Error Surface

This chapter inventories the current public error surface of LINC.

Current State

LINC exposes typed errors via LincError and structured diagnostics inside returned data.

Typed Error Surface Today

The clearest typed error boundary today is around the explicit workflow APIs such as probe_type_layouts(...) and inspect_symbols(...).

What Consumers Should Do Right Now

Downstream users should:

• treat successful return values as stable enough to consume
• treat diagnostics in returned data structures as first-class signals
• avoid matching exact error strings for durable control flow
• wrap stringly errors at their own boundary if they need structured handling immediately

What Counts As An Error vs A Diagnostic

• hard operational failures generally return an error
• partially understood source constructs often become diagnostics attached to a returned package
• validation findings are reported as structured match results, not thrown as errors