What causes "Must supply unless pulumi is run interactively" in pulumi/pulumi?

Pass the required argument explicitly (e.g. the full resource URN)

Must supply <%s> unless pulumi is run interactively

Error message

Must supply <%s> unless pulumi is run interactively

What it means

missingNonInteractiveArg builds the error shown when a required CLI argument is absent in a non-interactive session. With exactly one missing argument it formats 'Must supply <arg> unless pulumi is run interactively', since the interactive prompt path cannot run without a TTY.

Source

Thrown at pkg/cmd/pulumi/state/io.go:384

func getNewResourceName() (string, error) {
	var resourceName string
	err := survey.AskOne(&survey.Input{
		Message: "Choose a new resource name:",
	}, &resourceName, ui.SurveyIcons(cmdutil.GetGlobalColorization()))
	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}
	return resourceName, nil
}

// Format a non-nil error that indicates some arguments are missing for a
// non-interactive session.
func missingNonInteractiveArg(args ...string) error {
	switch len(args) {
	case 0:
		panic("cannot create an error message for missing zero args")
	case 1:
		return fmt.Errorf("Must supply <%s> unless pulumi is run interactively", args[0])
	default:
		for i, s := range args {
			args[i] = "<" + s + ">"
		}
		return fmt.Errorf("Must supply %s and %s unless pulumi is run interactively",
			strings.Join(args[:len(args)-1], ", "), args[len(args)-1])
	}
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 793f7b2e16)

Solutions

Pass the required argument explicitly (e.g. the full resource URN)
Run the command in an interactive terminal if you want the picker
Fix shell quoting/expansion so the argument is not empty in scripts

Example fix

// before (script, empty var)
pulumi state delete "$URN"
// after: fail fast when the variable is unset
: "${URN:?URN is required}" && pulumi state delete "$URN"

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// shell: refuse to run when the required argument is missing
if [ -z "${URN:-}" ]; then echo "Must supply <urn> unless pulumi is run interactively" >&2; exit 1; fi
pulumi state delete "$URN"

Prevention

In scripts, assert required args are non-empty before invoking pulumi
Detect non-TTY environments and always pass explicit arguments
Use `${VAR:?}` expansions to fail fast on unset variables

When it happens

Trigger: Running state commands (e.g. `pulumi state delete` with no URN) in CI or piped stdin where cmdutil.Interactive() is false and the positional argument is empty.

Common situations: Automation scripts forgetting the URN argument; CI jobs invoking pulumi without a TTY so the interactive picker is skipped; shell variable expansions yielding an empty string argument.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of pulumi/pulumi@793f7b2e16 (2026-08-31). Data as JSON: /api/errors/48fa666b31758546. Report an issue: GitHub.