aaif-goose/goose · error

Session has no conversation after history modification

Error message

Session has no conversation after history modification

What it means

Companion of 316 in the same HistoryReplaced block: the re-fetch after /compact //clear succeeded, but Session.conversation is None, so there is no conversation to hand the UI. The session record on disk simply has no conversation attached — typical when the history-modifying command ran in a session that never had any messages (conversation metadata never created) or the session record lost that field.

Source

Thrown at crates/goose/src/agents/agent.rs:2047

                    .await?;

                // Check if this was a command that modifies conversation history
                let modifies_history = crate::agents::execute_commands::COMPACT_TRIGGERS
                    .contains(&message_text.trim())
                    || message_text.trim() == "/clear";

                return Ok(Box::pin(async_stream::try_stream! {
                    yield AgentEvent::Message(user_message);
                    yield AgentEvent::Message(response);

                    // After commands that modify history, notify UI that history was replaced
                    if modifies_history {
                        let updated_session = session_manager.get_session(&session_config.id, true)
                            .await
                            .map_err(|e| anyhow!("Failed to fetch updated session: {}", e))?;
                        let updated_conversation = updated_session
                            .conversation
                            .ok_or_else(|| anyhow!("Session has no conversation after history modification"))?;
                        yield AgentEvent::HistoryReplaced(updated_conversation);
                    }
                }));
            }
            Ok(Some(resolved_message)) => {
                session_manager
                    .add_message(
                        &session_config.id,
                        &user_message.clone().with_visibility(true, false),
                    )
                    .await?;
                session_manager
                    .add_message(
                        &session_config.id,
                        &resolved_message.clone().with_visibility(false, true),
                    )
                    .await?;
            }

View on GitHub (pinned to 3810898a74)

Solutions

1. Send at least one normal message before issuing /clear or /compact so the session has a conversation
2. If the session should have messages, inspect its stored record for a missing conversation field and repair or recreate it
3. Treat the error as benign for genuinely empty sessions and continue without the HistoryReplaced event

// Guard history-modifying commands on sessions that actually have a conversation:
let session = session_manager.get_session(&session_id, true).await?;
if session.conversation.is_none() {
    anyhow::bail!("session {session_id} has no conversation; nothing to clear");
}

fn no_conversation(e: &anyhow::Error) -> bool {
    e.to_string().contains("has no conversation")
}

When it happens

Trigger: Issuing /clear (or a COMPACT_TRIGGERS command) as the very first input of a freshly created session whose record has conversation: None; session created via API without an initial exchange; older or externally-written session records missing the conversation field.

Common situations: Automation scripts creating empty sessions and immediately sending /clear; imported/migrated sessions with incomplete metadata.

Related errors

• Failed to fetch updated session: {}
• Session {} has no conversation
• Request not found: {}
• Extension state serialization failed: {}
• Failed to persist extension state: {}

AI-assisted analysis of aaif-goose/goose@3810898a74 (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fdbc95fdf7f169cf. Report an issue: GitHub.