What causes "no tasks defined. see {url}" in jdx/mise?

Define a task: add [tasks. ] to mise.toml or create a script in .mise/tasks/

no tasks defined. see {url}

Error message

no tasks defined. see {url}

What it means

Raised when mise needs to prompt the user to interactively select a task (no task specified on the command line) but the loaded configuration defines zero tasks. The error points to the tasks documentation.

Source

Thrown at src/task/task_list.rs:391

    }

    if !similar_cmds.is_empty() {
        err_msg.push_str("\n\nDid you mean the command:");
        for cmd_name in &similar_cmds {
            err_msg.push_str(&format!("\n  mise {cmd_name}"));
        }
    }

    append_available_tasks(&mut err_msg, &tasks_for_error, showing_all_tasks);

    bail!(err_msg);
}

/// Prompt the user to select a task interactively
async fn prompt_for_task(config: &Arc<Config>, load_all: bool) -> Result<Task> {
    let ctx = load_all.then(TaskLoadContext::all);
    let tasks = config.tasks_with_context(ctx.as_ref()).await?;
    ensure!(
        !tasks.is_empty(),
        "no tasks defined. see {url}",
        url = style::eunderline("https://mise.jdx.dev/tasks/")
    );
    let theme = crate::ui::theme::get_theme();
    let mut s = Select::new("Tasks")
        .description("Select a task to run")
        .filtering(true)
        .filterable(true)
        .theme(&theme);
    for t in tasks.values().filter(|t| !t.hide) {
        // Truncate description to first line only, like tasks ls does
        let desc = t.description.lines().next().unwrap_or_default();
        s = s.option(
            DemandOption::new(&t.name)
                .label(&t.display_name)
                .description(desc),
        );

View on GitHub (pinned to afd2eddd3a)

Solutions

Define a task: add [tasks.<name>] to mise.toml or create a script in .mise/tasks/
Run `mise tasks ls` from the correct project directory
cd to the project root so its config/tasks are loaded
Trust the config if it was ignored (`mise trust`)

Example fix

// mise.toml (before: no tasks)
[tasks.build]
run = "cargo build"
// after
mise run build

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

[ -n "$(mise tasks ls 2>/dev/null)" ] && mise run || echo "no tasks defined"

Try / catch

out=$(mise run 2>&1) || { echo "$out" | grep -q 'no tasks defined' && echo 'Define tasks in mise.toml'; }

Prevention

Always pass an explicit task name in scripts instead of relying on the interactive prompt
Define at least one task in mise.toml or .mise/tasks/
Check your cwd is inside the project before running mise run

When it happens

Trigger: Running `mise run` with no arguments in a project that has no tasks defined, triggering prompt_for_task, which ensures the task list is non-empty before showing a Select prompt.

Common situations: Running `mise run` bare in a fresh repo without mise.toml tasks or .mise/tasks directory; wrong working directory (project tasks not loaded); task files ignored/untrusted.

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 jdx/mise@afd2eddd3a (2026-09-09). Data as JSON: /api/errors/426ce1ab376b6f79. Report an issue: GitHub.