paperclipai/paperclip · error · Error

No company found by ID '${normalizedSelector}'.

Error message

No company found by ID '${normalizedSelector}'.

What it means

Thrown when --by is 'id' and the GET /api/companies/{selector} lookup (with ignoreNotFound) returned null. Because the user explicitly asserted the selector is an ID, a miss is a hard failure rather than a fallback to prefix resolution. The normalized selector was treated as a UUID.

Source

Thrown at cli/src/commands/client/company.ts:1947

      .action(async (selector: string, opts: CompanyDeleteOptions) => {
        try {
          const by = (opts.by ?? "auto").trim().toLowerCase() as CompanyDeleteSelectorMode;
          if (!["auto", "id", "prefix"].includes(by)) {
            throw new Error(`Invalid --by mode '${opts.by}'. Expected one of: auto, id, prefix.`);
          }

          const ctx = resolveCommandContext(opts);
          const normalizedSelector = normalizeSelector(selector);
          assertDeleteFlags(opts);

          let target: Company | null = null;
          const shouldTryIdLookup = by === "id" || (by === "auto" && isUuidLike(normalizedSelector));
          if (shouldTryIdLookup) {
            const byId = await ctx.api.get<Company>(apiPath`/api/companies/${normalizedSelector}`, { ignoreNotFound: true });
            if (byId) {
              target = byId;
            } else if (by === "id") {
              throw new Error(`No company found by ID '${normalizedSelector}'.`);
            }
          }

          if (!target && ctx.companyId) {
            const scoped = await ctx.api.get<Company>(apiPath`/api/companies/${ctx.companyId}`, { ignoreNotFound: true });
            if (scoped) {
              try {
                target = resolveCompanyForDeletion([scoped], normalizedSelector, by);
              } catch {
                // Fallback to board-wide lookup below.
              }
            }
          }

          if (!target) {
            try {
              const companies = (await ctx.api.get<Company[]>("/api/companies")) ?? [];
              target = resolveCompanyForDeletion(companies, normalizedSelector, by);

View on GitHub (pinned to 67001ec6eb)

Solutions

1. Verify the ID: `paperclipai company list --json` and copy the current id.
2. Drop `--by id` to let auto/prefix resolution try the selector as a prefix.
3. Ensure the auth token has access to the target company (board token for cross-company).

Example fix

# before
paperclipai company delete 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 --by id --yes --confirm ...
# after
ID=$(paperclipai company list --json | jq -r '.[0].id')
paperclipai company delete "$ID" --by id --yes --confirm "$PREFIX"

// Confirm the company exists before asserting --by id in a delete.
async function companyExistsById(api: { get: (p: string, o?: { ignoreNotFound?: boolean }) => Promise<unknown> }, id: string): Promise<boolean> {
  const c = await api.get(`/api/companies/${id}`, { ignoreNotFound: true });
  return c != null;
}

import type { Company } from "@paperclipai/shared";

function isCompany(v: unknown): v is Company {
  return !!v && typeof v === "object" && typeof (v as Company).id === "string";
}

try {
  const byId = await ctx.api.get<Company>(`/api/companies/${id}`, { ignoreNotFound: true });
  if (!isCompany(byId)) throw new Error(`No company found by ID '${id}'`);
} catch (err) {
  // Optionally fall back to --by prefix resolution here.
  throw err;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running `paperclipai company delete <id> --by id ...` where <id> is not an existing company UUID; a typo in the UUID; the company was already deleted; the authenticated caller lacks read access to that company.

Common situations: Stale ID copied from an old list; company deleted in another session; agent-scoped API key trying to delete a company outside its scope (returns 404 via ignoreNotFound).

Related errors

• No company found for selector '${selector}'. Use company ID
• No company found for selector '${normalizedSelector}'.
• No company found by ID '${selector}'.
• No company found by shortname/prefix '${selector}'.
• Selector '${selector}' is ambiguous (matches both an ID and

AI-assisted analysis of paperclipai/paperclip@67001ec6eb (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4c06f2515698e977. Report an issue: GitHub.