What causes "invalid --audience value %q: must be 'human' or 'agent'" in alibaba/open-code-review?

Use exactly --audience human or --audience agent (lowercase)

invalid --audience value %q: must be 'human' or 'agent'

Error message

invalid --audience value %q: must be 'human' or 'agent'

What it means

validateAudience whitelists exactly 'human' or 'agent'. Any other --audience value (wrong case, typo, empty string if not defaulted elsewhere) is rejected with this error naming the offending value and the allowed set.

Source

Thrown at cmd/opencodereview/shared_flags.go:110

	}
	if modeCount > 1 {
		return fmt.Errorf("only one review mode allowed (--from/--to or --commit)")
	}
	if from != "" && to == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("--to is required when --from is specified")
	}
	if to != "" && from == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("--from is required when --to is specified")
	}
	return nil
}

func validateAudience(audience string) error {
	switch audience {
	case "human", "agent":
		return nil
	default:
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid --audience value %q: must be 'human' or 'agent'", audience)
	}
}

func validateOutputFormat(format string) (string, error) {
	normalized := strings.ToLower(strings.TrimSpace(format))
	switch normalized {
	case "text", "json", "sarif":
		return normalized, nil
	default:
		return "", fmt.Errorf("invalid --format value %q: must be 'text', 'json', or 'sarif'", format)
	}
}

func validateReviewOptions(opts *reviewOptions) error {
	if err := validateDiffMode(opts.from, opts.to, opts.commit); err != nil {
		return err
	}
	if opts.preview && opts.resume != "" {

View on GitHub (pinned to 5cf97d0d15)

Solutions

Use exactly --audience human or --audience agent (lowercase)
Fix the typo / casing in your script or alias
Guard interpolated values: ensure AUDIENCE is one of human|agent before invoking
Omit --audience if the default suits you

Example fix

// before
ocr review --from main --to HEAD --audience Agent
// after
ocr review --from main --to HEAD --audience agent

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

case "$AUDIENCE" in human|agent) ;; *) echo "invalid audience: $AUDIENCE"; exit 2;; esac

Type guard

function isAudience(v) { return v === 'human' || v === 'agent'; }

Try / catch

out=$(ocr review --audience "$AUDIENCE" 2>&1) || { echo "$out" | grep -q 'invalid --audience' && AUDIENCE=human && ocr review --audience "$AUDIENCE"; }

Prevention

Use only the exact lowercase literals human and agent
Validate interpolated env vars before passing them as flags
Keep the allowed values in a shell case statement in wrappers
Check --help when unsure; values are case-sensitive

When it happens

Trigger: Passing --audience Human, --audience ai, --audience llm, or any string other than the exact lowercase literals 'human'/'agent' to review or scan (via validateReviewOptions / validateScanOptions).

Common situations: Case-sensitivity mistakes (Human vs human); reusing vocabulary from other tools (reviewer/ai/bot); scripts interpolating an unset AUDIENCE variable producing an empty or bogus value.

Understand the failure class

Background: Invalid enum value errors: "Unknown type", "Invalid scope", "must be one of" — when a string is not on the library's allowed list — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of alibaba/open-code-review@5cf97d0d15 (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a3290e862faae885. Report an issue: GitHub.