How do I preserve the original error when adding context to an exception?

Replacing an exception without its cause can hide the operation that actually failed. Python supports explicit chaining. Inside an exception handler, use raise ImportError("Could not load the configured plugin") from exc when translating an error to your application boundary. Use bare raise to propagate the same exception unchanged. Test that the traceback shows both the low-level cause and useful high-level context. Avoid including passwords, tokens or complete private payloads in messages. from None deliberately suppresses displayed context and should be reserved for cases where that is actually desirable, not used to make debugging output look cleaner.