Recipe catalog / retry-worthwhile

Decide whether to retry

Does failure describe a transient condition where an identical retry could succeed, given any attempt history?

You need a yes/no decision after a tool call or request fails and the error text, not a status code, is the only signal you have.

Explore this recipe interactively · Source and implementation guide

Use retry-worthwhile in TypeScript

Install with npm install jev-recipes. Requires Node.js 22.9 or newer and ES modules. Set TYPESAFE_API_KEY in your server environment for live calls, which send input to TypeSafe and use API quota. See the installation guide.

import { retryWorthwhile } from 'jev-recipes/retry-worthwhile';

const result = await retryWorthwhile({
  "failure": "HTTP 429 Too Many Requests: rate limit exceeded for this API key. Retry-After: 30.",
  "attempt": "First attempt, issued immediately after a batch of 50 similar calls to the same endpoint.",
  "minConfidence": 0.8
});
console.log(result);

Input contract

{
  "input": {
    "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "failure": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "attempt": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "minConfidence": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": 0,
        "maximum": 1
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "failure"
    ]
  },
  "result": {
    "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
    "type": "object",
    "properties": {
      "model": {
        "type": "string"
      },
      "usage": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "input_tokens": {
            "type": "integer",
            "minimum": 0,
            "maximum": 9007199254740991
          },
          "output_tokens": {
            "type": "integer",
            "minimum": 0,
            "maximum": 9007199254740991
          }
        },
        "required": [
          "input_tokens",
          "output_tokens"
        ],
        "additionalProperties": false
      },
      "status": {
        "type": "string",
        "enum": [
          "ready",
          "review"
        ]
      },
      "probability": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": 0,
        "maximum": 1
      },
      "confidence": {
        "type": "number",
        "minimum": 0,
        "maximum": 1
      },
      "verdict": {
        "type": "string",
        "enum": [
          "retry",
          "stop"
        ]
      }
    },
    "required": [
      "model",
      "usage",
      "status",
      "probability",
      "confidence",
      "verdict"
    ],
    "additionalProperties": false
  }
}

Saved example result

This hand-authored response demonstrates the contract. It is not a model accuracy measurement. Run it without an API key: npx jev-recipes demo retry-worthwhile.

{
  "model": "demo-fixture",
  "usage": {
    "input_tokens": 0,
    "output_tokens": 0
  },
  "status": "ready",
  "probability": 0.95,
  "confidence": 0.95,
  "verdict": "retry"
}

Evaluation evidence

Use the evaluation guide to measure this decision on your own labeled cases.

Limitations

• Judges the failure text as written. It does not know your retry budget, backoff policy, or whether the action is safe to repeat.
• Says whether an identical retry could succeed, not whether a modified attempt would. Fixing inputs or permissions is a different decision.

Related recipes

• failure-kind: Use failure-kind to place the failure in one of your own categories when you need more than a retry or stop answer.
• repeated-attempt: Use repeated-attempt to check whether a proposed next attempt is really a fresh approach rather than the same one again.