What causes "${app.slug}: capture has no states" in paperclipai/paperclip?

Inspect the capture file for the app's slug and ensure at least one '## State:' section survives parsing.

paperclipai/paperclip · error · Error

: capture has no states

Error message

${app.slug}: capture has no states

What it means

After parsing, each app whose slug has a parsed capture must have at least one state. Because parseCapture() only returns entries derived from '## State:' headings, an empty array here means the capture matched the 99-count check but still yielded no states for this app — an inconsistency caught before writing output files.

Solutions

Inspect the capture file for the app's slug and ensure at least one '## State:' section survives parsing.
Check recent changes to parseCapture() for filtering logic that can drop all states; fix the filter or re-add the states.
If the app should not have a capture at all, remove the capture file (and adjust the 99-count) rather than shipping an empty capture.

Example fix

// before
const states = stateMatches.filter((m) => wantState(m[1])); // can be []
// after
if (states.length === 0) throw new Error(`${fileName}: no captured states`);

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

for (const app of apps) {
  const cap = parsedCaptures[app.slug];
  if (cap && cap.length === 0) throw new Error(`${app.slug}: capture parsed to zero states`);
}

Prevention

Keep parseCapture() fail-fast (throw on zero headings) rather than returning [].
Review any new state-filtering logic in parseCapture for empty-result edge cases.
Add a unit test that every parsed capture yields >= 1 state.

When it happens

Trigger: In the final loop over apps, for an app where parsedCaptures[app.slug] exists (the capture file <slug>.md was parsed) and its array length is 0. In practice parseCapture throws on zero headings, so this guards against a future parseCapture change returning an empty array (e.g. filtering states) or an empty-array assignment.

Common situations: Refactoring parseCapture to filter/skip states and returning [] for edge-case files; test doubles or patched ingestion code injecting an empty capture list; a slug whose capture file exists but whose states are all filtered out by a new criterion.

Understand the failure class

Background: EmptyResultError / "no results found": when an API or scraper succeeds but returns zero rows — this error's family across 9 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of paperclipai/paperclip@3f1d897a7c (2026-09-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/c86ff84896b1c182. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at scripts/ingest-app-definitions.mjs:1644

  providers: captureFiles.map((fileName) => {
    const slug = path.basename(fileName, ".md");
    const states = parsedCaptures[slug].map((state) => inferState(slug, state));
    return {
      slug,
      stateCount: states.length,
      states,
      ambiguities: states
        .filter((state) => !state.auth)
        .map(
          (state) => `Auth is not explicit in capture state: ${state.label}`,
        ),
    };
  }),
};
for (const app of apps) {
  validateApp(app);
  if (parsedCaptures[app.slug] && parsedCaptures[app.slug].length === 0)
    throw new Error(`${app.slug}: capture has no states`);
}
fs.mkdirSync(out, { recursive: true });
for (const app of apps)
  fs.writeFileSync(
    path.join(out, `${app.slug}.json`),
    JSON.stringify(app, null, 2) + "\n",
  );
if (!definitionsOnly) fs.writeFileSync(
  path.join(root, "packages/shared/src/app-definitions.ingestion-report.json"),
  JSON.stringify(reviewReport, null, 2) + "\n",
);
const imports = apps
  .map(
    (a, i) =>
      `import a${i} from "./app-definitions/${a.slug}.json" with { type: "json" };`,
  )
  .join("\n");
fs.writeFileSync(

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