What it requires. A topic whose instructions say nothing about what happens when an action errors, times out or returns empty, and an action path with no fault handling behind it.
Why it matters. Unhandled failure in an agent does not stop the conversation, it changes the answer. The model continues without the data and produces something plausible. The same shape upstream is worse: a run left in an intermediate state can be invisible to every downstream stage at once - the report, the delivery and the chase queue alike - so nobody is ever told. On the org this was written against, not one of twenty-one instructions mentioned failure at all.
How to fix it. Add a fault path to every flow-backed action, and state in the topic instructions what the agent should say when an action returns nothing.
Source. Our defect handling standard, 16 August 2026
Is this rule worth checking?
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