affaan-m/ECC · error · Error

Unknown argument: ${arg}

Error message

Unknown argument: ${arg}

What it means

Thrown by scripts/work-items.js parseArgs when a token starts with '-' but is not --help, -h, --json, and not a member of VALUE_FLAGS. Any hyphen-prefixed token that is not a recognized option is rejected; bare positional tokens (like a subcommand or an id) are accepted into positionals and do not trigger this. This is the work-items counterpart of the unknown-argument guard in status.js and uninstall.js.

Source

Thrown at scripts/work-items.js:114

  }

  for (let index = 0; index < args.length; index += 1) {
    const arg = args[index];
    if (arg === '--help' || arg === '-h') {
      parsed.help = true;
    } else if (arg === '--json') {
      parsed.json = true;
    } else if (VALUE_FLAGS.has(arg)) {
      const value = args[index + 1];
      if (!value || value.startsWith('--')) {
        throw new Error(`Missing value for ${arg}`);
      }
      assignOption(parsed, arg, value);
      index += 1;
    } else if (!arg.startsWith('-')) {
      parsed.positionals.push(arg);
    } else {
      throw new Error(`Unknown argument: ${arg}`);
    }
  }

  return parsed;
}

function parseMetadataJson(value) {
  if (value === undefined || value === null) {
    return null;
  }

  try {
    return JSON.parse(value);
  } catch (error) {
    throw new Error(`Invalid --metadata-json: ${error.message}`);
  }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 01e15490f0)

Solutions

1. Run `node scripts/work-items.js --help` to see the accepted flags per subcommand.
2. Correct the flag spelling or remove the unsupported option.
3. Confirm the flag belongs to work-items.js and not to a sibling script (status.js, uninstall.js).

Example fix

// before
node scripts/work-items.js list --verbose

// after
node scripts/work-items.js list --json

const KNOWN = new Set(['--help','-h','--json','--as','--db','--github-repo','--id','--limit','--metadata-json','--owner','--priority','--repo','--repo-root','--session','--session-id','--source','--source-id','--status','--title','--url']);
function validateWorkItemsArgs(argv) {
  for (const tok of argv) {
    if (tok.startsWith('-') && !KNOWN.has(tok)) {
      throw new Error(`work-items.js does not accept: ${tok}`);
    }
  }
}

When it happens

Trigger: `node scripts/work-items.js list --verbose`; `node scripts/work-items.js upsert --description "x"` (--description is not a supported flag); `--json-output` (correct is --json).

Common situations: Typos in flag names; passing a flag from another ECC script that work-items does not support; a version mismatch where a flag was renamed; assuming a generic flag like --verbose exists.

Related errors

• Missing value for ${arg}
• ${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

AI-assisted analysis of affaan-m/ECC@01e15490f0 (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8528e0cd138ece84. Report an issue: GitHub.