What causes " is required" in jackwener/OpenCLI?

Pass a non-empty title: `notebooklm create "My Notebook"`.

jackwener/OpenCLI · error · ArgumentError

<title> is required

Error message

<title> is required

What it means

parseCreateTitle validates the <title> positional argument for the notebooklm create command. An empty, whitespace-only, or missing title throws this ArgumentError. Titles are required because they are sent directly in the CreateProject RPC payload.

Source

Thrown at clis/notebooklm/create.js:14

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, requireNotebooklmExecute, requireNotebooklmSession, verifyNotebooklmNotebookExists } from './utils.js';

const NOTEBOOKLM_CREATE_PROJECT_RPC_ID = 'CCqFvf';
const DEFAULT_EMOJI = '📒';
const MAX_TITLE_LEN = 200;
const NOTEBOOK_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 parseCreateTitle(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 parseCreateEmoji(value) {
    const emoji = String(value ?? '').trim();
    if (!emoji) return DEFAULT_EMOJI;
    return emoji;
}

export function parseCreateProjectResult(result) {
    let current = result;
    while (Array.isArray(current) && current.length === 1 && Array.isArray(current[0])) {
        current = current[0];
    }
    const id = Array.isArray(current)

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

Pass a non-empty title: `notebooklm create "My Notebook"`.
In scripts, guard the variable: [ -n "$TITLE" ] || exit before invoking.
Quote the title so shell word-splitting doesn't drop it.

Example fix

// before
create("")
// after
create("Research Notes")

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const title = String(rawTitle ?? '').trim();
if (!title) throw new Error('Title is required before calling create');

Type guard

function isValidTitle(v) {
  return typeof v === 'string' && v.trim().length > 0;
}

Try / catch

try {
  await create(rawTitle);
} catch (e) {
  if (String(e.message) === '<title> is required') {
    console.error('Usage: notebooklm create <title>');
    process.exitCode = 2;
    return;
  }
  throw e;
}

Prevention

Quote positional args in shell to prevent them being dropped.
Guard script variables for non-empty values before invoking.
Default to a fallback title when input is optional in automation.

When it happens

Trigger: Running `create` with no <title> argument, or with an empty/whitespace value like `create " "`.

Common situations: Script variable expanding to empty ($TITLE unset); shell quoting dropping the argument; forgetting the positional arg after flags.

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

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5705b4b4b5a50682. Report an issue: GitHub.