Ask for "error handling" and you get try/catch wrapped around everything with console.log in the catch. Ask for this instead:

"Add error handling to this module. Requirements:

• A small hierarchy: AppError base, then ValidationError, NotFoundError, ConflictError, ExternalServiceError

• Each carries an HTTP status and a machine-readable code

• One central Express error middleware maps them to responses

• Unknown errors become a 500 with a correlation ID; the real message goes to the logger, never to the client

• Stack traces only when NODE_ENV !== production

• External calls get a timeout and one retry with backoff; a retry exhaustion is an ExternalServiceError, not a 500"

The line that earns its place is "the real message goes to the logger, never to the client". Without it you leak table names in 500 bodies.

Generated Outputs (1)

1 weeks ago

Claude

claude-opus-4

1 weeks ago

Generated Output

export class ConflictError extends AppError {
constructor(message: string, code = "CONFLICT") {
super(message, 409, code)
}
}

// error middleware
if (err instanceof AppError) {
return res.status(err.status).json({ success: false, code: err.code, message: err.message })
}
const correlationId = randomUUID()
logger.error({ correlationId, err })
return res.status(500).json({ success: false, code: "INTERNAL", correlationId })

Prompting For Error Handling That Is Not Just try/catch

Generated Outputs (1)