version: "1.0.2" name: Error Messages description: Expert skill for designing and implementing high-quality compiler error messages category: User Experience allowed-tools:

• Read
• Write
• Edit
• Glob
• Grep
• Bash

graph: domains: [domain:software-engineering] specializations: [specialization:programming-languages] skillAreas: [skill-area:compiler-implementation, skill-area:language-design] roles: [role:backend-engineer]

Error Messages Skill

Overview

Expert skill for designing and implementing high-quality compiler error messages.

Capabilities

• Design clear, actionable error message templates
• Implement source context display with underlines
• Generate fix suggestions and quick fixes
• Handle error cascades and suppression
• Implement multi-span error annotations
• Support machine-readable error output (JSON)
• Implement color/styled terminal output
• Design error recovery strategies for better diagnostics

Target Processes

• error-message-enhancement.js
• parser-development.js
• type-system-implementation.js
• semantic-analysis.js
• lsp-server-implementation.js

Dependencies

Elm/Rust error message guidelines

Usage Guidelines

1. Clarity: Make error messages clear and actionable
2. Context: Show relevant source code context with precise location
3. Suggestions: Provide fix suggestions when possible
4. Cascades: Suppress cascading errors to avoid overwhelming users
5. Machine-Readable: Support JSON output for tooling integration

Output Schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "errorFormat": {
      "type": "string",
      "enum": ["human", "json", "sarif"]
    },
    "features": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": { "type": "string" }
    },
    "colorSupport": { "type": "boolean" },
    "generatedFiles": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": { "type": "string" }
    }
  }
}