crewAIInc/crewAI · error · SystemExit

Error executing crew with trigger: {e}

Error message

Error executing crew with trigger: {e}

What it means

Printed with SystemExit(1) by TriggerCommand.execute_with_trigger() as the outer catch-all: any exception after the 404 check — _validate_response failures (auth/5xx), JSON decode errors on the response, or failures inside _run_crew_with_payload when spawning the local crew process with the sample payload — surfaces as 'Error executing crew with trigger: {e}'.

Source

Thrown at lib/cli/src/crewai_cli/triggers/main.py:71

            if response.status_code == 404:
                error_data = response.json()
                console.print(
                    f"[bold red]Error: {error_data.get('error', 'Trigger not found')}[/bold red]"
                )
                raise SystemExit(1)

            self._validate_response(response)

            trigger_data = response.json()
            self._display_trigger_info(trigger_data)

            self._run_crew_with_payload(trigger_data.get("sample_payload", {}))

        except Exception as e:
            console.print(
                f"[bold red]Error executing crew with trigger: {e}[/bold red]"
            )
            raise SystemExit(1) from e

    def _display_triggers(self, triggers_data: dict[str, Any]) -> None:
        """Display triggers in a formatted table."""
        apps = triggers_data.get("apps", [])

        if not apps:
            console.print("[yellow]No triggers found.[/yellow]")
            return

        for app in apps:
            app_name = app.get("name", "Unknown App")
            app_slug = app.get("slug", "unknown")
            is_connected = app.get("is_connected", False)
            connection_status = (
                "[green]✓ Connected[/green]"
                if is_connected
                else "[red]✗ Not Connected[/red]"
            )

View on GitHub (pinned to 754d7323be)

Solutions

  1. Read the inner exception text after the colon — it distinguishes API errors from local crew execution failures.
  2. For API auth errors, re-run `crewai login` and retry.
  3. For local crew failures, first make a plain `crewai run` work, then retry `crewai trigger execute app/trigger`.
  4. Ensure the project was scaffolded with trigger support (main.py contains run_with_trigger) and is up to date (`crewai update` or re-scaffold).
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

# validate auth + local runnability before executing a trigger
assert auth.get_api_key(), "run `crewai login` first"
import subprocess
assert subprocess.run(["uv", "run", "run"], capture_output=True).returncode == 0, "plain `crewai run` must succeed first"

Try / catch

try:
    cmd.execute_with_trigger(trigger_path)
except SystemExit:
    raise
except Exception as e:
    # read inner text: API auth/5xx vs local crew subprocess failure
    logging.exception("trigger execution failed: %s", e)
    raise

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Plus API returns 401/500 for get_trigger_payload (non-404 error statuses); response body is not JSON; or the local crew run (`run_with_trigger` subprocess with the sample payload) fails — e.g. missing API keys for the crew itself, or the generated main.py lacking a run_with_trigger entrypoint.

Common situations: Expired Plus token mid-session; crew project not created from a template that supports triggers, so executing the payload locally crashes; crew env vars missing so the subprocess exits non-zero.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of crewAIInc/crewAI@754d7323be (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/86537bdf8da4d585. Report an issue: GitHub.