alibaba/open-code-review · error

--preview and --resume cannot be used together

Error message

--preview and --resume cannot be used together

What it means

validateReviewOptions rejects combining --preview with --resume because they configure contradictory session behavior: preview runs a fresh lightweight pass while resume continues an existing session identified by an ID.

Source

Thrown at cmd/opencodereview/shared_flags.go:129

	}
}

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 != "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("--preview and --resume cannot be used together")
	}
	if err := validateAudience(opts.audience); err != nil {
		return err
	}
	normalizedFormat, err := validateOutputFormat(opts.outputFormat)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	opts.outputFormat = normalizedFormat
	const minMaxTools = 50
	if opts.maxTools < 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("--max-tools must be a non-negative integer (0 means use template default)")
	}
	if opts.maxTools > 0 && opts.maxTools < minMaxTools {
		fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "[ocr] --max-tools %d is below minimum %d, using %d\n", opts.maxTools, minMaxTools, minMaxTools)
		opts.maxTools = minMaxTools
	}
	if opts.maxGitProcs < 0 {

View on GitHub (pinned to 5cf97d0d15)

Solutions

1. Drop --preview to resume the session: ocr review --resume <id>
2. Drop --resume to run a fresh preview: ocr review --preview ...
3. In wrappers, make --preview and --resume mutually exclusive in your own arg parsing
4. Start a new session instead of resuming if preview semantics are what you want

Example fix

// before
ocr review --from main --to HEAD --preview --resume sess_123
// after
ocr review --from main --to HEAD --resume sess_123

if [ -n "$RESUME" ] && [ "$PREVIEW" = "1" ]; then echo '--preview and --resume are mutually exclusive'; exit 2; fi

null

if ! ocr review "$@" 2>err.log; then grep -q 'preview and --resume cannot be used together' err.log && echo 'Drop --preview or --resume'; fi

When it happens

Trigger: Running `ocr review --preview --resume <id>` — the opts.preview && opts.resume != "" branch, reached from the review subcommand's anonymous option-building caller.

Common situations: Shell aliases or wrappers that hardcode --preview while the user adds --resume; scripts reusing a flag array across modes; misunderstanding preview as compatible with session continuation.

Understand the failure class

Background: "mutually exclusive" flag errors: what "can't supply both nx and xx", "--raw is not compatible with -i" and "cannot be used with" mean, and how to fix them — this error's family across 29 libraries.

Related errors

• only one review mode allowed (--from/--to or --commit)
• --to is required when --from is specified
• --from is required when --to is specified
• invalid --audience value %q: must be 'human' or 'agent'
• invalid --format value %q: must be 'text', 'json', or 'sarif

AI-assisted analysis of alibaba/open-code-review@5cf97d0d15 (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7d068c3188950dbb. Report an issue: GitHub.