santifer/career-ops · critical · Error

tracker-parse.mjs: cannot load tracker-aliases.json (${e.mes

Error message

tracker-parse.mjs: cannot load tracker-aliases.json (${e.message}). The file ships with career-ops next to tracker-parse.mjs — restore it from the repo or re-run: node update-system.mjs apply

What it means

At module load time, tracker-parse.mjs reads tracker-aliases.json (a SYSTEM/BOOTSTRAP file shipped alongside the module) and JSON.parse's it into HEADER_ALIASES. If the file is missing or corrupt, it throws an Error telling the user this is a broken install and to restore the file or re-run `node update-system.mjs apply`. This is deliberately fail-fast: a silent fallback would reintroduce header-alias drift across readers.

Source

Thrown at tracker-parse.mjs:40

/**
 * Header text (lowercased) → canonical field name. Includes ES aliases.
 * Loaded from tracker-aliases.json — the ONE shared alias table, which the web
 * read path (web/src/lib/tracker-table.mjs) also loads at runtime, so the two
 * can never drift (PR #1598 review). Add new aliases in the JSON, not here.
 *
 * A missing or corrupt JSON is a broken install (the file ships alongside this
 * module in SYSTEM_PATHS/BOOTSTRAP_PATHS): fail fast with an actionable
 * message rather than degrading silently — a quiet fallback here would
 * reintroduce exactly the reader drift the shared table exists to prevent.
 * (The web loader degrades to the legacy fixed order instead because it reads
 * the file from a user-configured root at request time.)
 */
export const HEADER_ALIASES = (() => {
  const src = new URL('./tracker-aliases.json', import.meta.url);
  try {
    return JSON.parse(readFileSync(src, 'utf-8'));
  } catch (e) {
    throw new Error(
      `tracker-parse.mjs: cannot load tracker-aliases.json (${e.message}). ` +
      'The file ships with career-ops next to tracker-parse.mjs — restore it ' +
      'from the repo or re-run: node update-system.mjs apply',
    );
  }
})();

/**
 * A score cell in the tracker: `N/5` or `N.N/5` (any precision), or the
 * sentinels `N/A` / `DUP` / `—` (em dash) / `-` (hyphen). Markdown bold is
 * stripped first. `—`/`-` mirror the tracker's own "no data" convention used
 * in every other column (Report, PDF, etc.) — see #1799: a backfilled entry
 * with no evaluation (e.g. a rejection for a role never run through
 * `oferta`) needs a score-cell sentinel too, not just `N/A`. A status label
 * never matches this, which is what makes it a reliable discriminator between
 * the score and status columns regardless of their order (#1427).
 */
export const SCORE_CELL_RE = /^\d+(?:\.\d+)?\/5$/;

View on GitHub (pinned to 9b17a8ac97)

Solutions

1. Restore the install: node update-system.mjs apply.
2. Re-clone or re-pull the repo to get the original tracker-aliases.json.
3. Validate the file: node -e "JSON.parse(require('fs').readFileSync('tracker-aliases.json','utf8'))" and fix syntax errors.
4. If a custom install location, ensure tracker-aliases.json sits next to tracker-parse.mjs.

Example fix

# the error is an install-integrity failure — no code fix, run:
node update-system.mjs apply
# or restore from git:
git checkout HEAD -- tracker-aliases.json

function trackerAliasesInstalled() {
  const p = new URL('./tracker-aliases.json', import.meta.url);
  try {
    JSON.parse(readFileSync(p, 'utf-8'));
    return true;
  } catch { return false; }
}
if (!trackerAliasesInstalled()) {
  console.error('Run: node update-system.mjs apply');
  process.exit(1);
}

When it happens

Trigger: tracker-aliases.json is absent from the module directory (deleted, never copied, or a partial update left it out); the file exists but contains invalid JSON (truncated, encoding issue, hand-edit corruption).

Common situations: A career-ops update (update-system.mjs) was interrupted leaving the install partial; a user manually edited or deleted tracker-aliases.json; a git operation removed the file; file-system corruption or a sync tool (Dropbox) truncated the file.

Related errors

• Could not parse existing candidates file at ${candidatesPath
• Existing candidates file at ${candidatesPath} is not a JSON
• plugins.local/${id} already exists — `node plugins.mjs remov
• landingjobs: unexpected API response — expected a JSON array
• local parser returned invalid JSON

AI-assisted analysis of santifer/career-ops@9b17a8ac97 (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5ad05eafdb67eb8c. Report an issue: GitHub.