siyuan-note/siyuan · error

--label is required

Error message

--label is required

What it means

`siyuan tag remove` requires the `--label` flag identifying which tag to remove. The command reads the flag with cmd.Flags().GetString and returns this error when it is empty or absent, since removing without a label would be ambiguous.

Solutions

1. Pass the tag: `siyuan tag remove --label mytag`
2. Check that the shell variable supplying the label is non-empty before invoking
3. Run `siyuan tag list` (or equivalent) to confirm the exact label text

Example fix

// before
siyuan tag remove
// after
siyuan tag remove --label mytag

if [ -z "$LABEL" ]; then echo "--label is required" >&2; exit 2; fi
siyuan tag remove --label "$LABEL"

if ! siyuan tag remove --label "$LABEL"; then
  echo "tag remove failed; check the label exists" >&2
fi

When it happens

Trigger: Running `siyuan tag remove` without `--label`, or with `--label ""` (empty value).

Common situations: Copy-pasting an example command without filling in the label; a shell variable holding the tag name being empty due to a failed lookup or unset environment variable.

Understand the failure class

Background: "--flag is required" and "must specify" CLI errors: how missing-required-flag validation works and how to fix it — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• --new is required
• --old is required
• --av and --ids are required
• --av, --key, --item and --value are required
• --block is required for non-detached rows

AI-assisted analysis of siyuan-note/siyuan@9f775e8a12 (2026-09-19). Data as JSON: /api/errors/779176418f495268. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at kernel/cli/cmd/tag.go:59

		switch outputFormat {
		case "json":
			data, _ := json.MarshalIndent(tags, "", "  ")
			fmt.Println(string(data))
		default:
			printTagTable(tags)
		}
		return nil
	},
}

var tagRemoveCmd = &cobra.Command{
	Use:   "remove --label <label>",
	Short: "Remove a tag",
	RunE: func(cmd *cobra.Command, args []string) error {
		label, _ := cmd.Flags().GetString("label")
		if label == "" {
			return fmt.Errorf("--label is required")
		}

		if dryRun {
			fmt.Printf("[dry-run] Would remove tag \"%s\"\n", label)
			return nil
		}

		if err := model.RemoveTag(label); err != nil {
			return err
		}
		model.AppendPushReloadTagEntry()
		return nil
	},
}

var tagRenameCmd = &cobra.Command{
	Use:   "rename --old <old-label> --new <new-label>",
	Short: "Rename a tag",

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