aaif-goose/goose · error

invalid thinking effort

Error message

invalid thinking effort

What it means

After the interactive 'Select thinking effort' prompt, the chosen string is parsed with ThinkingEffort::from_str, which accepts off/disabled/none, low, medium/med, high, and max/xhigh. A parse failure is collapsed into this generic message. All menu items (off/low/medium/high/max) are valid variants, so in practice this only fires on menu/enum drift between versions or non-menu input reaching the parse.

Source

Thrown at crates/goose-cli/src/commands/configure.rs:976

    };

    {
        let supports_thinking = match temp_provider.fetch_model_info(&model).await {
            Ok(model_info) => model_info.reasoning,
            Err(_) => goose_providers::model::ModelConfig::new(&model).is_reasoning_model(),
        };

        if supports_thinking {
            let effort: ThinkingEffort = cliclack::select("Select thinking effort:")
                .item("off", "Off - No extended thinking", "")
                .item("low", "Low - Better latency, lighter reasoning", "")
                .item("medium", "Medium - Moderate thinking", "")
                .item("high", "High - Deep reasoning", "")
                .item("max", "Max - No constraints on thinking depth", "")
                .initial_value("off")
                .interact()?
                .parse()
                .map_err(|_| anyhow::anyhow!("invalid thinking effort"))?;
            config.set_goose_thinking_effort(effort)?;
        }
    }

    // Test the configuration
    let spin = spinner();
    spin.start("Checking your configuration...");

    let toolshim_enabled = std::env::var("GOOSE_TOOLSHIM")
        .map(|val| val == "1" || val.to_lowercase() == "true")
        .unwrap_or(false);
    let toolshim_model = std::env::var("GOOSE_TOOLSHIM_OLLAMA_MODEL").ok();

    match test_provider_configuration(&provider_name, &model, toolshim_enabled, toolshim_model)
        .await
    {
        Ok(()) => {
            goose::config::set_active_provider(config, &provider_name, &model)?;

View on GitHub (pinned to 3810898a74)

Solutions

1. Re-run `goose configure` and pick one of the offered options (off/low/medium/high/max)
2. Update goose so the menu and the ThinkingEffort enum stay in sync
3. Embedders: validate candidate strings with ThinkingEffort::from_str before the prompt and surface the parser's own error message
4. Set the value directly through configuration instead of the wizard if the option is exposed

// Rust: validate before the prompt and surface the parser's own message
let raw: String = cliclack::select("Select thinking effort:") /* items */ .interact()?;
let effort: ThinkingEffort = raw.parse().map_err(|e: String| anyhow::anyhow!("{e}"))?;

fn is_valid_effort(s: &str) -> bool {
    matches!(
        s.to_lowercase().as_str(),
        "off" | "disabled" | "none" | "low" | "medium" | "med" | "high" | "max" | "xhigh"
    )
}

When it happens

Trigger: A build where the cliclack menu offers a value ThinkingEffort::from_str rejects (menu/enum drift after a patch), or programmatic/expect-driven input feeding an unexpected string to the select prompt.

Common situations: Forked builds that add menu entries without extending the enum; automation driving the configure TUI with scripted stdin; version skew between a wrapper tool and goose.

Related errors

• TLS was requested but no TLS backend is enabled. Enable the
• goose configure requires an interactive terminal. If you ins
• Failed to create provider for OAuth: {}
• Failed to store secret
• --severity: {e}

AI-assisted analysis of aaif-goose/goose@3810898a74 (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e977ab5d4f508a98. Report an issue: GitHub.