charmbracelet/crush · error

no prompt provided

Error message

no prompt provided

What it means

Returned by the non-interactive `crush run` command when the resolved prompt is empty. In non-interactive mode there is no TUI to type into, so a prompt must come from arguments or stdin; if reading stdin yields nothing, the command cannot proceed.

Source

Thrown at internal/cmd/run.go:86

			smallModel, _ = cmd.Flags().GetString("small-model")
			sessionID, _  = cmd.Flags().GetString("session")
			useLast, _    = cmd.Flags().GetBool("continue")
		)

		// Cancel on SIGINT or SIGTERM.
		ctx, cancel := signal.NotifyContext(context.Background(), os.Interrupt, os.Kill)
		defer cancel()

		prompt := strings.Join(args, " ")

		prompt, err := MaybePrependStdin(prompt)
		if err != nil {
			slog.Error("Failed to read from stdin", "error", err)
			return err
		}

		if prompt == "" {
			return fmt.Errorf("no prompt provided")
		}

		event.SetNonInteractive(true)

		switch {
		case sessionID != "":
			event.SetContinueBySessionID(true)
		case useLast:
			event.SetContinueLastSession(true)
		}

		if useClientServer() {
			c, ws, cleanup, err := connectToServer(cmd)
			if err != nil {
				return err
			}
			defer cleanup()

View on GitHub (pinned to 7944b8e522)

Solutions

1. Pass the prompt as an argument: `crush run "fix the failing test"`
2. Pipe content via stdin: `cat task.md | crush run`
3. Check that the variable supplying the prompt is non-empty before invoking
4. Review the command for quoting errors that collapse the argument to an empty string

Example fix

// before: PROMPT unset, empty prompt
PROMPT=""; crush run "$PROMPT"
// after: guard against empty prompt
[ -n "$PROMPT" ] || { echo "PROMPT is empty" >&2; exit 1; }
crush run "$PROMPT"

prompt := strings.Join(args, " ")
if strings.TrimSpace(prompt) == "" {
	return fmt.Errorf("no prompt provided")
}

if err := runCmd.Execute(); err != nil {
	if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "no prompt provided") {
		slog.Error("Provide a prompt: crush run \"...\" or pipe content via stdin")
	}
	return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: `crush run` with no positional argument while stdin is empty or a TTY redirect is closed; piping an empty stream (`echo -n | crush run`); quoting mistakes that pass an empty string as the prompt.

Common situations: CI scripts forgetting to pass the prompt; variables that expand to empty (unset PROMPT env var); heredocs with no content; invoking `run` without arguments.

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

• ${sessionList} Use more characters or the full hash
• error creating prompt: %s
• parsing template: %w
• executing template: %w
• cannot continue an agent tool session: %s

AI-assisted analysis of charmbracelet/crush@7944b8e522 (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f8cd84f6305f8215. Report an issue: GitHub.