tool-use-guardian

MonitoringSafeClaude Codex

How to Install

This skill comes from a community source. Check the original listing for install instructions.

General Claude Code install: copy SKILL.md to ~/.claude/skills/

Tool Use Guardian

Overview

The reliability wrapper every AI agent needs. Monitors tool calls, auto-retries failures, fixes truncated responses, and learns which tools are unreliable — so you never lose your chain of thought.

Free forever. Built by the Genesis Agent Marketplace.

Install

npx skills add christopherlhammer11-ai/tool-use-guardian

When to Use This Skill

Use when tool calls return truncated or malformed JSON
Use when APIs timeout or rate-limit your agent mid-task
Use when a multi-step chain breaks partway through
Use when you need automatic retry logic without writing it yourself
Use for any agent workflow that depends on external tool reliability

How It Works

Step 1: Pre-Call Validation

Before every tool call, Guardian validates: - Required parameters are present and correctly typed - The tool is not marked as "unreliable" from previous failures - Request size is within known limits

Step 2: Failure Classification

When a tool call fails, Guardian classifies the failure into one of 9 categories:

Failure Type	Recovery Action
Truncated JSON	Re-fetch with pagination or smaller chunks
API Timeout	Retry once with simpler request, then decompose
Rate Limit (429)	Exponential backoff, max 3 retries
Auth Expired	Flag for user intervention
Mid-chain Break	Resume from last successful checkpoint
Error-as-200	Detect `{"error": "..."}` disguised as success
Schema Mismatch	Attempt auto-coercion, warn if lossy
Network Failure	Retry with jitter, max 2 attempts
Unknown Error	Log full context, escalate to user

Step 3: Chain Protection

For multi-step tool chains, Guardian maintains checkpoints. If step 4 of 7 fails, it resumes from step 4 — never restarts from scratch.

Step 4: Learning

Guardian tracks failure patterns per tool. After 3+ failures of the same type, it marks the tool as unreliable and suggests alternatives.

Best Practices

✅ Let Guardian wrap all external tool calls automatically
✅ Review Guardian's reliability reports to identify flaky tools
✅ Use checkpoint recovery for long chains
❌ Don't disable retry logic for rate-limited APIs
❌ Don't ignore repeated failure warnings

Related Skills

@recallmax - Long-context memory enhancement (also free from Genesis Marketplace)

Limitations

Use this skill only when the task clearly matches the scope described above.
Do not treat the output as a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review.
Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.