Claude API cheatsheet

Claude API: Errors and configuration

4 common Claude API tasks.

Handle API errors

Catch the most specific exception first. The SDK already retries rate limits and server errors.

try:
    response = client.messages.create(...)
except anthropic.BadRequestError as e:
    print("Bad request:", e.message)
except anthropic.AuthenticationError:
    print("Invalid API key")
except anthropic.RateLimitError as e:
    print("Retry after", e.response.headers.get("retry-after"))
except anthropic.APIStatusError as e:
    print("API error", e.status_code)
except anthropic.APIConnectionError:
    print("Network error")

Set a timeout and retries for one call

Override client settings for a single request without changing the client.

client.with_options(timeout=30.0, max_retries=5).messages.create(
    model="claude-opus-5-5",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}],
)

Log the request ID

Include the request ID when reporting a problem to Anthropic.

print(response._request_id)

Turn on SDK logging

Print the SDK's requests and responses while debugging.

export ANTHROPIC_LOG=debug