microsoft/aspire · error · InvalidOperationException

Downloaded Aspire skills package does not contain…

Error message

Downloaded Aspire skills package does not contain skill-manifest.json.

What it means

AspireSkillsBundleProvider locates the root directory of a downloaded skills bundle by searching for skill-manifest.json. When no directory in the extracted archive contains that manifest, FindBundleRoot throws this InvalidOperationException, meaning the archive is not a valid Aspire skills bundle layout.

Solutions

Verify the release asset zip actually contains skill-manifest.json at its root or directly inside a single top-level directory
Re-download the bundle; a truncated download may have failed to extract the manifest
Regenerate and publish the skills bundle with the manifest included

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// before installing, inspect the extracted bundle
var manifests = Directory.EnumerateFiles(extractDir, "skill-manifest.json", SearchOption.AllDirectories).ToList();
if (manifests.Count == 0)
    throw new InvalidOperationException($"Bundle at {extractDir} has no skill-manifest.json — not a valid skills bundle.");

Try / catch

try
{
    await provider.CreateBundleAsync(archivePath);
}
catch (InvalidOperationException ex) when (ex.Message.Contains("does not contain skill-manifest.json"))
{
    logger.LogError(ex, "Downloaded skills bundle is missing skill-manifest.json; re-download or use a different release.");
}

Prevention

Always publish release archives that contain skill-manifest.json at the root or one directory deep
Verify archive layout with CI checks before publishing a skills release
Use the official bundle tooling rather than hand-zipping directories

When it happens

Trigger: Downloaded/extracted GitHub release asset whose top-level directories (or the archive root) contain no skill-manifest.json; FindBundleRoot is called from bundleRoot during bundle creation.

Common situations: Publishing a release with the wrong artifact (zip without the manifest), mis-zipped archive that nests the manifest one level deeper than expected, corrupted or partially extracted download, or someone packaging skills manually and forgetting skill-manifest.json.

Understand the failure class

Background: "File not found" and ENOENT errors: why libraries can't find a file that should exist — this error's family across 50 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of microsoft/aspire@25830f84bd (2026-09-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/28b74ecb5afc8187. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/Aspire.Cli/Agents/AspireSkills/AspireSkillsBundleProvider.cs:605

            return new DirectoryInfo(packageDirectory);
        }

        var topLevelBundleDirectories = Directory
            .EnumerateDirectories(extractionDirectory)
            .Where(directory => File.Exists(Path.Combine(directory, ManifestFileName)))
            .ToArray();

        if (topLevelBundleDirectories.Length == 1)
        {
            return new DirectoryInfo(topLevelBundleDirectories[0]);
        }

        if (topLevelBundleDirectories.Length > 1)
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException("Downloaded Aspire skills package contains multiple skill-manifest.json files.");
        }

        throw new InvalidOperationException("Downloaded Aspire skills package does not contain skill-manifest.json.");
    }

    private static void CopyDirectory(string sourceDirectory, string targetDirectory)
    {
        Directory.CreateDirectory(targetDirectory);

        foreach (var sourceFile in Directory.GetFiles(sourceDirectory, "*", SearchOption.AllDirectories))
        {
            var relativePath = Path.GetRelativePath(sourceDirectory, sourceFile);
            var targetFile = Path.Combine(targetDirectory, relativePath);
            var targetFileDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(targetFile);
            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(targetFileDirectory))
            {
                Directory.CreateDirectory(targetFileDirectory);
            }

            File.Copy(sourceFile, targetFile, overwrite: true);
        }

View on GitHub (pinned to 25830f84bd)