headroomlabs-ai/headroom · error · ValueError

Failed to decompress deflate request body: {exc}

Error message

Failed to decompress deflate request body: {exc}

What it means

Error "Failed to decompress deflate request body: {exc}" thrown in headroomlabs-ai/headroom.

Source

Thrown at headroom/proxy/helpers.py:2425

                "Request body is zstd-compressed but the 'zstandard' package is not installed. "
                "Install it with: pip install zstandard"
            ) from None
        except Exception as exc:
            raise ValueError(f"Failed to decompress zstd request body: {exc}") from exc
    elif encoding == "gzip":
        import gzip as _gzip

        try:
            raw = _gzip.decompress(raw)
        except Exception as exc:
            raise ValueError(f"Failed to decompress gzip request body: {exc}") from exc
    elif encoding == "deflate":
        import zlib

        try:
            raw = zlib.decompress(raw)
        except Exception as exc:
            raise ValueError(f"Failed to decompress deflate request body: {exc}") from exc
    elif encoding == "br":
        try:
            import brotli

            raw = brotli.decompress(raw)
        except ImportError:
            raise ValueError(
                "Request body is brotli-compressed but the 'brotli' package is not installed."
            ) from None
        except Exception as exc:
            raise ValueError(f"Failed to decompress brotli request body: {exc}") from exc
    elif encoding and encoding != "identity":
        raise ValueError(f"Unsupported Content-Encoding: {encoding}")

    return cast(bytes, raw)


# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

View on GitHub (pinned to 322425c43b)

Solutions

1. Inspect the underlying exception {exc}; truncated deflate streams are the common cause
2. Confirm the client truly sent deflate-compressed data (some clients mislabel zlib-wrapped vs raw deflate)
3. Retry the request; capture and inspect the raw body if it persists

When it happens

Trigger: Raised when inflating a deflate-compressed request body fails, usually a corrupt payload or zlib-vs-raw-deflate mismatch.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of headroomlabs-ai/headroom@322425c43b (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/972650d41c1b2707. Report an issue: GitHub.