In an HTTP server, top level means the handlers, is that so?
Depends if it can be handled lower (with a retry or default data for example), if it can be it won’t be passed all the way up.
Generally though I haven’t personally found it useful to always annotate at every point in the call chain. So my default is not to annotate and if err return err.
What I like about errors instead of exceptions is they are boring and predictable and in the call signature so I wouldn’t want to lose that.