ruvnet/ruflo · error

bootstrapElevate requires a non-empty reason

Error message

bootstrapElevate requires a non-empty reason

What it means

bootstrapElevate() requires the operator to justify every manual trust elevation with a non-empty reason string, and the supplied reason was missing or whitespace-only. The guard exists because each elevation is audit-tagged and the audit record is meaningless without a justification.

Source

Thrown at v3/@claude-flow/plugin-agent-federation/src/application/trust-evaluator.ts:187

   * 2→3, etc.) so a freshly-joined BBS peer can be hand-promoted to
   * TRUSTED on Day 1, before its interaction count has accrued. This is an
   * operator escape hatch — every invocation MUST be recorded as a special
   * `bootstrap_elevation` audit entry so it is distinguishable from organic
   * upgrades. `reason` MUST be a non-empty operator-supplied string.
   *
   * The caller is responsible for refusing to invoke this method when the
   * target node is not a registered federation peer; this function trusts
   * its inputs and only performs the elevation + audit construction.
   *
   * @returns audit entry tagged `bootstrap_elevation` ready to be persisted.
   */
  bootstrapElevate(
    node: FederationNode,
    newLevel: TrustLevel,
    reason: string,
  ): BootstrapElevationAuditEntry {
    if (typeof reason !== 'string' || reason.trim().length === 0) {
      throw new Error('bootstrapElevate requires a non-empty reason');
    }
    if (
      newLevel !== TrustLevel.VERIFIED &&
      newLevel !== TrustLevel.ATTESTED &&
      newLevel !== TrustLevel.TRUSTED &&
      newLevel !== TrustLevel.PRIVILEGED
    ) {
      throw new Error(`bootstrapElevate target level must be VERIFIED..PRIVILEGED, got ${newLevel}`);
    }
    const previousLevel = node.trustLevel;
    node.updateTrustLevel(newLevel);

    const result: TrustTransitionResult = {
      previousLevel,
      newLevel,
      score: 0,
      components: { successRate: 0, uptime: 0, threatPenalty: 0, dataIntegrityScore: 0 },
      reason: `Bootstrap elevation: ${reason}`,

View on GitHub (pinned to fa13ee4ad6)

Solutions

1. Pass a non-empty, human-auditable reason to bootstrapElevate.
2. Validate the reason at the CLI/API boundary before calling the trust evaluator.

When it happens

Trigger: bootstrapElevate is invoked with an empty or whitespace-only reason string.

Common situations: Caller forwards an optional reason parameter that was not provided by the operator.

AI-assisted analysis of ruvnet/ruflo@fa13ee4ad6 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fec00ba7fffa8673. Report an issue: GitHub.