Exam CCAR-F Topic 1 Question 174 Discussion
Actual exam question for Anthropic's CCAR-F exam
Question #: 174
Topic #: 1
Question #: 174
Topic #: 1
You are building a customer support resolution agent using the Claude Agent SDK. The agent handles high- ambiguity requests like returns, billing disputes, and account issues. It has access to your backend systems through custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools ( get_customer , lookup_order , process_refund , escalate_to_human ). Your target is 80%+ first-contact resolution while knowing when to escalate.
Your process_refund tool returns two types of errors: technical errors ("503 Service Unavailable",
"Connection timeout") that are transient (~5% of calls), and business errors ("Order exceeds 30-day return window", "Item already refunded") that are permanent (~12% of calls). Monitoring shows the agent wastes 3-
4 turns retrying business errors that can never succeed. Currently, both error types return only a plain text message to Claude.
What's the most effective way to reduce wasted retries while improving customer-facing response quality?
Your process_refund tool returns two types of errors: technical errors ("503 Service Unavailable",
"Connection timeout") that are transient (~5% of calls), and business errors ("Order exceeds 30-day return window", "Item already refunded") that are permanent (~12% of calls). Monitoring shows the agent wastes 3-
4 turns retrying business errors that can never succeed. Currently, both error types return only a plain text message to Claude.
What's the most effective way to reduce wasted retries while improving customer-facing response quality?
Suggested Answer: D Vote an answer
The error response must explicitly communicate both control semantics and user-facing meaning. Setting " retriable " : false tells the agent that repeating the same operation cannot change the outcome. Providing a customer-friendly explanation allows Claude to respond accurately without exposing internal implementation details or inventing its own interpretation of the business rule.
Anthropic recommends returning failed tool operations with an error indicator and sufficiently informative content so Claude can decide whether to retry, request another input, or explain the limitation. Tool interfaces should provide detailed descriptions and structured parameters rather than forcing Claude to infer operational behavior from ambiguous text. ( https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agents-and-tools/tool-use/build-a-tool- using-agent?utm_source=chatgpt.com ) Option A appropriately limits automatic retries to technical failures, but it does not solve the stated customer- response problem unless business failures also carry clear semantics. Option B relies on fragile parsing of human-readable messages. Option C adds latency and another tool dependency, and eligibility may still change or fail for reasons not covered by the preliminary check.
A complete schema should identify the error code, category, retryability, customer-safe explanation, and permitted next actions. Technical errors can similarly return " retriable " : true with retry guidance and a maximum-attempt policy.
Official references/topics: Structured tool errors, retryability classification, customer-safe explanations, resilient MCP contracts.
Anthropic recommends returning failed tool operations with an error indicator and sufficiently informative content so Claude can decide whether to retry, request another input, or explain the limitation. Tool interfaces should provide detailed descriptions and structured parameters rather than forcing Claude to infer operational behavior from ambiguous text. ( https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agents-and-tools/tool-use/build-a-tool- using-agent?utm_source=chatgpt.com ) Option A appropriately limits automatic retries to technical failures, but it does not solve the stated customer- response problem unless business failures also carry clear semantics. Option B relies on fragile parsing of human-readable messages. Option C adds latency and another tool dependency, and eligibility may still change or fail for reasons not covered by the preliminary check.
A complete schema should identify the error code, category, retryability, customer-safe explanation, and permitted next actions. Technical errors can similarly return " retriable " : true with retry guidance and a maximum-attempt policy.
Official references/topics: Structured tool errors, retryability classification, customer-safe explanations, resilient MCP contracts.
by Marcia at Sep 30, 2026, 08:29 AM
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