alibaba/open-code-review · error

session id is required

Error message

session id is required

What it means

SessionFilePath validates its inputs before building the JSONL path under ~/.opencodereview/<sessions>/<encoded-repo>; an empty sessionID cannot map to a file, so it fails fast with this sentinel-style error. It is used by LoadComments, LoadSummary, LoadDetail and loadResumeState to locate a persisted session. Hitting it means the caller passed an empty/lost session ID instead of a real one.

Source

Thrown at internal/session/resume.go:83

	ReviewMode      string             `json:"reviewMode"`
	DiffFrom        string             `json:"diffFrom"`
	DiffTo          string             `json:"diffTo"`
	DiffCommit      string             `json:"diffCommit"`
	ScanPaths       *[]string          `json:"scanPaths"`
	FilePath        string             `json:"filePath"`
	OldPath         string             `json:"oldPath"`
	NewPath         string             `json:"newPath"`
	Fingerprint     string             `json:"fingerprint"`
	SourceSessionID string             `json:"sourceSessionId"`
	Error           string             `json:"error"`
	Comments        []model.LlmComment `json:"comments"`
	RunManifest     *RunManifest       `json:"run_manifest"`
}

// SessionFilePath returns the JSONL path for a persisted session.
func SessionFilePath(repoDir, sessionID string) (string, error) {
	if sessionID == "" {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("session id is required")
	}
	home, err := os.UserHomeDir()
	if err != nil {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("resolve home dir: %w", err)
	}
	return filepath.Join(home, ".opencodereview", sessionSubDir, encodeRepoPath(repoDir), sessionID+".jsonl"), nil
}

// LoadResumeState replays a previous session JSONL into a fingerprint index. A
// record that cannot be parsed fails the load: with nothing to arbitrate coverage,
// a dropped line is indistinguishable from a checkpoint that was never written,
// and the pair it may have belonged to — a review_item_failed retracting an
// earlier done record — cannot be reconstructed from the rest of the file.
func LoadResumeState(repoDir, sessionID string) (*ResumeState, error) {
	return loadResumeState(repoDir, sessionID, false)
}

// LoadReviewResumeState replays a review session, dropping records it cannot

View on GitHub (pinned to 5cf97d0d15)

Solutions

1. Pass a non-empty session ID (the UUID returned when the session was created / printed by the previous run)
2. Guard the call site: if sessionID == "" skip resume instead of calling the loader
3. Check where the session ID is stored (env/config) and fix the empty value at the source
4. List existing sessions in ~/.opencodereview/<sessions>/<encoded-repo>/ to find the correct <sessionID>.jsonl

Example fix

// before
path, err := session.SessionFilePath(repoDir, sessionID) // sessionID == ""
// after
if sessionID == "" { return errors.New("no previous session to resume") }
path, err := session.SessionFilePath(repoDir, sessionID)

if sessionID == "" {
    return errors.New("no session id available; skip resume or run a new session")
}
path, err := session.SessionFilePath(repoDir, sessionID)

path, err := session.SessionFilePath(repoDir, sessionID)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "session id is required") {
        log.Printf("empty session id: %v", err)
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling SessionFilePath(repoDir, ""), or calling any loader (LoadComments/LoadSummary/LoadDetail/loadResumeState) after resume state was never established and the session ID variable defaulted to the empty string.

Common situations: Resuming before a first session was ever persisted; a config file or env var that should carry the session ID is empty; parsing code that failed to extract the session ID from a previous run's output and silently stored "".

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• --max-tokens must be a non-negative integer
• invalid line range: start_line %d is greater than end_line %
• background file %q is a directory, not a file
• background file %q is %d bytes, exceeding the maximum of %d
• invalid max_tokens %q: must be a positive integer

AI-assisted analysis of alibaba/open-code-review@5cf97d0d15 (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e1a78a7833cf1054. Report an issue: GitHub.