cli/cli · warning

a value is required

Error message

a value is required

What it means

Returned (as *NotFoundError) when the PR finder has neither a PR number/URL nor a usable (base repo + branch name) pair to search with. It is a typed NotFoundError, so callers can distinguish 'not found' from hard failures. It usually means the command cannot even formulate a query.

Source

Thrown at internal/ghinstance/host.go:38

// Default returns the host name of the default GitHub instance.
func Default() string {
	return defaultHostname
}

// TenantName extracts the tenant name from tenancy host name and
// reports whether it found the tenant name.
func TenantName(h string) (string, bool) {
	normalizedHostName := ghauth.NormalizeHostname(h)
	return strings.CutSuffix(normalizedHostName, "."+tenancyHost)
}

func isGarage(h string) bool {
	return strings.EqualFold(h, "garage.github.com")
}

func HostnameValidator(hostname string) error {
	if len(strings.TrimSpace(hostname)) < 1 {
		return errors.New("a value is required")
	}
	if strings.ContainsRune(hostname, '/') || strings.ContainsRune(hostname, ':') {
		return errors.New("invalid hostname")
	}
	return nil
}

func GraphQLEndpoint(hostname string) string {
	if isGarage(hostname) {
		return fmt.Sprintf("https://%s/api/graphql", hostname)
	}
	if ghauth.IsEnterprise(hostname) {
		return fmt.Sprintf("https://%s/api/graphql", hostname)
	}
	if strings.EqualFold(hostname, localhost) {
		return fmt.Sprintf("http://api.%s/graphql", hostname)
	}
	return fmt.Sprintf("https://api.%s/graphql", hostname)

View on GitHub (pinned to 0eeec0b92e)

Solutions

1. Pass an explicit selector: `gh pr view 123`, `gh pr view https://github.com/o/r/pull/123`, or `--repo owner/repo`.
2. Ensure you are inside the repository checkout and on a branch: `git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD`.
3. Detect this case in code with errors.As(err, &NotFoundError{}) instead of string matching.

Example fix

# before
gh pr view  # in a non-repo dir -> no pull requests found

# after
gh pr view --repo acme/widgets 123

if selector == "" && branchName == "" {
    return errors.New("no PR selector and no branch context: pass a number, URL, or --repo")
}

func isNotFound(err error) bool {
    var nf *shared.NotFoundError
    return errors.As(err, &nf)
}

pr, repo, err := finder.Find(opts)
if err != nil {
    var nf *shared.NotFoundError
    if errors.As(err, &nf) {
        // not-found: create the PR or prompt, do not report a hard error
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running `gh pr view/status/checkout` style commands with no argument where: the current directory is not a git repo (no branch name), no base repo can be resolved, and no selector was given. Also when branchName is empty (detached HEAD).

Common situations: Running gh outside a git repository; detached HEAD in CI; scripts that assume a branch context that does not exist.

Related errors

• a task description is required
• empty Copilot API URL returned
• cannot use `--stdio` with `--server-port`
• cannot use `--stdio` with `--profile`
• cannot use `--config` with `--profile`

AI-assisted analysis of cli/cli@0eeec0b92e (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bf63088a8ed75449. Report an issue: GitHub.