google-gemini/gemini-cli · error

Invalid retention period: ${period}. Value must be greater t

Error message

Invalid retention period: ${period}. Value must be greater than 0

What it means

Thrown by parseRetentionPeriod when the regex matched but the numeric value parsed to 0 (e.g. '0d', '0h'). A zero retention period is semantically meaningless (it would delete everything immediately or never gate correctly), so it is rejected even though it is syntactically valid.

Source

Thrown at packages/cli/src/utils/sessionCleanup.ts:402

/**
 * Parses retention period strings like "30d", "7d", "24h" into milliseconds
 * @throws {Error} If the format is invalid
 */
function parseRetentionPeriod(period: string): number {
  const match = period.match(/^(\d+)([dhwm])$/);
  if (!match) {
    throw new Error(
      `Invalid retention period format: ${period}. Expected format: <number><unit> where unit is h, d, w, or m`,
    );
  }

  const value = parseInt(match[1], 10);
  const unit = match[2];

  // Reject zero values as they're semantically invalid
  if (value === 0) {
    throw new Error(
      `Invalid retention period: ${period}. Value must be greater than 0`,
    );
  }

  // eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/no-unsafe-type-assertion
  return value * MULTIPLIERS[unit as keyof typeof MULTIPLIERS];
}

/**
 * Validates retention configuration
 */
function validateRetentionConfig(
  config: Config,
  retentionConfig: SessionRetentionSettings,
): string | null {
  if (!retentionConfig.enabled) {
    return 'Retention not enabled';
  }

View on GitHub (pinned to 5024443c72)

Solutions

1. Set a positive retention period such as '7d' or '24h'.
2. If you want to disable cleanup entirely, use the dedicated disable flag/setting rather than a zero period (check the cleanup config schema).
3. Validate retention > 0 in any UI that collects this value.

Example fix

// before
// retention: '0d'

// after
// retention: '7d'

function parseRetentionSafe(period) {
  const m = period.match(/^(\d+)([dhwm])$/);
  if (!m) throw new Error('Invalid format');
  if (parseInt(m[1], 10) === 0) throw new Error('Value must be > 0');
  return parseInt(m[1], 10) * MULTIPLIERS[m[2]];
}

When it happens

Trigger: period matches the regex but parseInt(match[1]) === 0. Input like '0d', '0w', '0m', '0h'.

Common situations: User sets retention to 0 intending 'disable' but the feature requires a positive duration. Default value misconfigured to '0d'. Copy/paste placeholder value left in config.

Related errors

• Invalid retention period format: ${period}. Expected format:
• Invalid approval mode: ${rawApprovalMode}. Valid values are:
• Invalid telemetry configuration: ${err.message}.
• Invalid regex pattern in allowedExtensions setting: "${patte
• Invalid environment variable name: "${key}". Must contain on

AI-assisted analysis of google-gemini/gemini-cli@5024443c72 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ecb468dc9ceb17fb. Report an issue: GitHub.