anthropics/financial-services · error · FileNotFoundError

File not found: {excel_path}

Error message

File not found: {excel_path}

What it means

Raised in DCFModelValidator.__init__ of the pitch-agent copy of validate_dcf.py when Path(excel_path).exists() is False, i.e. the Excel workbook to validate does not exist on disk. It fires before openpyxl.load_workbook is called, so no workbook state is created. The actual message interpolates the exact path passed to the constructor.

Source

Thrown at plugins/agent-plugins/pitch-agent/skills/dcf-model/scripts/validate_dcf.py:26

import json
from pathlib import Path
from typing import Optional


class DCFModelValidator:
    """Validates DCF models for errors and quality issues"""

    def __init__(self, excel_path: str):
        try:
            import openpyxl
        except ImportError:
            raise ImportError("openpyxl not installed. Run: pip install openpyxl")

        self.excel_path = excel_path
        self.openpyxl = openpyxl

        if not Path(excel_path).exists():
            raise FileNotFoundError(f"File not found: {excel_path}")

        self.workbook_formulas = openpyxl.load_workbook(excel_path, data_only=False)
        self.workbook_values = openpyxl.load_workbook(excel_path, data_only=True)
        self.errors = []
        self.warnings = []
        self.info = []
        
    def validate_all(self) -> dict:
        """
        Run all validation checks

        Returns:
            Dict with validation results
        """
        from datetime import datetime

        self.check_sheet_structure()
        self.check_formula_errors()

View on GitHub (pinned to 69cbc81467)

Solutions

1. Confirm the file from the script's CWD: ls -l '<path>'; if missing, locate the real output location
2. Pass an absolute resolved path: DCFModelValidator(str(Path(x).resolve()))
3. Sanitize externally sourced paths: p = raw.strip().strip('"\'')
4. If an upstream generation step should have written the file, check its logs/temp dir for where (or whether) it wrote output

Example fix

# before
validator = DCFModelValidator('output/pitch_dcf.xlsx')  # FileNotFoundError

# after
from pathlib import Path
p = Path('output/pitch_dcf.xlsx').resolve()
if not p.is_file():
    raise SystemExit(f'Missing model file: {p}')
validator = DCFModelValidator(str(p))

from pathlib import Path
p = Path(excel_path).expanduser().resolve()
if not p.is_file():
    raise SystemExit(f'Model file not found: {p}')
validator = DCFModelValidator(str(p))

def is_valid_model_path(raw: str) -> bool:
    p = Path(raw).expanduser()
    return p.is_file() and p.suffix.lower() in {'.xlsx', '.xlsm'}

try:
    validator = DCFModelValidator(path)
except FileNotFoundError as e:
    raise SystemExit(f'Could not open model: {e}. Check the path and where the generation step wrote its output.')

When it happens

Trigger: Calling DCFModelValidator(excel_path) with a path relative to the wrong CWD, a typo, or a model file that the pitch-generation step never produced. Only the message template appears here; at runtime it contains the concrete path.

Common situations: Agent pipelines that generate the deck/model in a temp directory then validate from a different working directory; case mismatches on case-sensitive filesystems; paths copy-pasted from Windows (backslashes) on POSIX; paths extracted from LLM/CLI output containing quotes or stray whitespace.

Understand the failure class

Background: "File not found" and ENOENT errors: why libraries can't find a file that should exist — this error's family across 50 libraries.

Related errors

• File not found: {excel_path}
• File not found: {excel_path}
• openpyxl not installed. Run: pip install openpyxl
• openpyxl not installed. Run: pip install openpyxl
• openpyxl not installed. Run: pip install openpyxl

AI-assisted analysis of anthropics/financial-services@69cbc81467 (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f6c625e6072ba406. Report an issue: GitHub.