sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills · warning

Failed to parse PW_EXTRA_HEADERS as JSON:

Error message

Failed to parse PW_EXTRA_HEADERS as JSON:

What it means

JSON.parse threw while reading PW_EXTRA_HEADERS, so the variable's value is not valid JSON at all — unquoted keys, single quotes, smart quotes, an unterminated string, or unresolved template placeholders. The helper logs the parser's message and returns null; the effect is that requests run without the extra headers, which usually surfaces later as unexpected 401/403 responses from the target site.

Source

Thrown at skills/playwright-skill/lib/helpers.js:31

 */
function getExtraHeadersFromEnv() {
  const headerName = process.env.PW_HEADER_NAME;
  const headerValue = process.env.PW_HEADER_VALUE;

  if (headerName && headerValue) {
    return { [headerName]: headerValue };
  }

  const headersJson = process.env.PW_EXTRA_HEADERS;
  if (headersJson) {
    try {
      const parsed = JSON.parse(headersJson);
      if (typeof parsed === 'object' && parsed !== null && !Array.isArray(parsed)) {
        return parsed;
      }
      console.warn('PW_EXTRA_HEADERS must be a JSON object, ignoring...');
    } catch (e) {
      console.warn('Failed to parse PW_EXTRA_HEADERS as JSON:', e.message);
    }
  }

  return null;
}

/**
 * Launch browser with standard configuration
 * @param {string} browserType - 'chromium', 'firefox', or 'webkit'
 * @param {Object} options - Additional launch options
 */
async function launchBrowser(browserType = 'chromium', options = {}) {
  const defaultOptions = {
    headless: process.env.HEADLESS !== 'false',
    slowMo: process.env.SLOW_MO ? parseInt(process.env.SLOW_MO) : 0,
    args: ['--no-sandbox', '--disable-setuid-sandbox']
  };

View on GitHub (pinned to 58d857988f)

Solutions

  1. Validate before the run: node -e "JSON.parse(process.env.PW_EXTRA_HEADERS)" and fix whatever it reports
  2. In YAML use single quotes or a block scalar around the whole JSON so inner double quotes survive: PW_EXTRA_HEADERS: '{"Authorization":"Bearer x"}'

Example fix

# before (not valid JSON — parse error)
export PW_EXTRA_HEADERS="{Authorization: 'Bearer x'}"

# after
export PW_EXTRA_HEADERS='{"Authorization":"Bearer x"}'
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

node -e "JSON.parse(process.env.PW_EXTRA_HEADERS ?? '{}')" // run before starting the suite

Try / catch

try {
  headers = JSON.parse(process.env.PW_EXTRA_HEADERS ?? '{}');
} catch (e) {
  throw new Error(`Invalid PW_EXTRA_HEADERS JSON: ${e.message}`);
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: PW_EXTRA_HEADERS set to {Authorization: "Bearer x"} (unquoted key), {"a": 'b'} (single quotes), a multi-line YAML block folded wrongly, or a value still containing ${SECRET} placeholders.

Common situations: Hand-writing JSON in a shell export without escaping quotes; docker-compose/Kubernetes env values that drop inner quotes; CI secret substitution leaving placeholder text; smart quotes pasted from a chat window or rich text editor.

Understand the failure class

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills@58d857988f (2026-08-26). Data as JSON: /api/errors/09b0478b4488c792. Report an issue: GitHub.