Hmbown/CodeWhale · error

Codewhale account request failed

Error message

Codewhale account request failed (HTTP {}, code {code})

What it means

A request to the Codewhale account API returned a non-success HTTP status, and the response body carried a parseable machine error code string (extracted from the JSON `code` field and passed through `safe_error_code`). The CLI surfaces both the HTTP status and that error code so the developer can identify the server-side failure.

Solutions

  1. Read the `code` in the message and look it up in the Codewhale account API docs.
  2. Re-authenticate (`codewhale login`) or refresh the machine API key if the status is 401/403.
  3. Retry with backoff if the code indicates rate limiting (429).
  4. Check the Codewhale status page / contact support for 5xx statuses.
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

match result {
    Err(e) if e.to_string().contains("HTTP 401") || e.to_string().contains("HTTP 403") => reauthenticate_and_retry(),
    Err(e) if e.to_string().contains("HTTP 429") => backoff_and_retry(),
    Err(e) => return Err(e),
    Ok(v) => Ok(v),
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Any account API call (list providers, create key, resolve models) that gets an HTTP error response whose JSON body contains a `code` string field recognized by `safe_error_code`.

Common situations: Expired/invalid account key (401/403 with an error code), rate limiting, requesting a nonexistent resource, or server-side validation errors returned as JSON with `code`.

Understand the failure class

Background: "API error: {status}" and "HTTP 401/403/404/429/5xx" errors: non-2xx HTTP responses explained — this error's family across 27 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of Hmbown/CodeWhale@433685b202 (2026-09-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/963fa1854aea48b9. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at crates/cli/src/cloud.rs:1260

fn parse_json_body<T: DeserializeOwned>(body: &[u8]) -> Result<T> {
    serde_json::from_slice(body).context("The Codewhale service returned an invalid JSON response")
}

fn response_error(response: &CloudResponse) -> anyhow::Error {
    let code = serde_json::from_slice::<serde_json::Value>(&response.body)
        .ok()
        .and_then(|body| {
            body.get("code")
                .and_then(serde_json::Value::as_str)
                .or_else(|| {
                    body.get("error")
                        .and_then(|error| error.get("code"))
                        .and_then(serde_json::Value::as_str)
                })
                .and_then(safe_error_code)
        });
    match code {
        Some(code) => anyhow!(
            "Codewhale account request failed (HTTP {}, code {code})",
            response.status
        ),
        None => anyhow!(
            "Codewhale account request failed (HTTP {})",
            response.status
        ),
    }
}

fn safe_error_code(code: &str) -> Option<String> {
    if code.is_empty()
        || code.len() > 80
        || !code
            .bytes()
            .all(|byte| byte.is_ascii_alphanumeric() || matches!(byte, b'_' | b'-' | b'.'))
    {
        return None;

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