Components Foundation AI Error States
AI04 · Transparency

AI Error States

Purpose Typed, human-readable error patterns for AI-specific failures — timeout, refusal, hallucination-flagged, and rate-limit — each with concrete recovery paths.
Use when The AI system returns an error, refusal, flagged output, or capacity limit.
Do not use For generic HTTP/system errors (use standard error handling). AI04 is for model-specific failure modes.
Failure mode prevented Users receiving opaque error messages with no recovery path, no explanation of cause, and no way to distinguish model errors from system failures.
Example Dark Academia
Dark Academia
The Atelier
Neon Tide
The Archive
Candlelight
The Conservatory
hallucination-flagged — output contains unverifiable citation or fabricated referencerate-limit — workspace has hit request ceilingrefusal — model declined to fulfill requesttimeout — model did not respond within acceptable window
Design rule

Every AI error must surface: error type, human-readable cause, and at least one concrete recovery action. Never show a generic error for a model-specific failure.

Override these CSS custom properties to apply your own visual treatment without touching the component's behavioral contracts.

Shared semantic tokens

Token Controls
--rad-surface-card Card background
--rad-color-approve Primary recovery action button
--rad-radius-card Card border radius

Component-scoped tokens

Token Controls
--rad-error-hallucination-border Hallucination variant border
--rad-error-hallucination-color Hallucination label and icon
--rad-error-ratelimit-border Rate limit variant border
--rad-error-ratelimit-color Rate limit label and icon
--rad-error-refusal-border Refusal variant border
--rad-error-refusal-color Refusal label and icon
--rad-error-timeout-border Timeout variant border
--rad-error-timeout-color Timeout label and icon
--rad-error-body-color Error body text
--rad-error-body-strong Emphasized values in body
--rad-btn-upgrade-color Upgrade button text and border

"*Hallucination is in the list. You already knew that. Build the error state for it without irony.*"

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© 2025 Jackie Curry. All rights reserved. Publication date: 2025.

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