What causes "failed to record warning: %w" in gastownhall/beads?

Check database writability and connection state

failed to record warning: %w

Error message

failed to record warning: %w

What it means

When the AI summary is not shorter than the original content, compaction is aborted. Before aborting, the compactor records a warning comment on the issue via store.AddComment; if that comment write fails, this wrapped error is returned instead. The original issue content is always preserved.

Source

Thrown at internal/compact/compactor.go:128

	// 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 {
		warningMsg := fmt.Sprintf("Tier 1 compaction skipped: summary (%d bytes) not shorter than original (%d bytes)", compactedSize, originalSize)
		if err := c.store.AddComment(ctx, issueID, "compactor", warningMsg); err != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("failed to record warning: %w", err)
		}
		return fmt.Errorf("compaction would increase size (%d → %d bytes), keeping original", originalSize, compactedSize)
	}

	// Archive the original content BEFORE the destructive overwrite, so the
	// compaction is reversible (bd restore reads this snapshot). If archiving
	// fails we abort with the original content intact rather than lose it.
	if err := c.store.SnapshotIssue(ctx, issueID, 1); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to archive pre-compaction snapshot: %w", err)
	}

	// Update issue with summarized content
	updates := map[string]interface{}{
		"description":         summary,
		"design":              "",
		"notes":               "",
		"acceptance_criteria": "",
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 71377f2769)

Solutions

Check database writability and connection state
Inspect the wrapped AddComment error for the storage root cause
Skip issues whose content is already minimal — filter by original size before compacting
Retry the compaction; the size check is deterministic so the same issue may keep failing

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

if err := c.CompactTier1(ctx, id); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "failed to record warning") {
        // content is safe (original kept); investigate store write failure
        log.Printf("store write failed while recording skip warning: %v", err)
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Keep the database writable and monitor disk space
Filter out already-tiny issues before compaction so the size-skip path rarely fires
Treat write failures during warning recording as storage health signals

When it happens

Trigger: SummarizeTier1 returned a summary whose byte length >= originalSize, and then store.AddComment(ctx, issueID, "compactor", warningMsg) also failed (storage write error).

Common situations: Compacting already-terse issues where the model cannot compress further; the database became read-only or the connection dropped while posting the warning comment; concurrent writes locking the DB.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of gastownhall/beads@71377f2769 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4b41c4ee3ee47f7b. Report an issue: GitHub.