Coordination Failure

Research cross-reference

How this class maps to the two leading agent-failure taxonomies.

Catch this with Snapback

Send your agent's trace to the ingest endpoint. Snapback diagnoses it — including this class — and returns a structured verdict with the root cause and a concrete fix. Pre-flight screening is free; you only draw credit on a full diagnosis.

curl -X POST "https://ingest.snapback.sh/v1/traces" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer vdk_YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "trace_id": "run-42",
    "steps": [
      { "agent": "planner", "action": "...", "output": "..." },
      { "agent": "executor", "tool": "...", "error": "..." }
    ]
  }'

Get your ingest token when you create a source. Already emitting OpenTelemetry? Point your exporter at /v1/traces/otlp — no re-instrumentation. AI agents can call the same pipeline over MCP (diagnose_trace).

What comes back

Illustrative — your verdict is diagnosed from your actual trace.

{
  "failure_class": "coordination_failure",
  "failed_at_step": 2,
  "failure_agent": "executor",
  "root_cause": "<the specific cause, inferred from your trace>",
  "fix_suggestion": "<a concrete, applicable fix>",
  "confidence": 0.9
}

Catch this failure automatically

Snapback watches your agents and diagnoses this class the moment it happens — with the specific trace, the likely cause, and the fix.