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Nov 10, 2025
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Document AgentErrorEvent vs ConversationErrorEvent in Events architecture #94

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sdk/docs: document AgentErrorEvent vs ConversationErrorEvent in Event…
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Update sdk/arch/events.mdx
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20 changes: 20 additions & 0 deletions sdk/arch/events.mdx
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Expand Up @@ -179,6 +179,26 @@ flowchart LR
- **Tools → Events**: Create ObservationEvents after execution
- **Services → Events**: Read-only observers for monitoring, visualization

## Error Events: Agent vs Conversation

Two distinct error events exist in the SDK, with different purpose and visibility:

- AgentErrorEvent
- Type: ObservationBaseEvent (LLM-convertible)
- Scope: Error for a specific tool call (has tool_name and tool_call_id)
- Source: "agent"
- LLM visibility: Sent as a tool message so the model can react/recover
- Effect: Conversation continues; not a terminal state
- Code: https://github.com/OpenHands/software-agent-sdk/blob/main/openhands-sdk/openhands/sdk/event/llm_convertible/observation.py

- ConversationErrorEvent
- Type: Event (not LLM-convertible)
- Scope: Conversation-level runtime failure (no tool_name/tool_call_id)
- Source: typically "environment"
- LLM visibility: Not sent to the model
- Effect: Run loop transitions to ERROR and run() raises ConversationRunError; surface top-level error to client applications
- Code: https://github.com/OpenHands/software-agent-sdk/blob/main/openhands-sdk/openhands/sdk/event/conversation_error.py

## See Also

- **[Agent Architecture](/sdk/arch/agent)** - How agents read and write events
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