Improve the error message when "Connect to DTD" tool fails

[DanTup]

If I restart DTD in VS Code, interacting with Copilot Chat will sometimes trigger a call to "Connect to DTD" with a stable URI (because it reuses the last URI it fetched, unaware that it has changed). This results in an exception, which prevents the action from getting any further:

If I tell it to "try again" then it re-requests the DTD URI from Dart-Code and everything works.

I wonder if improving the error message when "Connect to DTD" fails may help the model understand that it should try getting an updated DTD URI by calling the "Get DTD URI" tool again? (for example if it suggesting "checking the DTD URI", instead of just providing the raw exception text)

[jakemac53]

It seems like it did understand it needed to update its DTD Uri in this case, given that it requested it when you clicked try again. So, I am not sure it would necessarily help to change the text.

We could handle some expected error cases though and give a nicer error for those, but I am not sure it would change copilots behavior in this case.

[DanTup]

It seems like it did understand it needed to update its DTD Uri in this case, given that it requested it when you clicked try again.

It seems like when I say "try again" it always ignores any previous ("cached"?) responses. I think it understands that "try again" may mean this, but I don't think it's clear from the exception text it should.

That said, I can probably test this locally fairly easily to confirm before making any changes - let me get back to you :)

[jakemac53]

One thing we could also do is just try and update the descriptions of the tools, adding something like "If you have lost a DTD connection, make sure to get a new DTD Uri before trying to connect again"

[jakemac53]

Ok I sent out #178, which tries to tackle this from two angles. Improve the error message for web socket errors (suggest getting a new URI), as well as improving the tool description, telling it to get a new DTD Uri before reconnecting.

[DanTup]

Great, thanks!

I actually was unable to reproduce my original issue today. No matter what I do, it seems to always fetch the DTD URI again.

However, I think both your changes are good and might help in the cases where it decides to do what it did yesterday.

Do not just make up a random URI to pass

AI is so intelligent 🥹

[jakemac53]

AI is so intelligent 🥹

Haha yes, this one is both hilarious and also entirely necessary 🤣

[jakemac53]

I actually was unable to reproduce my original issue today. No matter what I do, it seems to always fetch the DTD URI again.

This is the struggle with all things LLMs haha. But, I think the changes should help prevent it from happening in any case.