What causes "Invalid LinkedIn Learning slug: "${slug}"" in jackwener/OpenCLI?

Pass the ASCII slug exactly as it appears in the /learning/ URL, stripped of query strings, fragments, and trailing slashes.

jackwener/OpenCLI · error · ArgumentError

Invalid LinkedIn Learning slug: "${slug}"

Error message

Invalid LinkedIn Learning slug: "${slug}"

What it means

Thrown by parseSlug after a slug is extracted (from a URL, a /learning/<slug> path, or the raw input) when it fails the ^[a-zA-Z0-9-_]+$ check. LinkedIn Learning slugs are ASCII letters, digits, hyphens, and underscores only, so characters like spaces, dots, slashes, or non-Latin scripts indicate a malformed identifier.

Source

Thrown at clis/linkedin-learning/course.js:31

        let parsed;
        try {
            parsed = new URL(s);
        } catch {
            throw new ArgumentError(`Invalid LinkedIn Learning URL: "${s}"`);
        }
        const host = parsed.hostname.toLowerCase();
        if (host !== 'linkedin.com' && host !== 'www.linkedin.com') {
            throw new ArgumentError(`Invalid LinkedIn Learning host: "${parsed.hostname}"`);
        }
        const m = parsed.pathname.match(/^\/learning\/([^/?#]+)/);
        if (!m) throw new ArgumentError(`Invalid LinkedIn Learning course URL: "${s}"`);
        slug = m[1];
    } else {
        const m = s.match(/^\/?learning\/([^/?#]+)/);
        slug = m ? m[1] : s;
    }
    if (!/^[a-zA-Z0-9-_]+$/.test(slug)) {
        throw new ArgumentError(`Invalid LinkedIn Learning slug: "${slug}"`);
    }
    return slug;
}

function parseCourse(el, slug) {
    const title = normalizeWhitespace(el?.title);
    if (!title) return null;
    const description = typeof el?.description === 'string'
        ? el.description
        : (el?.description?.text || '');
    const duration = el?.duration?.unit === 'SECOND' ? String(el.duration.duration ?? '') : '';
    const released = el?.activatedAt ? new Date(el.activatedAt).toISOString().slice(0, 10) : '';
    return {
        title,
        slug,
        description,
        difficulty: el?.difficultyLevel || '',
        duration_sec: duration,

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

Pass the ASCII slug exactly as it appears in the /learning/<slug> URL, stripped of query strings, fragments, and trailing slashes.
Pass the full canonical https://www.linkedin.com/learning/<slug>/ URL instead of hand-editing the slug.
Look up the course via the linkedin-learning search command to obtain the correct slug.

Example fix

// before
opencli linkedin-learning course 'agentic.ai?trk=feed'
// after
opencli linkedin-learning course 'agentic-ai-build-your-first-agentic-ai-system'

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const SLUG_RE = /^[a-zA-Z0-9-_]+$/;
if (!SLUG_RE.test(slugOrExtractedSlug)) {
  throw new Error(`Bad slug before call: "${slugOrExtractedSlug}"`);
}

Type guard

function isValidSlug(v) {
  return typeof v === 'string' && /^[a-zA-Z0-9-_]+$/.test(v);
}

Try / catch

try {
  run(['linkedin-learning', 'course', slug]);
} catch (e) {
  if (String(e.message).includes('Invalid LinkedIn Learning slug')) {
    // strip query/fragment/unicode, or resolve via search, then retry
  } else throw e;
}

Prevention

Strip query strings, fragments, and trailing slashes from anything copied from the address bar.
Never pass URNs (urn:li:course:...) or localized titles as slugs.
Obtain slugs from the search command's url column instead of hand-typing them.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the linkedin-learning course command with a slug containing '.' (e.g. 'agentic.ai'), '/', '?', unicode characters, or trailing punctuation; also non-ASCII localized course titles used as identifiers.

Common situations: Quoting/parsing mistakes that leave URL fragments or query strings attached; copying the localized title rather than the slug from the address bar; course IDs like 'urn:li:course:123' pasted directly.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/24a79508925a50c3. Report an issue: GitHub.