argoproj/argo-workflows · error

duplicate WorkflowTemplate found: %q

Error message

duplicate WorkflowTemplate found: %q

What it means

Same duplicate-detection as ClusterWorkflowTemplates but namespaced: offline client stores WorkflowTemplates per namespace by name. Two WorkflowTemplates sharing a name within the same namespace in the linted manifests make the store ambiguous and abort with this error.

Source

Thrown at pkg/apiclient/offline-client.go:83

				switch v := obj.(type) {
				case *wfv1.ClusterWorkflowTemplate:
					if _, ok := clusterWorkflowTemplateGetter.clusterWorkflowTemplates[objName]; ok {
						return fmt.Errorf("duplicate ClusterWorkflowTemplate found: %q", objName)
					}
					clusterWorkflowTemplateGetter.clusterWorkflowTemplates[objName] = v

				case *wfv1.WorkflowTemplate:
					getter, ok := workflowTemplateGetters[namespace]
					if !ok {
						getter = &offlineWorkflowTemplateNamespacedGetter{
							namespace:         namespace,
							workflowTemplates: map[string]*wfv1.WorkflowTemplate{},
						}
						workflowTemplateGetters[namespace] = getter
					}

					if _, ok := getter.(*offlineWorkflowTemplateNamespacedGetter).workflowTemplates[objName]; ok {
						return fmt.Errorf("duplicate WorkflowTemplate found: %q", objName)
					}
					getter.(*offlineWorkflowTemplateNamespacedGetter).workflowTemplates[objName] = v
				}
			}
			return nil
		})

		if err != nil {
			return nil, nil, err
		}
	}

	return ctx, &offlineClient{
		clusterWorkflowTemplateGetter:       clusterWorkflowTemplateGetter,
		namespacedWorkflowTemplateGetterMap: workflowTemplateGetters,
	}, nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 35bff19146)

Solutions

1. Rename one of the conflicting WorkflowTemplates or change one's namespace.
2. Remove the redundant file/document from the linted set.
3. Search the manifests for `name: <offending>` under kind: WorkflowTemplate to locate both.

Example fix

// before
kind: WorkflowTemplate
metadata:
  name: dup
  namespace: default
// after
kind: WorkflowTemplate
metadata:
  name: dup-alt
  namespace: default

seen := map[string]bool{}
// for each parsed WorkflowTemplate doc:
key := ns + "/" + name
if seen[key] { return fmt.Errorf("duplicate WorkflowTemplate %s", key) }
seen[key] = true

if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "duplicate WorkflowTemplate found") {
    // name is quoted inside err; locate both (namespace,name) occurrences and fix
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Linting paths containing two WorkflowTemplates with identical metadata.name AND identical metadata.namespace (duplicates in different namespaces are allowed).

Common situations: Duplicated manifests in a directory passed to `argo lint`; accidentally rendering the same template twice with different values files but the same name; forgetting to change the name when creating a variant.

Related errors

• duplicate ClusterWorkflowTemplate found: %q
• not supported when you are in offline mode
• couldn't find workflow template %q in namespace %q
• failed to parse YAML from file %s: %w
• couldn't find cluster workflow template %q

AI-assisted analysis of argoproj/argo-workflows@35bff19146 (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/519ad17c0210fd0e. Report an issue: GitHub.