atuinsh/atuin · error

stdout was piped

Error message

stdout was piped

What it means

Error "stdout was piped" thrown in atuinsh/atuin.

Source

Thrown at crates/atuin-ai/src/tools/mod.rs:853

    let start = std::time::Instant::now();

    // TODO: check if this is proper for all shells we support
    let mut cmd = tokio::process::Command::new(&shell_call.shell);
    cmd.arg("-c").arg(&shell_call.command);
    cmd.stdout(std::process::Stdio::piped());
    cmd.stderr(std::process::Stdio::piped());

    if let Some(ref dir) = shell_call.dir {
        cmd.current_dir(dir);
    }

    let mut child = match cmd.spawn() {
        Ok(child) => child,
        Err(e) => return ToolOutcome::Error(format!("Failed to spawn command: {e}")),
    };

    let stdout = child.stdout.take().expect("stdout was piped");
    let stderr = child.stderr.take().expect("stderr was piped");

    // VT100 emulator for the live preview (viewport-sized)
    let mut parser = vt100::Parser::new_safe(PREVIEW_HEIGHT, PREVIEW_WIDTH, 0);

    let mut stdout_reader = tokio::io::BufReader::new(stdout);
    let mut stderr_reader = tokio::io::BufReader::new(stderr);

    let mut stdout_buf = [0u8; 4096];
    let mut stderr_buf = [0u8; 4096];
    let mut stdout_done = false;
    let mut stderr_done = false;

    // Full output buffers (for the LLM, not the preview)
    let mut full_stdout = Vec::<u8>::new();
    let mut full_stderr = Vec::<u8>::new();

    let mut interval = tokio::time::interval(Duration::from_millis(50));

View on GitHub (pinned to 15fe1318f1)

Solutions

1. Run the tool with stdout attached to a terminal, not a pipe.

When it happens

Trigger: Fires in AI tooling when an invariant that stdout must be a terminal is violated because stdout is piped.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of atuinsh/atuin@15fe1318f1 (2026-08-19). Data as JSON: /api/errors/60c2d2e20a1a1ab0. Report an issue: GitHub.