conductor-oss/conductor · error · RuntimeException

Anthropic Messages API call failed: {message}

Error message

Anthropic Messages API call failed: {message}

What it means

AnthropicChatModel.call() wraps any java.io.IOException thrown by AnthropicMessagesApi.createMessage() into a RuntimeException with this message. The underlying IOException (connection timeout, read timeout, DNS failure, TLS error) is preserved as the cause. This is the catch-all for all transport-layer failures between Conductor and api.anthropic.com; HTTP error responses (non-2xx status codes) are handled separately inside createMessage itself (see error 182).

Source

Thrown at ai/src/main/java/org/conductoross/conductor/ai/providers/anthropic/AnthropicChatModel.java:72

public class AnthropicChatModel implements ChatModel {

    private static final int DEFAULT_MAX_TOKENS = 8192;

    private final AnthropicMessagesApi messagesApi;
    private final ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();

    public AnthropicChatModel(AnthropicMessagesApi messagesApi) {
        this.messagesApi = messagesApi;
    }

    @Override
    public ChatResponse call(Prompt prompt) {
        try {
            MessagesRequest request = buildRequest(prompt);
            MessagesResponse result = messagesApi.createMessage(request);
            return toSpringChatResponse(result, prompt.getOptions());
        } catch (IOException e) {
            throw new RuntimeException("Anthropic Messages API call failed: " + e.getMessage(), e);
        }
    }

    private MessagesRequest buildRequest(Prompt prompt) {
        List<org.springframework.ai.chat.messages.Message> springMessages =
                prompt.getInstructions();
        ChatOptions options = prompt.getOptions();

        // Extract system messages
        String system = null;
        List<org.springframework.ai.chat.messages.Message> nonSystemMessages = new ArrayList<>();
        for (org.springframework.ai.chat.messages.Message msg : springMessages) {
            if (msg.getMessageType() == MessageType.SYSTEM) {
                String sysText = ((SystemMessage) msg).getText();
                system = system == null ? sysText : system + "\n" + sysText;
            } else {
                nonSystemMessages.add(msg);
            }

View on GitHub (pinned to cf7c3e4a8a)

Solutions

1. Inspect the cause (getCause()) and its message — it carries the specific I/O failure reason.
2. Verify network connectivity to config.getBaseURL() (default https://api.anthropic.com) from the Conductor host.
3. If the request is large (many tokens, multi-image), increase the OkHttp readTimeout via AIHttpClients configuration.
4. If behind a proxy, set the appropriate OkHttp proxy configuration.

Example fix

// before — default client with short timeout
Anthropic anthropic = new Anthropic(config);

// after — custom client with longer timeout
OkHttpClient httpClient = new OkHttpClient.Builder()
    .connectTimeout(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
    .readTimeout(120, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
    .build();
Anthropic anthropic = new Anthropic(config, httpClient);

// Validate Anthropic config before calling the chat model
void validateAnthropicConfig(AnthropicConfiguration config) {
    if (config.getApiKey() == null || config.getApiKey().isBlank()) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Anthropic API key is required");
    }
    if (config.getBaseURL() == null || config.getBaseURL().isBlank()) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Anthropic base URL is required");
    }
}

// Retry on transient IOException, fail fast on permanent errors
int maxRetries = 3;
for (int attempt = 0; attempt <= maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
        return chatModel.call(prompt);
    } catch (RuntimeException e) {
        if (e.getCause() instanceof java.io.IOException
                && attempt < maxRetries) {
            Thread.sleep((long) Math.pow(2, attempt) * 1000);
            continue;
        }
        throw e;
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: The OkHttp POST to {baseUrl}/v1/messages fails at the transport layer: socket timeout, connection refused, DNS resolution failure for api.anthropic.com, TLS handshake failure, or the OkHttp client's readTimeout is exceeded for a large streaming-adjacent request.

Common situations: OkHttp default timeout too short for large-context Claude requests. Corporate proxy or firewall blocking api.anthropic.com. Incorrect baseUrl configured in AnthropicConfiguration pointing to an unreachable host. Intermittent network partition or DNS blip in containerised deployments.

Related errors

• Gemini generateContent failed: {message}
• Embeddings API call failed: {message}
• Gemini generateImages failed: {message}
• Gemini embedContent failed
• Failed to download from {url}

AI-assisted analysis of conductor-oss/conductor@cf7c3e4a8a (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0e3d585a88f369d3. Report an issue: GitHub.