stablyai/orca · error

Adhoc label has no usable characters: ${JSON.stringify(label

Error message

Adhoc label has no usable characters: ${JSON.stringify(label)}

What it means

Thrown by normalizeAdhocLabel when, after stripping refs/heads/ and origin/ prefixes, collapsing disallowed characters, trimming, truncating to 32 chars, and trimming trailing separators, the result is empty. The label goes verbatim into a release title and a $GITHUB_OUTPUT line, so the function replaces rather than rejects — but if every input character was disallowed (whitespace, emoji, punctuation only) there is nothing left to keep.

Source

Thrown at config/scripts/adhoc-build-version.mjs:68

 *
 * The input is free text from whoever ran the workflow, so it cannot be trusted
 * to stay inside the title's shape: a stray `•` would forge a field separator,
 * and a newline would break the `$GITHUB_OUTPUT` line the workflow parses. Both
 * collapse to `-` here, which is why this replaces rather than rejects.
 */
export function normalizeAdhocLabel(label) {
  const cleaned = String(label ?? '')
    // `refs/heads/x` and `origin/x` are what a ref input tends to arrive as; the
    // prefix is noise in a title where every row is already a branch build.
    .replace(/^(?:refs\/heads\/|origin\/)/, '')
    .replace(/[^\p{L}\p{N}._/-]+/gu, ' ')
    .trim()
    .replace(/\s+/g, '-')
    .slice(0, ADHOC_LABEL_MAX_LENGTH)
    // Truncation can land mid-separator, leaving a title ending in `-` or `/`.
    .replace(/[-._/]+$/, '')
  if (!cleaned) {
    throw new Error(`Adhoc label has no usable characters: ${JSON.stringify(label)}`)
  }
  return cleaned
}

/**
 * `1.4.163 • wasm-terminal • Aug 1, 2:25PM • abc1234` — the human-facing release
 * title, shown verbatim in both the GitHub releases list and the build picker.
 *
 * Why the label sits where hourly puts its build number: several adhoc builds
 * from different branches coexist in the channel, so the picker needs the branch
 * to tell them apart. A counter would say nothing about which one to pick.
 */
export function formatAdhocReleaseName(version, label, commit, date) {
  return [
    version.split('-')[0],
    normalizeAdhocLabel(label),
    formatReleaseTitleTimestamp(date),
    commit.slice(0, 7)

View on GitHub (pinned to 1136503c6a)

Solutions

1. Set ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL to a branch or feature name containing at least one letter or digit before dispatching the workflow.
2. If the label should be optional, change the workflow to fall back to the branch/ref name when ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL is empty rather than passing it through verbatim.
3. Pre-validate the label in the workflow dispatch input with a pattern that requires at least one \p{L}|\p{N} character.
4. Surface a friendlier error message that names the env var and the required character class.

Example fix

// before
// ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL='' node config/scripts/adhoc-build-version.mjs
// -> 'Adhoc label has no usable characters: ""'

// after
// ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL='wasm-terminal' node config/scripts/adhoc-build-version.mjs

function hasUsableLabel(label) {
  const cleaned = String(label ?? '')
    .replace(/^(?:refs\/heads\/|origin\/)/, '')
    .replace(/[^\p{L}\p{N}._/-]+/gu, ' ')
    .trim()
    .replace(/\s+/g, '-')
    .slice(0, 32)
    .replace(/[-._/]+$/, '')
  return cleaned.length > 0
}
// if (!hasUsableLabel(process.env.ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL)) throw new Error('ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL needs at least one letter or digit')

When it happens

Trigger: ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL env var was unset (empty string default), all punctuation/whitespace, or a single emoji; the workflow dispatched with the label field left blank.

Common situations: User triggered an adhoc build without filling the label input; label was set to a string of special characters (e.g. '!!! ???'); a script defaulted ORCA_ADHOC_LABEL to an empty string instead of a branch name.

Related errors

• Package version is not valid semver: ${baseVersion}
• Adhoc build timestamp is invalid.
• Package version is not valid semver: ${baseVersion}
• Hourly build timestamp is invalid.
• Hourly build number must be a positive integer: ${buildNumbe

AI-assisted analysis of stablyai/orca@1136503c6a (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/01de910fc6df10fc. Report an issue: GitHub.