jackwener/OpenCLI · error · ArgumentError

--title is required

Error message

--title is required

What it means

parseNoteTitle validates the --title option for the write-note command: it stringifies and trims the value, and throws ArgumentError when nothing remains. This guarantees every note created in NotebookLM has a non-empty title before any browser automation runs.

Source

Thrown at clis/notebooklm/write-note.js:15

import { cli, Strategy } from '@jackwener/opencli/registry';
import { ArgumentError, CommandExecutionError } from '@jackwener/opencli/errors';
import { NOTEBOOKLM_DOMAIN, NOTEBOOKLM_SITE } from './shared.js';
import { callNotebooklmRpc } from './rpc.js';
import { buildNotebooklmNotebookUrl, ensureNotebooklmHome, parseNotebooklmNotebookTarget, requireNotebooklmExecute, requireNotebooklmSession } from './utils.js';

const NOTEBOOKLM_CREATE_NOTE_RPC_ID = 'CYK0Xb';
const NOTEBOOKLM_MUTATE_NOTE_RPC_ID = 'cYAfTb';
const MAX_TITLE_LEN = 200;
const MAX_CONTENT_LEN = 1_000_000;
const NOTE_UUID_RE = /^[a-f0-9]{8}-[a-f0-9]{4}-[a-f0-9]{4}-[a-f0-9]{4}-[a-f0-9]{12}$/i;

export function parseNoteTitle(value) {
    const title = String(value ?? '').trim();
    if (!title) throw new ArgumentError('--title is required');
    if (title.length > MAX_TITLE_LEN) {
        throw new ArgumentError(`--title must be at most ${MAX_TITLE_LEN} characters (got ${title.length})`);
    }
    return title;
}

export function parseNoteContent(value) {
    const content = String(value ?? '');
    if (!content) throw new ArgumentError('--content is required');
    if (content.length > MAX_CONTENT_LEN) {
        throw new ArgumentError(`--content exceeds ${MAX_CONTENT_LEN} characters; split into smaller notes.`);
    }
    return content;
}

export function buildCreateNoteShellArgs(projectId) {
    return [projectId, '', [1], null, 'New Note', null, [2]];
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Pass a non-empty --title value, e.g. --title "Meeting notes".
2. Quote titles containing spaces so the shell does not split or drop them.
3. In scripts, check the title variable is non-empty before invoking write-note.
4. Fix the upstream command/pipeline that produced an empty title.

Example fix

// before
await writeNote({ title: process.env.NOTE_TITLE, content });

// after
const title = (process.env.NOTE_TITLE || '').trim();
if (!title) throw new Error('NOTE_TITLE must be set to a non-empty value');
await writeNote({ title, content });

const title = String(rawTitle ?? '').trim();
if (!title) throw new Error('--title is required');

const hasTitle = (v) => typeof v === 'string' && v.trim().length > 0;

try {
  await writeNote({ title, content });
} catch (e) {
  if (String(e.message).includes('--title is required')) {
    console.error('Usage: write-note --title "My note" --content "..."');
    process.exit(2);
  }
  throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling write-note without --title, with --title "" or whitespace-only, or passing undefined/null for the title parameter.

Common situations: Forgetting the flag on the command line, a script variable being empty because an upstream command produced no output, or quoting mistakes yielding an empty argument.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• --content is required
• keyword must not be empty
• <from> station must not be empty
• <to> station must not be empty
• who 不能为空

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/cd410758680ad53f. Report an issue: GitHub.