jackwener/OpenCLI · warning · EmptyResultError

No Wayback snapshot for "${target}".

Error message

No Wayback snapshot for "${target}".

What it means

An EmptyResultError thrown when the Wayback save API response contains no archived snapshot (or the closest snapshot is marked unavailable). This is an expected outcome, not a fault: it tells the user that no archived copy of the target exists or was just created. The second argument is a human-facing hint including the requested URL.

Source

Thrown at clis/archive/wayback.js:69

                    'User-Agent': 'opencli/1.0 (+https://github.com/jackwener/opencli)',
                },
            });
        } catch (error) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`archive wayback request failed: ${error?.message || error}`);
        }
        if (!resp.ok) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`archive wayback failed: HTTP ${resp.status}`);
        }
        let data;
        try {
            data = await resp.json();
        } catch (error) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`archive wayback returned malformed JSON: ${error?.message || error}`);
        }

        const snap = data?.archived_snapshots?.closest;
        if (!snap || !snap.available) {
            throw new EmptyResultError('archive wayback', `No Wayback snapshot for "${target}".`);
        }
        if (typeof snap.url !== 'string' || !snap.url || !/^\d{14}$/.test(String(snap.timestamp ?? ''))) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError('archive wayback returned malformed payload: closest snapshot is missing url/timestamp');
        }

        return [{
            original_url: String(data.url ?? target),
            requested_timestamp: timestamp,
            snapshot_timestamp: String(snap.timestamp ?? ''),
            snapshot_url: String(snap.url),
            status: String(snap.status ?? ''),
        }];
    },
});

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

  1. Wait a few seconds and re-run the command — newly queued saves take time to register
  2. Verify the URL is reachable and correctly spelled
  3. Check the target manually at web.archive.org to confirm archiving is possible
  4. If scripting around it, catch EmptyResultError and implement a delayed retry

Example fix

// before
const out = await exec('opencli archive wayback ' + url);
// after
try {
  return await exec('opencli archive wayback ' + url);
} catch (e) {
  if (e.name === 'EmptyResultError') {
    await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 10000));
    return await exec('opencli archive wayback ' + url); // retry once after queue delay
  }
  throw e;
}
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

null

Type guard

null

Try / catch

try {
  const out = await runWayback(url);
  return out;
} catch (e) {
  if (e.name === 'EmptyResultError' && e.message.includes('No Wayback snapshot')) {
    await sleep(10000); // snapshot may still be processing
    return runWayback(url);
  }
  throw e;
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: `opencli archive wayback <url>` where data.archived_snapshots.closest is missing, null, or has available:false — e.g. the save job has not been processed yet, or the URL has never been archived and the save was queued asynchronously.

Common situations: Archiving a brand-new URL and querying too soon before the snapshot registers; typo'd or dead URLs; the save API returning a 200 with an empty snapshots object while the job processes.

Understand the failure class

Background: EmptyResultError / "no results found": when an API or scraper succeeds but returns zero rows — this error's family across 9 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/34f5ce805974d3ea. Report an issue: GitHub.