jackwener/OpenCLI · error · ArgumentError

twitter tweet URL cannot be empty

Error message

twitter tweet URL cannot be empty

What it means

ArgumentError from parseTweetUrl when the URL argument is empty or whitespace-only. parseTweetUrl is the shared validator used by retweet, like, quote and other tweet-targeting commands, so all of them fail fast with this error before any browser interaction.

Source

Thrown at clis/twitter/shared.js:50

    'messages',
    'notifications',
    'privacy',
    'search',
    'settings',
    'signup',
    'tos',
]);

function isTwitterHost(hostname) {
    return TWEET_HOSTS.has(hostname)
        || hostname.endsWith('.x.com')
        || hostname.endsWith('.twitter.com');
}

export function parseTweetUrl(rawUrl) {
    const value = String(rawUrl ?? '').trim();
    if (!value) {
        throw new ArgumentError('twitter tweet URL cannot be empty', 'Example: opencli twitter retweet https://x.com/jack/status/20');
    }
    let parsed;
    try {
        parsed = new URL(value);
    }
    catch {
        throw new ArgumentError(`Invalid tweet URL: ${value}`, 'Use a full https://x.com/<user>/status/<id> URL');
    }
    const hostname = parsed.hostname.toLowerCase();
    if (parsed.protocol !== 'https:' || !isTwitterHost(hostname)) {
        throw new ArgumentError(`Invalid tweet URL host: ${value}`, 'Use a full https://x.com/<user>/status/<id> URL');
    }
    const match = parsed.pathname.match(TWEET_PATH_PATTERN);
    if (!match?.[1]) {
        throw new ArgumentError(`Could not extract tweet ID from URL: ${value}`, 'Use a full https://x.com/<user>/status/<id> URL');
    }
    return {
        id: match[1],

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Pass a full tweet URL as the argument, e.g. https://x.com/jack/status/20
2. Fix the shell/CI variable so it is non-empty before invoking
3. Quote the URL to prevent the shell from eating it

Example fix

// before
opencli twitter retweet "$TWEET_URL"   # TWEET_URL empty
// after
TWEET_URL=https://x.com/jack/status/20 opencli twitter retweet "$TWEET_URL"

function requireTweetUrl(v) {
  const s = String(v ?? '').trim();
  if (!s) throw new Error('tweet URL is required, e.g. https://x.com/jack/status/20');
  return s;
}

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

try {
  await opencli.twitter.retweet(url);
} catch (e) {
  if (e.name === 'ArgumentError' && /cannot be empty/.test(e.message)) {
    console.error('Provide a full tweet URL');
  } else throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: `opencli twitter retweet ''`, passing an unset shell variable ($TWEET_URL expands to nothing), or calling the JS API with null/undefined/'' as rawUrl.

Common situations: CI variables not set, copy-paste losing the URL, scripts interpolating an empty field from JSON/YAML input, or forgetting the positional argument entirely.

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

• twitter search query is empty
• ${label} cannot be empty
• twitter profile username must be a valid Twitter/X handle
• Invalid --from username: ${JSON.stringify(kwargs.from)}
• twitter search --limit must be a positive integer

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7f7f3bb822871d9f. Report an issue: GitHub.