jackwener/OpenCLI · error · Error

AUTH_REQUIRED: facebook.com redirected to login

Error message

AUTH_REQUIRED: facebook.com redirected to login

What it means

A plain Error thrown inside the injected browser-side script (buildNotificationsScript) when window.location.pathname matches an auth-redirect path, i.e. facebook.com bounced the navigation to a login page. It is not the user-facing error itself: getFacebookNotifications catches it, matches /AUTH_REQUIRED/, and rethrows as AuthRequiredError('facebook.com', ...).

Source

Thrown at clis/facebook/notifications.js:248

            text,
            time,
            url: href,
            notif_id,
            notif_type,
        });
    }
    return out;
}

export function buildNotificationsScript(limit) {
    return `
(async () => {
  const FB_HOST = ${JSON.stringify(FB_HOST)};
  const MARK_AS_READ_PREFIXES = ${JSON.stringify(MARK_AS_READ_PREFIXES)};
  const UNREAD_BADGE_LABELS = ${JSON.stringify(UNREAD_BADGE_LABELS)};
  ${isFacebookAuthRedirectPath.toString()}
  if (isFacebookAuthRedirectPath(window.location.pathname || '')) {
    throw new Error('AUTH_REQUIRED: facebook.com redirected to login');
  }
  ${stripMarkAsReadPrefix.toString()}
  ${stripAnchorChrome.toString()}
  ${parseNotifQuery.toString()}
  ${extractNotificationRowsFromDoc.toString()}
  // Wait briefly for [role="listitem"] rows to render in case the SPA
  // is still hydrating. 8s ceiling keeps a slow network from hanging
  // the command — empty list after that surfaces as EmptyResultError
  // on the Node side.
  const start = Date.now();
  while (document.querySelectorAll('[role="listitem"]').length === 0 && Date.now() - start < 8000) {
    await new Promise(function(r) { setTimeout(r, 200); });
  }
  return extractNotificationRowsFromDoc(document, ${JSON.stringify(limit)}, {
    stripMark: stripMarkAsReadPrefix,
    stripChrome: stripAnchorChrome,
    parseQuery: parseNotifQuery,
    fbHost: FB_HOST,

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

  1. Open the managed Chrome browser and log in to Facebook, then retry the notifications command
  2. Verify /notifications loads (no redirect to login) in the profile browser
  3. Complete any Facebook security/2FA challenge that invalidated the session
  4. If sessions keep expiring, check cookie persistence (user-data-dir) in the browser wrapper
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

const onLoginRedirect = await page.evaluate(String.raw`(() => /login|checkpoint/.test(window.location.pathname))()`);
if (onLoginRedirect) throw new Error('AUTH_REQUIRED: facebook.com redirected to login');

Try / catch

try {
  const rows = await getFacebookNotifications(page, args);
} catch (e) {
  if (e.name === 'AuthRequiredError' && /facebook\.com/.test(e.message)) {
    await openBrowserAndLogin('facebook.com');
  } else throw e;
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: page.evaluate ran on a page whose URL is a Facebook login/redirect path because the profile's session cookies were missing or expired when visiting /notifications.

Common situations: Expired Facebook session; logged out of the managed Chrome profile; Facebook forced re-auth after password change/security challenge; running against a profile that never logged in to facebook.com.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f2e8a205b6998654. Report an issue: GitHub.