internal_error (500)¶

The service did something it did not intend.

Cause¶

The one code that means a bug rather than a refusal. Two paths reach it: a failure nobody modelled, and a response that did not match its own schema.

It is the only code in the catalogue that is always recorded as a failure to look at.

The status is 500, or another 5xx where the failure carried one.

The message¶

The wording depends on which of the cases above it was.

Unexpected error.
The response could not be produced.

The fix¶

Retry once — most are transient. Quote the event_id if the response carries one, and the request_id otherwise, when you report it.

Nothing is charged for a scan that ended here: the reservation is released before the error leaves.

event_id¶

event_id is always present on this code. It is the one code that means a bug, so every occurrence is recorded. Quote the value in a support request and it resolves to that one failure.

Related codes¶

• service_unavailable — a dependency is unreachable.
• engine_unavailable — the engine did not answer.

The whole catalogue, grouped by what a caller does with it, is on errors.

The response¶

{
  "error": {
    "code": "internal_error",
    "message": "Unexpected error.",
    "docs_url": "https://doc.cheap/docs/errors/internal_error",
    "request_id": "req_9e6b1f7c-2d4a-4b83-9c51-7f0ad3e8b642",
    "event_id": "e3b0c44298fc1c14"
  }
}