plandex-ai/plandex · error

--debug value must be greater than 0

Error message

--debug value must be greater than 0

What it means

This error is thrown by autoDebugValue.Set when the --debug value parses as an integer but is zero or negative. The flag requires a strictly positive integer (number of debug tries). It is a range-validation error, not a parse error.

Source

Thrown at app/cli/cmd/plan_exec_helpers.go:241

	value *int
}

func newAutoDebugValue(p *int) *autoDebugValue {
	*p = 0 // Default to 0 (disabled)
	return &autoDebugValue{p}
}

func (f *autoDebugValue) Set(s string) error {
	if s == "" {
		*f.value = defaultAutoDebugTries
		return nil
	}
	v, err := strconv.Atoi(s)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid value for --debug: %v", err)
	}
	if v <= 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("--debug value must be greater than 0")
	}
	*f.value = v
	return nil
}

func (f *autoDebugValue) String() string {
	if f.value == nil {
		return "0"
	}
	return strconv.Itoa(*f.value)
}

func (f *autoDebugValue) Type() string {
	return "int"
}

// EditorValue implements the flag.Value interface
type editorValue struct {

View on GitHub (pinned to e2d772072e)

Solutions

1. Pass a value >= 1, e.g. --debug=1
2. Omit --debug entirely to use the default autoDebugTries
3. Fix the script/computation producing 0 or negative values

Example fix

// before
plandex tell -f plan.md --debug=0
// after
plandex tell -f plan.md --debug=1

if v, err := strconv.Atoi(debugArg); err != nil || v <= 0 {
    return fmt.Errorf("--debug must be >= 1")
}

func isPositiveInt(s string) bool {
    v, err := strconv.Atoi(s)
    return err == nil && v > 0
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing --debug=0 or a negative value like --debug=-1 to a command that accepts autoDebugValue.

Common situations: Trying to 'disable' debug by passing 0 (omit the flag instead), scripting with a computed value that resolved to 0 or negative.

Understand the failure class

Background: "unknown output mode", "invalid value for flag", "expects true/false": fixing invalid flag value errors in CLI tools — this error's family across 24 libraries.

Related errors

• invalid value for --debug: %v
• invalid context index: %s
• no context found with name: %s
• run command requires exactly one file path argument
• invalid value: %s

AI-assisted analysis of plandex-ai/plandex@e2d772072e (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/61538fb067670a1c. Report an issue: GitHub.