charmbracelet/gum · error

failed to get selection

Error message

failed to get selection

What it means

The Bubble Tea program ran without error but returned a nil final model, so gum cannot extract the user's selection. This is a defensive check against a nil result from tea.Program.Run(). It means no selection state was produced at all.

Source

Thrown at table/command.go:164

	m := model{
		table:     table,
		showHelp:  o.ShowHelp,
		hideCount: o.HideCount,
		help:      help.New(),
		keymap:    defaultKeymap(),
		padding:   []int{top, right, bottom, left},
	}
	tm, err := tea.NewProgram(
		m,
		tea.WithOutput(os.Stderr),
		tea.WithContext(ctx),
	).Run()
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to start tea program: %w", err)
	}

	if tm == nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to get selection")
	}

	m = tm.(model)
	if o.ReturnColumn > 0 && o.ReturnColumn <= len(m.selected) {
		if err = writer.Write([]string{m.selected[o.ReturnColumn-1]}); err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("failed to write col %d of selected row: %w", o.ReturnColumn, err)
		}
	} else {
		if err = writer.Write([]string(m.selected)); err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("failed to write selected row: %w", err)
		}
	}

	writer.Flush()

	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 4d089f9550)

Solutions

1. Re-run the command in a standard terminal; this is usually transient
2. Update gum/Bubble Tea to the latest version to pick up runtime fixes
3. Avoid sending abnormal signals (SIGKILL/SIGTSTP) during the table display
4. Check for environment variables (TERM) that may break tea's runtime

for i in 1 2 3; do
  sel=$(gum table < data.csv) && break
  sleep 1
done
[ -n "$sel" ] || exit 1

When it happens

Trigger: `tea.NewProgram(...).Run()` returns `tm == nil` — the program exits without producing a final model (abnormal teardown, tea runtime edge cases).

Common situations: Terminal teardown anomalies, signal-based abrupt exit paths of the tea runtime, or unusual terminal emulators that crash the program silently.

Related errors

• unable to run filter: %w
• unable to start program: %w
• unable to run action: %w
• failed to start tea program: %w
• failed to run write: %w

AI-assisted analysis of charmbracelet/gum@4d089f9550 (2026-08-31). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a279a3ce0d8d491e. Report an issue: GitHub.