What causes "failed to fetch issue: %w" in gastownhall/beads?

Check whether the issue still exists (bd show )

failed to fetch issue: %w

Error message

failed to fetch issue: %w

What it means

After passing the eligibility check, CompactTier1 fetches the full issue via store.GetIssue. If that fetch fails, the compaction aborts with this wrapped error. This is a storage-layer read failure on a record the eligibility check just saw, so it often indicates a race or backend problem.

Source

Thrown at internal/compact/compactor.go:107

	if ctx.Err() != nil {
		return ctx.Err()
	}

	// Check eligibility before fetching issue (fail fast)
	eligible, reason, err := c.store.CheckEligibility(ctx, issueID, 1)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to verify eligibility: %w", err)
	}
	if !eligible {
		if reason != "" {
			return fmt.Errorf("issue %s is not eligible for Tier 1 compaction: %s", issueID, reason)
		}
		return fmt.Errorf("issue %s is not eligible for Tier 1 compaction", issueID)
	}

	issue, err := c.store.GetIssue(ctx, issueID)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to fetch issue: %w", err)
	}

	// Calculate original size
	originalSize := len(issue.Description) + len(issue.Design) + len(issue.Notes) + len(issue.AcceptanceCriteria)

	if c.config.DryRun {
		return fmt.Errorf("dry-run: would compact %s (original size: %d bytes)", issueID, originalSize)
	}

	// Get summary from AI
	summary, err := c.summarizer.SummarizeTier1(ctx, issue)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to summarize: %w", err)
	}

	// Check if compaction would actually reduce size
	compactedSize := len(summary)
	if compactedSize >= originalSize {

View on GitHub (pinned to 71377f2769)

Solutions

Check whether the issue still exists (bd show <issueID>)
Inspect the wrapped error for the storage root cause
Retry once the database/connection is healthy
Re-run eligibility + compaction after any concurrent writers have finished

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

if _, err := store.GetIssue(ctx, issueID); err != nil {
    return fmt.Errorf("issue %s unreadable before compaction: %w", issueID, err)
}

Try / catch

err := c.CompactTier1(ctx, id)
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "failed to fetch issue") {
    time.Sleep(backoff)
    err = c.CompactTier1(ctx, id)
}
return err

Prevention

Avoid deleting issues while a compaction batch is running
Use a context with adequate timeout for the store read
Retry fetch failures — they are often transient connection drops

When it happens

Trigger: store.GetIssue(ctx, issueID) returns a non-nil error — e.g. the issue was deleted between CheckEligibility and GetIssue, the database connection dropped, or the storage backend returned an internal error.

Common situations: Concurrent deletion of the issue while a compaction runs; database outage mid-operation; corrupted database; transient network failure against a remote Dolt server.

Understand the failure class

Background: Record Not Found Errors: "not found", RecordNotFound, and "was not found" — what they mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of gastownhall/beads@71377f2769 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8bd3fdb9758e7093. Report an issue: GitHub.