multica-ai/multica · error

expected a full UUID or at least %d hex characters, got %q

Error message

expected a full UUID or at least %d hex characters, got %q

What it means

Returned by normalizeUUIDPrefix when the input, after lowercasing and stripping dashes, is shorter than minShortIDPrefixLen (4 hex characters). Short prefixes cannot uniquely identify a resource, so the CLI rejects them before making any network calls.

Source

Thrown at server/cmd/multica/cmd_id_resolver.go:62

	return id
}

func issueCandidate(issue map[string]any) idCandidate {
	return idCandidate{
		ID:      strVal(issue, "id"),
		Display: issueDisplayKey(issue),
		Detail:  strVal(issue, "title"),
	}
}

func normalizeUUIDPrefix(input string) (string, error) {
	trimmed := strings.TrimSpace(input)
	if trimmed == "" {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("id is required")
	}
	prefix := strings.ToLower(strings.ReplaceAll(trimmed, "-", ""))
	if len(prefix) < minShortIDPrefixLen {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("expected a full UUID or at least %d hex characters, got %q", minShortIDPrefixLen, input)
	}
	for _, r := range prefix {
		if !((r >= '0' && r <= '9') || (r >= 'a' && r <= 'f')) {
			return "", fmt.Errorf("expected a UUID prefix containing only hex characters, got %q", input)
		}
	}
	return prefix, nil
}

func compactUUID(id string) string {
	return strings.ToLower(strings.ReplaceAll(strings.TrimSpace(id), "-", ""))
}

func resolveIDByPrefix(ctx context.Context, client *cli.APIClient, kind, input string, fetch func(context.Context, *cli.APIClient) ([]idCandidate, error)) (resolvedID, error) {
	trimmed := strings.TrimSpace(input)
	if trimmed == "" {
		return resolvedID{}, fmt.Errorf("%s id is required", kind)
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 2c0912b6ec)

Solutions

1. Pass at least 4 hex characters of the UUID, or the full UUID
2. Copy the full UUID via a list command with --full-id and use that
3. If generating prefixes in a script, validate length >= 4 before calling the CLI

Example fix

# before
multica label rm "ab"

# after
multica label rm "ab12cd"  # or the full UUID from `multica label list --full-id`

// validUUIDPrefix reports whether input can serve as a CLI UUID prefix.
func validUUIDPrefix(input string) bool {
	compact := strings.ToLower(strings.ReplaceAll(strings.TrimSpace(input), "-", ""))
	if len(compact) < 4 {
		return false
	}
	for _, r := range compact {
		if !((r >= '0' && r <= '9') || (r >= 'a' && r <= 'f')) {
			return false
		}
	}
	return true
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a 1–3 character id fragment such as "ab", "1a2", or a dashed fragment whose compact form is under 4 chars. Produced by resolveIDByPrefix for any prefix-resolvable resource (autopilot, project, label, task run) and indirectly by resolveIssueRef's tailored-hint detection.

Common situations: Truncated copy-paste from terminal output; shell history editing that cut the id short; scripts slicing substrings of a UUID with too-small an offset or length.

Related errors

• expected a UUID prefix containing only hex characters, got %
• id is required
• %s id is required
• resolve %s: %w
• no %s found matching id prefix %q; run the list command with

AI-assisted analysis of multica-ai/multica@2c0912b6ec (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5a6030c224a703b2. Report an issue: GitHub.