affaan-m/ECC · error · Error

review packet exceeds

Error message

review packet exceeds ${MAX_PROMPT_BYTES} bytes

What it means

runReview() enforces a hard payload cap of MAX_PROMPT_BYTES (64 KiB) on the UTF-8 byte length of the review packet. Packets larger than 64 * 1024 bytes throw this error, protecting against oversized prompts to the Codex CLI. The stdin wrapper (runStdinReview) enforces the same limit incrementally.

Solutions

1. Trim the packet to under 64 KiB before calling runReview (truncate the diff, review files in batches)
2. Use byte-aware truncation (Buffer.byteLength) rather than character length to account for multi-byte characters
3. Split the review into multiple smaller packets and run runReview per chunk
4. Summarize or filter the diff (e.g. `git diff --stat` plus key hunks) to reduce size

Example fix

// before
const review = runReview(hugeDiff, options); // throws >64KiB
// after
let packet = hugeDiff;
while (Buffer.byteLength(packet, 'utf8') > 64 * 1024) {
  packet = packet.slice(0, Math.floor(packet.length * 0.9));
}
const review = runReview(packet, options);

const { MAX_PROMPT_BYTES } = require('./review-with-codex');
function packetFits(prompt) {
  return Buffer.byteLength(prompt, 'utf8') <= MAX_PROMPT_BYTES;
}
if (!packetFits(packet)) packet = truncateToBytes(packet, MAX_PROMPT_BYTES);

try {
  return runReview(prompt, options);
} catch (err) {
  if (err.message.includes('review packet exceeds')) {
    console.error('Packet too large; split or truncate to <= 65536 bytes');
    return null;
  }
  throw err;
}

When it happens

Trigger: runReview(prompt, options) where Buffer.byteLength(prompt, 'utf8') > 65536 — e.g. piping a large git diff, long logs, or many files into the script.

Common situations: Reviewing a big PR diff without truncation; piping concatenated files; non-ASCII content (multi-byte UTF-8) pushing a modest-looking packet over the byte cap.

Understand the failure class

Background: payload too large / request exceeds maximum size: why libraries cap bytes and how to fix oversize payloads — this error's family across 50 libraries.

Related errors

• harness health evidence exceeds integrity verification bound
• references exceed bounded limits
• OpenAI transfer consent is required
• review packet is empty
• -32001

AI-assisted analysis of affaan-m/ECC@8321021c54 (2026-09-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6273c831f52a6605. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at skills/council-multi-model/scripts/review-with-codex.js:184

    );
  }
  return versionMatch[1];
}

function buildEnvironment(sourceEnv = process.env) {
  const allowed = [
    'PATH', 'HOME', 'USERPROFILE', 'CODEX_HOME',
    'TMPDIR', 'TMP', 'TEMP', 'SystemRoot', 'ComSpec', 'PATHEXT',
  ];
  return Object.fromEntries(
    allowed.filter((name) => sourceEnv[name]).map((name) => [name, sourceEnv[name]])
  );
}

function runReview(prompt, options, dependencies = {}) {
  if (!prompt.trim()) throw new Error('review packet is empty');
  if (Buffer.byteLength(prompt, 'utf8') > MAX_PROMPT_BYTES) {
    throw new Error(`review packet exceeds ${MAX_PROMPT_BYTES} bytes`);
  }
  if (!options.consent) throw new Error('OpenAI transfer consent is required');
  if (options.timeoutMs < 10_000 || options.timeoutMs > MAX_TIMEOUT_MS) {
    throw new Error('timeout is outside the 10-120 second safety range');
  }

  const spawn = dependencies.spawnSync || spawnSync;
  const environment = buildEnvironment(dependencies.env || process.env);
  const verifySupport = dependencies.verifyToollessSupport || verifyToollessSupport;
  verifySupport({ spawnSync: spawn, env: environment });
  const makeTemp = dependencies.mkdtempSync || fs.mkdtempSync;
  const readFile = dependencies.readFileSync || fs.readFileSync;
  const remove = dependencies.rmSync || fs.rmSync;
  const tempDir = makeTemp(path.join(os.tmpdir(), 'ecc-council-review-'));
  const outputFile = path.join(tempDir, 'last-message.txt');

  try {
    const result = spawn('codex', buildCodexArgs(tempDir, outputFile), {

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