gatsbyjs/gatsby · error

Found unknown argument "${arg}", ignoring. Known arguments a

Error message

Found unknown argument "${arg}", ignoring. Known arguments are: ${Flag.yes}, ${Flag.ts}

What it means

create-gatsby CLI arg parsing: an argument starting with '-' matched neither the yes flag nor the TypeScript flag, so it is ignored rather than used as the site directory name; only -y and -ts are recognized.

Source

Thrown at packages/create-gatsby/src/utils/parse-args.ts:39

 * - `npm init gatsby hello-world -y`
 * - `npm init gatsby -y hello-world`
 *
 * We deliberately trade the edge case of a user attempting to create a directory name
 * prepended with a dash (e.g. `-my-project`) for flags that work regardless of position.
 */
export function parseArgs(args: Array<string>): IArgs {
  const { flags, dirName } = args.reduce(
    (sortedArgs, arg) => {
      switch (arg) {
        case Flag.yes:
          sortedArgs.flags.yes = true
          break
        case Flag.ts:
          sortedArgs.flags.ts = true
          break
        default:
          if (arg.startsWith(`-`)) {
            reporter.warn(
              `Found unknown argument "${arg}", ignoring. Known arguments are: ${Flag.yes}, ${Flag.ts}`
            )
            break
          }
          sortedArgs.dirName = arg
      }
      return sortedArgs
    },
    {
      flags: {
        yes: false,
        ts: false,
      },
      dirName: ``,
    }
  )

  return {

View on GitHub (pinned to e85d62f177)

Solutions

1. Remove the unknown flag from the command
2. Use only the supported flags: -y/--yes and -ts

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/create-gatsby/src/utils/parse-args.ts:39 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of gatsbyjs/gatsby@e85d62f177 (2026-08-26). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b1d21105b153e80a. Report an issue: GitHub.