Username is empty. Please provide a username to retrieve.

Error message

Username is empty. Please provide a username to retrieve.

What it means

Thrown by handleGetUser when the parsed command's content is falsy — i.e. 'get user:' was sent with no username. This is a plain Error raised before getUserProfile is called, so no profile lookup occurs.

Source

Thrown at integrations/twitter-services/src/adapters/airi-adapter.ts:200

  private async handleGetUser(content: string): Promise<boolean> {
    if (content) {
      const userProfile = await this.twitterServices.user.getUserProfile(content)
      logger.main.log(`Retrieved profile for user: @${content}`)
      // Return user info to the user
      this.client.send({
        type: 'input:text',
        data: {
          text: `User Profile for @${userProfile.username}:
Display Name: ${userProfile.displayName}
Bio: ${userProfile.bio || 'N/A'}
Followers: ${userProfile.followersCount || 0}
Following: ${userProfile.followingCount || 0}`,
        },
      })
      return true
    }
    else {
      throw new Error('Username is empty. Please provide a username to retrieve.')
    }
  }

  private async handleGetTimeline(count: number): Promise<boolean> {
    const timelineOptions = { count }
    const tweets = await this.twitterServices.timeline.getTimeline(timelineOptions)
    logger.main.log(`Retrieved ${tweets.length} tweets from timeline`)
    // Return timeline to the user
    this.client.send({
      type: 'input:text',
      data: {
        text: `Latest ${tweets.length} tweets from your timeline:
${tweets.map((t: Tweet) => `- ${t.author.displayName}: ${t.text.substring(0, 80)}...`).join('\n')}`,
      },
    })
    return true
  }

View on GitHub (pinned to 27111382b4)

Solutions

Provide a non-empty username after 'get user:'.
Validate content in the parser and reprompt for the username before dispatch.
Have the adapter reply with usage guidance instead of throwing.

Example fix

// before
if (content) { /* fetch profile */ } else {
  throw new Error('Username is empty. Please provide a username to retrieve.')
}

// after
const user = content?.trim()
if (!user) {
  this.client.send({ type: 'input:text', data: { text: 'Usage: get user: <username>' } })
  return false
}

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

const user = (content ?? '').trim()
if (!user) {
  throw new Error('Username required')
}
await adapter.handleGetUser(user)

Type guard

function isEmptyUsernameError(e: unknown): boolean {
  return e instanceof Error && /Username is empty/.test(e.message)
}

Try / catch

try {
  await this.handleGetUser(content)
} catch (e) {
  if (e instanceof Error && /Username is empty/.test(e.message)) {
    this.client.send({ type: 'input:text', data: { text: 'Usage: get user: <username>' } })
  } else throw e
}

Prevention

Validate parsed content for the 'get user' command before dispatch.
Always include the @handle after the prefix.
Reply with usage hints instead of throwing on empty input.

When it happens

Trigger: User sends 'get user:' with nothing after the colon; parseTwitterCommand matched the 'get user' prefix but content is empty/whitespace.

Common situations: User forgot to type the @handle; LLM truncated the payload; empty input forwarded by the AIRI input:text event.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of moeru-ai/airi@27111382b4 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/df54b2bdcb5906ae. Report an issue: GitHub.