Significant-Gravitas/AutoGPT · error · HTTPException

Internal server error in Otto proxy

Error message

Internal server error in Otto proxy

What it means

Catch-all 500 from OttoService.ask for any exception not covered by the ClientError/TimeoutError handlers — e.g. JSON decode failures of the upstream body, validation errors building ApiResponse, or bugs in payload construction. It masks the root cause from the client (the real exception is only in logs).

Source

Thrown at autogpt_platform/backend/backend/api/features/otto/service.py:138

                    data = await response.json()
                    logger.info(
                        f"Successfully received response from Otto API for user {user_id}"
                    )
                    return ApiResponse(**data)

        except aiohttp.ClientError as e:
            logger.error(f"Connection error to Otto API: {str(e)}")
            raise HTTPException(
                status_code=503, detail="Failed to connect to Otto service"
            )
        except asyncio.TimeoutError:
            logger.error("Timeout error connecting to Otto API after 60 seconds")
            raise HTTPException(
                status_code=504, detail="Request to Otto service timed out"
            )
        except Exception as e:
            logger.error(f"Unexpected error in Otto API proxy: {str(e)}")
            raise HTTPException(
                status_code=500, detail="Internal server error in Otto proxy"
            )

View on GitHub (pinned to 9c8bb5550f)

Solutions

1. Read the backend log line 'Unexpected error in Otto proxy' — it contains the actual exception and traceback.
2. If it's a parse/validation error, capture the raw upstream body (add temporary debug logging) and diff it against the ApiResponse schema.
3. Align backend and Otto API versions so the response contract matches.
4. Fix the specific root cause; the 500 itself is only a wrapper.

Example fix

# before
except Exception as e:
    logger.error(f"Unexpected error in Otto API proxy: {str(e)}")
    raise HTTPException(status_code=500, detail="Internal server error in Otto proxy")
# after — narrow the parse failure so it's diagnosable
except json.JSONDecodeError as e:
    logger.error(f"Otto returned non-JSON body: {e}")
    raise HTTPException(status_code=502, detail="Otto returned an invalid response")

// Server-side: validate the upstream body shape before constructing ApiResponse
const raw = await response.text();
const parsed = JSON.parse(raw); // surfaces decode errors distinctly
if (!('answer' in parsed)) throw new TypeError('unexpected Otto response shape');

function isApiResponse(o: unknown): o is ApiResponse {
  return !!o && typeof (o as ApiResponse).answer === 'string';
}

try { return ApiResponse(**data); }
catch (e) {
  logger.error('Otto response contract violated: %s', raw_body);
  raise HTTPException(502, 'Otto returned an invalid response');
}

When it happens

Trigger: Otto returns 200 but with a body that isn't valid JSON or doesn't match the ApiResponse schema (response.json() or ApiResponse(**data) raising); errors while fetching/serializing graph data that escape their own try/except; unexpected runtime errors in the request path.

Common situations: Otto API contract change breaking ApiResponse parsing; partial/truncated responses; upstream returning HTML error pages with status 200 behind a misconfigured gateway.

Understand the failure class

• HTTP status errors: handling 4xx and 5xx responses — how to handle 4xx and 5xx responses properly.

Related errors

• str(e)
• OpenAI API key not configured
• Dream pass scheduling failed: {type(exc).__name__}: {exc}
• Ratification pass failed: {type(exc).__name__}: {exc}
• Nightly batch scheduling failed: {type(exc).__name__}: {exc}

AI-assisted analysis of Significant-Gravitas/AutoGPT@9c8bb5550f (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4d78e29ba8296225. Report an issue: GitHub.