What causes "--title is required" in multica-ai/multica?

Pass a non-empty title: `multica project create --title "Q3 Migration"`.

--title is required

Error message

--title is required

What it means

Flag guard in runProjectCreate (cmd_project.go:309): `multica project create` was invoked without a non-empty --title. Title is the only required field for creation (description and others are optional), so the CLI rejects the call locally before constructing the API client.

Source

Thrown at server/cmd/multica/cmd_project.go:309

		headers := []string{"ID", "TITLE", "STATUS", "LEAD", "DESCRIPTION"}
		rows := [][]string{{
			strVal(project, "id"),
			strVal(project, "title"),
			strVal(project, "status"),
			lead,
			strVal(project, "description"),
		}}
		cli.PrintTable(os.Stdout, headers, rows)
		return nil
	}

	return cli.PrintJSON(os.Stdout, project)
}

func runProjectCreate(cmd *cobra.Command, _ []string) error {
	title, _ := cmd.Flags().GetString("title")
	if title == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("--title is required")
	}

	client, err := newAPIClient(cmd)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}

	ctx, cancel := cli.APIContext(context.Background())
	defer cancel()

	body := map[string]any{"title": title}
	if v, _ := cmd.Flags().GetString("description"); v != "" {
		body["description"] = v
	}
	if v, _ := cmd.Flags().GetString("status"); v != "" {
		if err := validateProjectStatus(v); err != nil {
			return err
		}

View on GitHub (pinned to 2c0912b6ec)

Solutions

Pass a non-empty title: `multica project create --title "Q3 Migration"`.
Guard in scripts: `[ -n "$TITLE" ] || { echo 'title required'; exit 1; }` before the call.
Use ${TITLE:?} so the shell itself fails fast on an unset variable.

Example fix

# before
multica project create --title "$TITLE"   # $TITLE unset -> --title ""
# --title is required

# after
multica project create --title "${TITLE:?TITLE must be set}"

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

title := strings.TrimSpace(os.Getenv("PROJECT_TITLE"))
if title == "" { return fmt.Errorf("PROJECT_TITLE must be set") }

Type guard

func hasTitle(s string) bool { return strings.TrimSpace(s) != "" }

Prevention

Use ${TITLE:?} shell parameter expansion to fail before the CLI runs.
Trim whitespace when deriving titles from files or tickets.
Assert required flags up front in wrapper scripts instead of relying on CLI guards.

When it happens

Trigger: Omitting --title entirely, or passing --title "" (empty string) — including scripts where $TITLE expands to nothing and the quotes keep the argument present but empty.

Common situations: Shell scripts with unset variables quoted as ""; pipelines that derive the title from an empty field; assuming an interactive prompt will ask for the title.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of multica-ai/multica@2c0912b6ec (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c6f81d7f7fd542b2. Report an issue: GitHub.