kovidgoyal/kitty · error

Failed to get the current working directory with error: %w

Error message

Failed to get the current working directory with error: %w

What it means

os.Getwd() failed while edit_in_kitty was building the environment payload (it embeds the current working directory for the editor session). Getwd fails when the CWD has been deleted or become unreadable — the kernel can no longer resolve '.' to a path.

Source

Thrown at tools/cmd/edit_in_kitty/main.go:217

	data := strings.Builder{}
	data.Grow(len(file_data) * 4)

	add := func(key, val string) {
		if data.Len() > 0 {
			data.WriteString(",")
		}
		data.WriteString(key)
		data.WriteString("=")
		data.WriteString(val)
	}
	add_encoded := func(key, val string) { add(key, encode(val)) }

	if unix.Access(path, unix.R_OK|unix.W_OK) != nil {
		return 1, fmt.Errorf("%s is not readable and writeable", path)
	}
	cwd, err := os.Getwd()
	if err != nil {
		return 1, fmt.Errorf("Failed to get the current working directory with error: %w", err)
	}
	add_encoded("cwd", cwd)
	for _, arg := range os.Args[2:] {
		add_encoded("a", arg)
	}
	add("file_inode", fmt.Sprintf("%d:%d:%d", s.Dev, s.Ino, s.Mtim.Nano()))
	add_encoded("file_data", utils.UnsafeBytesToString(file_data))
	fmt.Println("Waiting for editing to be completed, press Esc to abort...")
	write_data := func(data_type string, rdata []byte) (err error) {
		err = utils.AtomicWriteFile(path, bytes.NewReader(rdata), fs.FileMode(s.Mode).Perm())
		if err != nil {
			err = fmt.Errorf("Failed to write data to %s with error: %w", path, err)
		}
		return
	}
	exit_code, err = edit_loop(data.String(), true, write_data)
	if err != nil {
		if err == tui.Canceled {

View on GitHub (pinned to 6d5d0c4406)

Solutions

1. cd to a valid directory (e.g. cd ~ or cd /) before retrying
2. Recreate the deleted directory if the shell must stay there: mkdir -p <old-cwd>
3. Avoid launching editors from long-lived shells in temp dirs that get cleaned up
4. If a mount vanished, remount it or cd out of it

Example fix

# before (shell sits in a deleted dir)
edit-in-kitty notes.txt   # getwd ENOENT
# after
cd ~ && edit-in-kitty /path/to/notes.txt

// Verify CWD is resolvable before launching the editor
if wd, err := os.Getwd(); err != nil {
    fmt.Fprintln(os.Stderr, "CWD lost; cd to a valid directory first")
    os.Chdir(os.Getenv("HOME")) // recover into a known-good dir
}

if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "Failed to get the current working directory") {
    os.Chdir("/")
    // retry with an absolute file path

When it happens

Trigger: Running edit_in_kitty from a directory that was deleted (rm -rf by another process) or whose permissions no longer allow traversal, or from inside a mount point that vanished. Also possible when PWD env is stale and the fallback syscall fails with ENOENT/EACCES.

Common situations: Shell sitting in a removed temp/project dir (common after a build script cleans up), deleted container overlay dirs, or unmounted FUSE mounts that were the CWD.

Related errors

• Failed to open %s for reading with error: %w
• Failed to stat %s with error: %w
• Failed to read from %s with error: %w
• %s is not readable and writeable
• resolving base symlinks: %w

AI-assisted analysis of kovidgoyal/kitty@6d5d0c4406 (2026-08-27). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6be9fc8b2854f899. Report an issue: GitHub.