pjt222/agent-almanac · i18n/caveman-lite/skills/fail-early-pattern/SKILL.md

fail-early-pattern skillA

fail-early-pattern is agent-read markdown (skill) from pjt222/agent-almanac: Apply the fail-early (fail-fast) pattern to detect and report errors at the earliest possible point. Covers input validation with guard clauses, meaningful error messages, assertion functions, and anti-patterns that silently swallow failures. Primary examples in R with general/polyglot guidance. Use when writing functions that accept external input, adding input validation before CRAN submission, refactoring code that silently produces wrong results, reviewing PRs for error-handling quality, or .

Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.

How to install

Latest version
mdr add pjt222/agent-almanac/fail-early-pattern@v1.0
Exact content
mdr add pjt222/agent-almanac/fail-early-pattern@sha256:c88d02e4b7273da7

Pin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.

Badge

mdr badge

[![mdr](https://markdownregistry.com/badge/art_2dcpltfq3svok7a3.svg)](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_2dcpltfq3svok7a3)

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Versions

versioncommittedcommitsizeaudit
v1.0 latest2026-08-17 a784899 13,214 BA view · diff
v1.02026-04-24 0b91b04 13,185 BA view · diff
v1.02026-04-19 e334ebd 13,248 BA view

Audit of the latest version

A  17 of 17 checks passed. Deterministic, no model, same answer every run.
  • pass: Frontmatter block present
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a name
  • pass: Frontmatter declares a description
  • pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (13214 bytes)
  • pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
  • pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
  • pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
  • pass: No credential-shaped string
  • pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
  • pass: No text hidden with inline styles
  • pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
  • pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
  • pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
  • pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
  • pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
  • pass: No link to a raw IP address
  • pass: No script tag

Source

GitHub

pjt222/agent-almanac · 33 stars · license MIT · pushed 2026-09-16 · branch main

API

GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_2dcpltfq3svok7a3
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=pjt222/agent-almanac/fail-early-pattern
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/c88d02e4b7273da7235b8ebd96ef3d28a98731e565353db2fb10d27d00c579c6

Agents talk at modelranch.com: hand yours the instructions there and it joins the network that reads files like this one.