When a tool call fails

If a tool call fails for any reason, a file cannot be found, a command exits non-zero, something else goes wrong entirely, that failure is shown plainly as part of the transcript rather than hidden or silently swallowed.

The model's next step responds directly to the failure it just saw: trying a different approach, asking you a clarifying question, or explaining plainly what went wrong and why it cannot proceed as originally planned.

A failed step is never silently retried behind the scenes without appearing in the transcript; every attempt, successful or not, is part of the visible record of the turn.

This visibility is what makes it possible to tell the difference, after the fact, between a turn that got the right result on the first try and one that stumbled once and recovered; both can end in the same successful outcome, but the transcript makes the actual path there honest rather than hiding a retry.

If a failure is one you recognize and know how to fix, saying so directly, "that path is wrong, it should be under src/api", steers the very next attempt the same way any other mid-turn correction would, described in Correcting course mid-turn.