santifer/career-ops · error · Error

--sort must be date or score

Error message

--sort must be date or score

What it means

CLI argument validation in company-funded.mjs's parseArgs: the --sort value, after trim/lowercase, is neither "date" nor "score". The input at fault is the token immediately after --sort; empty (missing) values also land here since the default comparison fails.

Solutions

1. Use `--sort date` or `--sort score`.
2. Map alternative sort names to the supported keys in wrapper scripts.
3. Check `--help` output for the current list of accepted sort values.
4. If a new sort key is genuinely needed, extend the includes() check and the sort implementation.

Example fix

// before
node company-funded.mjs --sort amount

// after
node company-funded.mjs --sort score

const SORTS = new Set(['date', 'score']);
function validSort(s) {
  const v = String(s || '').trim().toLowerCase();
  return SORTS.has(v) ? v : null;
}

const isKnownSort = (s) => ['date', 'score'].includes(String(s).trim().toLowerCase());

try {
  run(['--sort', sort]);
} catch (e) {
  if (e.message.includes('--sort must be')) {
    console.warn(`Unsupported sort '${sort}', falling back to 'date'`);
    run(['--sort', 'date']);
  } else throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: `--sort funding` (an intuitively plausible but unsupported key), `--sort Date` would pass (lowercased) but `--sort date-desc`, `--sort relevance`, or `--sort` with a missing/empty value (`''`) all fail.

Common situations: Assuming more sort keys exist than the two implemented; copying a flag from another tool; wrapper scripts forwarding a user-selected sort that this script doesn't implement; version drift where a sort key was renamed.

Understand the failure class

Background: Invalid enum value errors: "Unknown type", "Invalid scope", "must be one of" — when a string is not on the library's allowed list — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

• unknown source in --sources
• Application answer state must be one of
• Application Answers section has
• decision must be one of
• --from and --to must both be supplied together (or neither…

AI-assisted analysis of santifer/career-ops@aac998c7ed (2026-09-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bb1e8e034bdef2ea. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at company-funded.mjs:133

    const arg = argv[i];
    if (arg === '--dry-run') opts.dryRun = true;
    else if (arg === '--json') opts.json = true;
    else if (arg === '--self-test') opts.selfTest = true;
    else if (arg === '--help' || arg === '-h') opts.help = true;
    else if (arg === '--limit') opts.limit = Number(argv[++i] || '');
    else if (arg === '--months') opts.months = Number(argv[++i] || '');
    else if (arg === '--sort') opts.sort = String(argv[++i] || '').trim().toLowerCase();
    else if (arg === '--sources') opts.sources = parseSources(argv[++i] || '');
    else throw new Error(`unknown option: ${arg}`);
  }
  if (!Number.isInteger(opts.limit) || opts.limit <= 0 || opts.limit > 100) {
    throw new Error('--limit must be an integer from 1 to 100');
  }
  if (!Number.isInteger(opts.months) || opts.months <= 0 || opts.months > 120) {
    throw new Error('--months must be an integer from 1 to 120');
  }
  if (!['date', 'score'].includes(opts.sort)) {
    throw new Error('--sort must be date or score');
  }
  return opts;
}

function parseSources(value) {
  const out = String(value || '')
    .split(',')
    .map((s) => normalizeSourceName(s.trim()))
    .filter(Boolean);
  const unique = [...new Set(out)];
  const allowed = new Set(['techcrunch', 'prnewswire', 'guardian', 'hn']);
  for (const source of unique) {
    if (!allowed.has(source)) throw new Error(`unknown source in --sources: ${source}`);
  }
  return unique.length ? unique : [...DEFAULT_SOURCES];
}

function normalizeSourceName(value) {

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