sipeed/picoclaw · error

$EDITOR is not set

Error message

$EDITOR is not set

What it means

`picoclaw mcp edit` shells out to the program named by $EDITOR (edit.go:22-24); if EDITOR is unset or whitespace-only the command aborts before the config is even loaded. The check is strings.TrimSpace(os.Getenv("EDITOR")) == "", so an empty or blank value is fatal.

Source

Thrown at cmd/picoclaw/internal/mcp/edit.go:22

	"fmt"
	"os"
	"strings"

	"github.com/spf13/cobra"
	"go.mau.fi/util/shlex"

	"github.com/sipeed/picoclaw/cmd/picoclaw/internal"
)

func newEditCommand() *cobra.Command {
	return &cobra.Command{
		Use:   "edit",
		Short: "Open the PicoClaw config in $EDITOR",
		Args:  cobra.NoArgs,
		RunE: func(cmd *cobra.Command, _ []string) error {
			editor := strings.TrimSpace(os.Getenv("EDITOR"))
			if editor == "" {
				return fmt.Errorf("$EDITOR is not set")
			}

			cfg, err := loadConfig()
			if err != nil {
				return err
			}
			if err = saveValidatedConfig(cfg); err != nil {
				return err
			}

			editorArgs, err := shlex.Split(editor)
			if err != nil {
				return fmt.Errorf("failed to parse $EDITOR: %w", err)
			}
			if len(editorArgs) == 0 {
				return fmt.Errorf("$EDITOR is empty")
			}

View on GitHub (pinned to 49183d7e8d)

Solutions

1. One-off: prefix the command, e.g. EDITOR=nano picoclaw mcp edit
2. Permanent: add export EDITOR=vim (or nano/code) to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc and restart the shell
3. On Debian/Ubuntu, select a default via update-alternatives --config editor after installing an editor package

Example fix

# before
picoclaw mcp edit
# after
EDITOR=nano picoclaw mcp edit

if [ -z "${EDITOR:-}" ] || [ -z "$(printf '%s' "$EDITOR" | tr -d '[:space:]')" ]; then
  echo "EDITOR is not set; defaulting to vi" >&2
  EDITOR=vi
fi
picoclaw mcp edit

When it happens

Trigger: Fresh container/CI shell where EDITOR was never exported; running mcp edit from cron, a daemon, or another process with a scrubbed environment.

Common situations: Minimal Docker images and CI runners; root shells; users who normally use a GUI editor and never configured EDITOR.

Related errors

• failed to parse $EDITOR: %w
• failed to confirm overwrite: %w
• aborted: MCP server %q already exists
• missing value for %s
• usage: picoclaw mcp add [flags] <name> <command-or-url> [arg

AI-assisted analysis of sipeed/picoclaw@49183d7e8d (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bc7794bf39f1f4af. Report an issue: GitHub.