affaan-m/ECC · error · Error

unknown argument: ${arg}

Error message

unknown argument: ${arg}

What it means

Thrown by parseArgs() in review-with-codex.js for any argv token that is not one of --consent-to-openai, --host-provider, --timeout-seconds, --help, or -h. The parser is intentionally strict: the review script sends prompts to a third-party LLM, so unrecognized flags are rejected rather than silently ignored.

Source

Thrown at skills/council-multi-model/scripts/review-with-codex.js:74

  for (let index = 0; index < argv.length; index += 1) {
    const arg = argv[index];
    if (arg === '--consent-to-openai') {
      options.consent = true;
    } else if (arg === '--host-provider') {
      options.hostProvider = argv[index + 1];
      index += 1;
    } else if (arg === '--timeout-seconds') {
      const seconds = Number(argv[index + 1]);
      if (!Number.isInteger(seconds) || seconds < 10 || seconds > 120) {
        throw new Error('--timeout-seconds must be an integer from 10 to 120');
      }
      options.timeoutMs = seconds * 1000;
      index += 1;
    } else if (arg === '--help' || arg === '-h') {
      options.help = true;
    } else {
      throw new Error(`unknown argument: ${arg}`);
    }
  }

  if (options.help) return options;
  if (!options.consent) {
    throw new Error('explicit --consent-to-openai is required');
  }
  if (!HOST_PROVIDERS.has(options.hostProvider)) {
    throw new Error('--host-provider must be anthropic, openai, or unknown');
  }
  return options;
}

function providerLabel(hostProvider) {
  if (hostProvider === 'anthropic') return 'cross-provider external critique';
  if (hostProvider === 'openai') return 'same-provider external critique';
  return 'provider relationship unverified';
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 01e15490f0)

Solutions

1. Strip unsupported flags; the script only accepts --consent-to-openai, --host-provider <p>, --timeout-seconds <n>, --help.
2. Pass multi-part values as the next token, not as --flag=value.
3. Feed the review packet on stdin, not as an argument.

Example fix

// before
node skills/council-multi-model/scripts/review-with-codex.js --consent-to-openai --host-provider=anthropic --model gpt-4

// after
echo "$REVIEW_PACKET" | node skills/council-multi-model/scripts/review-with-codex.js --consent-to-openai --host-provider anthropic

const REVIEW_FLAGS = new Set(['--consent-to-openai', '--host-provider', '--timeout-seconds', '--help', '-h']);
function assertReviewFlag(arg) {
  if (!REVIEW_FLAGS.has(arg)) {
    throw new Error(`unknown argument: ${arg}`);
  }
}

function isReviewFlag(arg) {
  return ['--consent-to-openai', '--host-provider', '--timeout-seconds', '--help', '-h'].includes(arg);
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing any unsupported flag, e.g. --model, --verbose, --repo, --prompt, or a positional argument. Note the parser does not support --flag=value form either: `--host-provider=anthropic` is treated as an unknown argument.

Common situations: Assuming the script shares flags with work-items.js or other ECC tools; using =-glued flags; passing the prompt as a positional instead of via stdin (the prompt must come on stdin).

Related errors

• ${label} must be a positive integer
• Unknown install target: ${parsed.target}. Expected one of ${
• Invalid ${flagName}: ${value}
• Invalid format: ${parsed.format}. Use text, json, or markdow
• --write requires --json, --markdown, or --format json|markdo

AI-assisted analysis of affaan-m/ECC@01e15490f0 (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5998c591b127f208. Report an issue: GitHub.