gastownhall/beads · error

step %q: %w

Error message

step %q: %w

What it means

FilterStepsByCondition evaluates each Step.Condition via EvaluateStepCondition and wraps any evaluation error with the offending step's ID using this prefix. It identifies which step in the formula has the bad condition, with the underlying cause (e.g. invalid condition format) appended via %w.

Source

Thrown at internal/formula/stepcondition.go:129

// Children of excluded steps are also excluded.
//
// Parameters:
//   - steps: the steps to filter
//   - vars: variable values for condition evaluation
//
// Returns the filtered steps and any error encountered during evaluation.
func FilterStepsByCondition(steps []*Step, vars map[string]string) ([]*Step, error) {
	if vars == nil {
		vars = make(map[string]string)
	}

	result := make([]*Step, 0, len(steps))

	for _, step := range steps {
		// Evaluate step condition
		include, err := EvaluateStepCondition(step.Condition, vars)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("step %q: %w", step.ID, err)
		}

		if !include {
			// Skip this step and all its children
			continue
		}

		// Clone the step to avoid mutating input
		clone := cloneStep(step)

		// Recursively filter children
		if len(step.Children) > 0 {
			filteredChildren, err := FilterStepsByCondition(step.Children, vars)
			if err != nil {
				return nil, err
			}
			clone.Children = filteredChildren
		}

View on GitHub (pinned to 71377f2769)

Solutions

1. Read the step ID from the error message to locate the offending step in the formula file.
2. Fix that step's condition to a supported format (see EvaluateStepCondition).
3. Temporarily remove the condition to confirm the rest of the formula works, then restore a corrected condition.

Example fix

// before (step deploy)
condition: "{{env}} == prod && {{approved}}"
// after
condition: "{{env}} == prod"

for _, s := range steps {
    if _, err := EvaluateStepCondition(s.Condition, vars); err != nil {
        return fmt.Errorf("pre-check failed for step %q: %w", s.ID, err)
    }
}

if err := FilterStepsByCondition(steps, vars); err != nil {
    var stepID string
    if m := regexp.MustCompile(`step "([^"]+)"`).FindStringSubmatch(err.Error()); m != nil { stepID = m[1] }
    return fmt.Errorf("fix condition on step %q: %w", stepID, err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Filtering steps where any step's Condition is malformed — EvaluateStepCondition returns an error and it is re-wrapped as `step "<id>": <cause>`.

Common situations: Running a formula whose YAML/TOML defines a condition the evaluator cannot parse; the error surfaces during formula instantiation or step filtering with the culprit step named.

Related errors

• resolve parent %s: %w
• invalid step condition format: %q (expected {{var}} or {{var
• not found
• resolve proxied server root: %w
• parsing formula: %w

AI-assisted analysis of gastownhall/beads@71377f2769 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9c1cdb7d4e50cf5c. Report an issue: GitHub.