AI engineering glossary · Agents tools MCP
What is error recovery?
Error recovery: An agent's ability to notice a failed step and continue by retrying, trying another tool or asking for help. It matters because errors compound over long tasks, and a single unhandled failure can derail everything.
Error recovery: an example
When a website returns HTTP 503, the agent waits, retries once, and then switches to a cached copy.
Related terms
More Agents tools MCP terms
- Escalation
- Evaluator-optimizer pattern
- Fallback
- Generative agents
- Grounding (agents)
- Guardrails for agents
- Human-in-the-loop
- Human-on-the-loop
Where you learn it
Error recovery is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.