Tool Reliability

How PraisonAI tools handle errors, retries, and edge cases

from praisonaiagents import Agent, duckduckgo

agent = Agent(name="Researcher", tools=[duckduckgo])
agent.start("Find recent news about tool reliability in AI agents")

The user relies on search tools; PraisonAI retries and fallbacks keep the agent run stable when a provider fails.

PraisonAI tools are designed with reliability-first principles.

Search Provider Priority

Automatic Fallback

search_web tries providers in order until one succeeds

Retry Logic

Each provider retries 3 times with exponential backoff

Quick Start

1. Simple Usage

       from praisonaiagents.tools import search_web
       
       # Automatically uses best available provider
       results = search_web("AI news 2024")
   
2. With Configuration

       from praisonaiagents.tools import internet_search
       
       # Direct DuckDuckGo access with retry
       results = internet_search("Python tutorials", retries=3)
   

Error Handling

Check for errors

results = search_web("query")
if results and "error" in results[0]:
    print(f"Failed: {results[0]['error']}")

list_processes handles None

System processes may return None for CPU/memory. Defaults to 0.0.

API Keys

Provider	Environment Variable	Quality
Tavily	TAVILY_API_KEY	⭐⭐⭐ Best
Exa	EXA_API_KEY	⭐⭐⭐ Best
You.com	YDC_API_KEY	⭐⭐ Good
DuckDuckGo	None needed	⭐ Basic

Set TAVILY_API_KEY for best search quality. DuckDuckGo is the free fallback.

Auto-Approve Tools

approve:
  - write_file
  - execute_command

agents:
  writer:
    tools:
      - write_file

Only auto-approve tools you trust.

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Schema-level Reliability

Runtime reliability (error handling, retries, fallbacks) complements schema-time reliability for comprehensive tool safety.

Schema validation catches broken tools at development time:

• Invalid OpenAI function schemas
• Missing required fields like properties
• Non-JSON-serializable values
• Duplicate tool names in lists

Runtime reliability handles execution errors:

• Network failures and timeouts
• API rate limits and retries
• Provider fallbacks
• Process crashes

For schema validation details and fixing validation errors, see Tool Schema Validation.

Related

Custom Tools

Build your own agent tools

Tools Overview

Browse PraisonAI tool documentation