What causes "plugin sync response expired" in router-for-me/CLIProxyAPI?

Re-fetch the sync index from the plugin store instead of using the cached copy

plugin sync response expired

Error message

plugin sync response expired

What it means

The sync response's expires_at is not in the future relative to the 'now' passed to Validate (the check is !now.Before(r.ExpiresAt), so an expiry equal to now also fails). The plugin index is time-limited on purpose so clients cannot keep using stale plugin metadata; once expired the payload is rejected and must be refreshed.

Source

Thrown at internal/pluginstore/home_sync.go:58

type PluginSyncResponse struct {
	SchemaVersion int              `json:"schema_version"`
	ExpiresAt     time.Time        `json:"expires_at"`
	Items         []PluginSyncItem `json:"items"`
}

func (r *PluginSyncResponse) Validate(now time.Time) error {
	if r == nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("plugin sync response is nil")
	}
	if r.SchemaVersion != PluginSyncSchemaVersion {
		return fmt.Errorf("unsupported plugin sync schema_version %d", r.SchemaVersion)
	}
	if r.ExpiresAt.IsZero() {
		return fmt.Errorf("plugin sync response missing expires_at")
	}
	if !now.Before(r.ExpiresAt) {
		return fmt.Errorf("plugin sync response expired")
	}
	seen := make(map[string]struct{}, len(r.Items))
	for index := range r.Items {
		item := &r.Items[index]
		if errManifest := item.Manifest.Validate(); errManifest != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("plugin sync item %d: %w", index, errManifest)
		}
		if errURLs := validatePluginSyncManifestURLs(item.Manifest); errURLs != nil {
			return fmt.Errorf("plugin sync item %d: %w", index, errURLs)
		}
		id := strings.TrimSpace(item.Manifest.ID)
		if _, exists := seen[id]; exists {
			return fmt.Errorf("plugin sync response contains duplicate plugin %q", id)
		}
		seen[id] = struct{}{}
		for authIndex := range item.Auth {
			if errAuth := ValidateResolvedAuthConfig(item.Auth[authIndex]); errAuth != nil {
				return fmt.Errorf("plugin sync item %d auth %d: %w", index, authIndex, errAuth)

View on GitHub (pinned to 78f0c4079e)

Solutions

Re-fetch the sync index from the plugin store instead of using the cached copy
Check the system clock (NTP) — a fast clock expires caches prematurely
Clear the local sync cache so a fresh, unexpired payload is downloaded
If operating the sync server, lengthen the expiry window it stamps into responses

Defensive patterns

Strategy: fallback

Validate before calling

if !time.Now().Before(resp.ExpiresAt) {
    // expired: refetch before use
    resp, err = refetchSync(ctx)
}

Try / catch

if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "plugin sync response expired") {
    // refetch the index; if offline, degrade gracefully without stale installs
}

Prevention

Refetch the index on expiry instead of trusting cached copies
Keep system clocks NTP-synced so caches do not expire early
Treat expired index as 'no data', never as 'use anyway'

When it happens

Trigger: Validate(now) with a cached response whose expires_at has passed — e.g. the process was offline or the cache dir retained an old index beyond its TTL.

Common situations: Long-running daemon resuming after sleep/hibernate; system clock jumped forward (or is wrong); air-gapped environment where the cached index aged out.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of router-for-me/CLIProxyAPI@78f0c4079e (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1a89a7a7183379f7. Report an issue: GitHub.