What causes "Failed to count completed issues: ${error}" in oven-sh/bun?

Run the exact gh command manually to see the raw error: `gh issue list --state closed --search 'closed:>=2026-01-01 reason:completed' --limit 1000 --json number`

oven-sh/bun · error

Failed to count completed issues

Error message

Failed to count completed issues: ${error}

What it means

Thrown by countCompletedIssues() when the `gh issue list --state closed --search "closed:>=<date> reason:completed" --limit 1000 --json ...` invocation fails. It wraps the gh CLI error, so the real cause (query syntax, auth, rate limit, repo context) is in the appended message.

Solutions

Run the exact gh command manually to see the raw error: `gh issue list --state closed --search 'closed:>=2026-01-01 reason:completed' --limit 1000 --json number`
Normalize sinceDate to YYYY-MM-DD before calling
Run `gh auth status`; export GH_TOKEN or set GH_REPO=oven-sh/bun
Retry after the rate-limit window if gh reports a secondary rate limit

Example fix

// before
const { count, issues } = await countCompletedIssues(sinceDate);

// after
const since = new Date(sinceDate).toISOString().slice(0, 10);
if (!/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/.test(since)) throw new Error(`bad sinceDate: ${sinceDate}`);
const { count, issues } = await countCompletedIssues(since);

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

// gh search qualifiers need a plain YYYY-MM-DD date
if (!/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/.test(sinceDate)) {
  throw new Error(`sinceDate must be YYYY-MM-DD, got: ${sinceDate}`);
}
await $`gh auth status`.quiet(); // fail fast on auth problems

Try / catch

let result;
for (let attempt = 0; attempt < 3; attempt++) {
  try {
    result = await countCompletedIssues(sinceDate);
    break;
  } catch (error) {
    if (/rate limit/i.test(String(error)) && attempt < 2) continue;
    throw error;
  }
}

Prevention

Normalize dates to YYYY-MM-DD before building gh search queries
Set GH_REPO=oven-sh/bun when running outside the repo checkout
Cache gh results in CI to avoid repeated --limit 1000 queries

When it happens

Trigger: sinceDate not in the YYYY-MM-DD form gh's search qualifier expects; gh unauthenticated or its token expired; secondary rate limit from repeated --limit 1000 queries; running outside a git checkout without GH_REPO set.

Common situations: Passing an ISO timestamp or Date object string instead of a plain date; CI where GH_TOKEN isn't in env; running the script in a directory that isn't the bun repo so gh can't infer oven-sh/bun.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of oven-sh/bun@8c5296ac45 (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/98b6b36b791058c9. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at scripts/github-metrics.ts:54

  }
}

/**
 * Count issues closed as completed since a given date
 */
async function countCompletedIssues(sinceDate: string): Promise<{ count: number; issues: number[] }> {
  try {
    const result =
      (await $`gh issue list --state closed --search "closed:>=${sinceDate} reason:completed" --limit 1000 --json number,closedAt,stateReason`.json()) as Issue[];

    const completedIssues = result.filter(issue => issue.stateReason === "COMPLETED");

    return {
      count: completedIssues.length,
      issues: completedIssues.map(issue => issue.number),
    };
  } catch (error) {
    throw new Error(`Failed to count completed issues: ${error}`);
  }
}

/**
 * Get positive reactions for an issue (👍, ❤️, 🎉, 🚀)
 */
async function getIssueReactions(issueNumber: number): Promise<number> {
  try {
    const reactions = (await $`gh api "repos/oven-sh/bun/issues/${issueNumber}/reactions"`.json()) as Reaction[];
    return reactions.filter(r => ["+1", "heart", "hooray", "rocket"].includes(r.content)).length;
  } catch {
    return 0;
  }
}

/**
 * Get positive reactions for all comments on an issue
 */

View on GitHub (pinned to 8c5296ac45)