gastownhall/beads · error

parsing JSON: %w

Error message

parsing JSON: %w

What it means

After reading the raw formula JSON, formulaToTOML unmarshals it into a generic map to preserve structure. If the file content is not valid JSON, json.Unmarshal fails and the error is wrapped as 'parsing JSON: %w'. This indicates the source file itself is malformed (syntax error, truncation, wrong format), not a conversion logic problem.

Source

Thrown at cmd/bd/formula.go:681

// formulaToTOML converts a Formula to TOML bytes.
// Uses a custom structure optimized for TOML readability.
func formulaToTOML(f *formula.Formula) ([]byte, error) {
	// We need to re-read the original JSON to get the raw structure
	// because the Formula struct loses some ordering/formatting
	if f.Source == "" {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("formula has no source path")
	}

	// Read the original JSON
	jsonData, err := os.ReadFile(f.Source)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("reading source: %w", err)
	}

	// Parse into a map to preserve structure
	var raw map[string]interface{}
	if err := json.Unmarshal(jsonData, &raw); err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("parsing JSON: %w", err)
	}

	// Fix float64 to int for known integer fields
	fixIntegerFields(raw)

	// Encode to TOML
	var buf bytes.Buffer
	encoder := toml.NewEncoder(&buf)
	encoder.Indent = ""
	if err := encoder.Encode(raw); err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("encoding TOML: %w", err)
	}

	// Post-process to convert escaped \n in strings to multi-line strings
	result := convertToMultiLineStrings(buf.String())

	return []byte(result), nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 71377f2769)

Solutions

1. Validate the JSON: run it through `jq . file.json` or python -m json.tool to find the syntax error at the reported offset.
2. Fix the JSON syntax (missing comma/brace, trailing comma, single quotes).
3. Restore the file from git or regenerate it with `bd formula export`/the canonical writer.
4. Confirm the file is actually JSON, not TOML or HTML; if it's already TOML, no conversion is needed.

Example fix

// before
{ "name": "deploy", "steps": [ { "cmd": "go test" } ] }  // trailing content/truncated
// after
{
  "name": "deploy",
  "steps": [{ "cmd": "go test" }]
}

# validate before converting
jq empty .beads/formulas/deploy.json || echo "invalid JSON"

if _, err := formulaToTOML(f); err != nil {
    var syntaxErr *json.SyntaxError
    if errors.As(err, &syntaxErr) {
        // report syntaxErr.Offset to locate the malformed byte
    }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running formula conversion against a source JSON file that is corrupted, truncated (partial write), hand-edited with invalid syntax, or not JSON at all (e.g. already TOML, or an HTML error page saved by mistake).

Common situations: Manual edits to formula JSON introducing syntax errors; interrupted writes leaving truncated files; formulas downloaded from a URL where an error page was saved; files converted between formats incorrectly.

Related errors

• parsing formula: %w
• failed to parse gh output: %w
• parse gh output: %w
• failed to parse JSONL line: %w
• failed to parse memory record: %w

AI-assisted analysis of gastownhall/beads@71377f2769 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/62eb3eb10e0588d7. Report an issue: GitHub.