chenhg5/cc-connect · error

parse auth.json: %w

Error message

parse auth.json: %w

What it means

After reading auth.json, readOAuthTokens unmarshals the bytes into a struct expecting {"tokens":{"access_token":...,"account_id":...}}. This error wraps the json.Unmarshal failure, so the cause carries the exact JSON syntax problem (offset, unexpected token, type mismatch). It is thrown whenever the file exists but is not valid JSON matching the expected shape.

Source

Thrown at agent/codex/usage.go:78

func (a *Agent) readOAuthTokens(readFile func(string) ([]byte, error)) (codexOAuthTokens, error) {
	path, err := codexAuthPath()
	if err != nil {
		return codexOAuthTokens{}, err
	}
	data, err := readFile(path)
	if err != nil {
		return codexOAuthTokens{}, fmt.Errorf("read %s: %w", path, err)
	}

	var payload struct {
		Tokens struct {
			AccessToken string `json:"access_token"`
			AccountID   string `json:"account_id"`
		} `json:"tokens"`
	}
	if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &payload); err != nil {
		return codexOAuthTokens{}, fmt.Errorf("parse auth.json: %w", err)
	}
	if strings.TrimSpace(payload.Tokens.AccessToken) == "" {
		return codexOAuthTokens{}, fmt.Errorf("auth.json missing tokens.access_token")
	}
	if strings.TrimSpace(payload.Tokens.AccountID) == "" {
		return codexOAuthTokens{}, fmt.Errorf("auth.json missing tokens.account_id")
	}

	return codexOAuthTokens{
		AccessToken: payload.Tokens.AccessToken,
		AccountID:   payload.Tokens.AccountID,
	}, nil
}

func (a *Agent) fetchUsage(ctx context.Context, client *http.Client, tokens codexOAuthTokens) (*core.UsageReport, error) {
	req, err := http.NewRequestWithContext(ctx, http.MethodGet, codexUsageURL, nil)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err

View on GitHub (pinned to 4000b2338a)

Solutions

1. Re-run `codex login` to regenerate a valid auth.json
2. Validate the file: `python3 -m json.tool ~/.codex/auth.json` to see the syntax error
3. Restore from backup or re-copy the auth.json from the machine where Codex was logged in
4. Check for editors/scripts that may have mangled the file (BOM, truncation)

Example fix

// before
// silently ignores malformed auth.json until GetUsage fails
usage, err := agent.GetUsage(ctx)
// after: pre-validate JSON before calling
var probe map[string]any
if err := json.Unmarshal(authBytes, &probe); err != nil {
    log.Fatalf("auth.json is not valid JSON: %v — run `codex login`", err)
}
usage, err := agent.GetUsage(ctx)

var probe any
if err := json.Unmarshal(b, &probe); err != nil { return fmt.Errorf("auth.json is not valid JSON: %w", err) }

if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &payload); err != nil {
    var je *json.SyntaxError
    if errors.As(err, &je) { return fmt.Errorf("auth.json invalid at offset %d: %v", je.Offset, je) }
    return fmt.Errorf("auth.json unreadable, re-run `codex login`: %w", err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: json.Unmarshal(data, &payload) returns an error inside readOAuthTokens, e.g. auth.json contains truncated content, invalid JSON syntax, or a top-level JSON array/string instead of an object. Callers: GetUsage and the InvalidJSON test.

Common situations: auth.json corrupted by a partial write or disk-full during `codex login`; file manually edited and syntax broken; another tool overwrote auth.json with a different format; encoding issues (BOM) after editing on Windows.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to unmarshal" / json.Unmarshal errors: why parsing a response into a Go struct fails and how to fix it — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

• read %s: %w
• auth.json missing tokens.access_token
• auth.json missing tokens.account_id
• decode usage response: %w
• parse existing Agy hooks %s: %w

AI-assisted analysis of chenhg5/cc-connect@4000b2338a (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fefcc19e3702d84d. Report an issue: GitHub.