--- title: "Tigzig APIs Tell You What Went Wrong. If Your Code Reads Only the Status Code, You Never See It." slug: tigzig-api-error-hints-read-the-body-sep2026 date_published: 2026-09-07T18:00:00.000Z original_url: https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-api-error-hints-read-the-body-sep2026 source: fresh processed_at: 2026-09-07T18:00:00.000Z --- # Tigzig APIs Tell You What Went Wrong. If Your Code Reads Only the Status Code, You Never See It. Tigzig APIs try to tell you what went wrong when you hit an error.. with customized error hints. However, if your code reads only the status code, you never see any of it. The hint is sitting there in the response body and one line of printing gets you it. If you are debugging by hand, just print the whole body. If it is automated code, print out the error block or the specific 'hint' piece. That's it. No, not all errors carry hints - I try and cover the most common / recurring errors that I see in the logs .. API catalog: [tigzig.com/apis](https://www.tigzig.com/apis) ## Quick tips - **Debugging by hand?** Just print the whole body. Everything is in there. - **In code**, pull out the error block on purpose. In Python that is `r.json()["error"]`. In JavaScript, `await res.json()` and then `j.error`. That gives you the whole error block. - **Where the tailored line sits.** On the MF API it is in `error.hint`. On Vigil, Tremor and the database API it is in `error.message`. That inconsistency is mine and I am sorting it out; taking the block works on all of them today. **Here is why automated code might miss it** - `requests`, `httpx` and `aiohttp` all return normally on a 400, so nothing stops your code and nothing tells you to look. - `urllib` does raise, but `str(e)` is only "HTTP Error 400: Bad Request" and the body is on `e.read()`. - `raise_for_status()` turns a status into an exception, and that exception carries the summary line only, so log the body itself. - For curl, reach for `--fail-with-body`. ## Quick reference: the API debugging guides Here are quick reference links to the main Tigzig API debugging guides. Just copy text from the guide and hand it over to your AI agent to debug, along with the API doc link at the end. - **[Demystifying Tigzig API errors](https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-api-errors-practical-guide-jul2026).** Twenty common failure modes across the mutual fund, macro and red-flag APIs, every one of them taken from real server logs. - **[Why a SQL error is usually the URL it travelled in](https://www.tigzig.com/post/db-mcp-url-encoding-errors-aug2026).** The plus sign, line breaks getting eaten, and clients that stop encoding at the first bracket. - **[An ISIN checker for when a fund lookup fails](https://www.tigzig.com/post/isin-checker-mutual-fund-identifiers-aug2026).** It separates a malformed identifier from a valid one whose data is simply absent, and where a character has been dropped it often suggests the intended ISIN. - **[Getting a 429](https://www.tigzig.com/post/mf-nav-api-429-rate-limit-aug2026).** Almost never your total, usually many unbounded calls firing at the same instant. - **[Is it you or is it me](https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-api-status-page-aug2026).** A status page with 90 days of uptime history per service. **API catalog** - For you: [tigzig.com/apis](https://www.tigzig.com/apis) - For your agent: [api.tigzig.com](https://api.tigzig.com) ![Tigzig API error hints: the hint is in the response body, not the status code](/images/blog/apiErrorHintsSep2026.png) --- Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar Source: https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-api-error-hints-read-the-body-sep2026 Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar. License: https://www.tigzig.com/terms ## Related Tools: [MFPRO - Mutual Fund Analytics](https://www.tigzig.com/mfpro), [TREMOR - Macro Stress Signals](https://www.tigzig.com/tremor), [DATS-4 Database AI Suite](https://www.tigzig.com/analyzer) Explore: [API and MCP catalog](https://www.tigzig.com/apis), [MF NAV API docs](https://www.tigzig.com/apis/mf-nav), [Claude for Analytics hub](https://www.tigzig.com/claude-for-analytics) More posts: [Demystifying TIGZIG API Errors: A Practical Guide for MFPRO, TREMOR, and VIGIL Users](https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-api-errors-practical-guide-jul2026), [Getting Errors Running SQL Against the Tigzig Cricket Database? The Most Common Failure Is the URL, Not Your SQL.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/db-mcp-url-encoding-errors-aug2026), [An ISIN Checker for When a Mutual Fund Lookup Fails. And Why One Fund Carries Ten Identifiers.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/isin-checker-mutual-fund-identifiers-aug2026), [Getting a 429 From the MF NAV API? It Is Almost Never the Total. Two Changes Fix Nearly Every Case.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/mf-nav-api-429-rate-limit-aug2026), [Getting Errors on the Tigzig APIs? Is It You, or Is It Me? Now You Can Just Go and Look.](https://www.tigzig.com/post/tigzig-api-status-page-aug2026)