What causes "Session view overrides could not be read" in stablyai/orca?

Retry the toggle — transient storage I/O often succeeds on the next attempt.

stablyai/orca · error · Error

Session view overrides could not be read

Error message

Session view overrides could not be read

What it means

Thrown by `updateSessionViewOverride` when the prerequisite read of existing overrides fails. `readSessionViewOverridesStorage` returns `loaded: false` only when `AsyncStorage.getItem` itself throws; the update then refuses to proceed because writing a single-tab map would overwrite the other tabs' valid saved overrides with an incomplete snapshot. The shared `overrideUpdateBarriers` chain serialises writes per host/worktree key.

Source

Thrown at mobile/src/storage/session-view-preferences.ts:142

  await overrideUpdateBarriers.get(key)
  return readSessionViewOverridesStorage(key)
}

/** Persists one user mutation without replacing sibling overrides from another mount. */
export async function updateSessionViewOverride(
  hostId: string,
  worktreeId: string,
  tabId: string,
  view: MobileSessionView
): Promise<void> {
  const key = sessionViewOverridesKey(hostId, worktreeId)
  const previous = overrideUpdateBarriers.get(key) ?? Promise.resolve()
  const update = previous.then(async () => {
    const current = await readSessionViewOverridesStorage(key)
    // Why: a transient read failure must not replace valid saved siblings with
    // a partial map containing only the latest tab.
    if (!current.loaded) {
      throw new Error('Session view overrides could not be read')
    }
    current.overrides.set(tabId, view)
    await AsyncStorage.setItem(key, JSON.stringify(Object.fromEntries(current.overrides)))
  })
  const barrier = update.catch(() => undefined)
  overrideUpdateBarriers.set(key, barrier)
  try {
    await update
  } finally {
    if (overrideUpdateBarriers.get(key) === barrier) {
      overrideUpdateBarriers.delete(key)
    }
  }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 1136503c6a)

Solutions

Retry the toggle — transient storage I/O often succeeds on the next attempt.
Free device storage / restart the app to clear a transient AsyncStorage fault.
If it persists, the storage backend may need the app's cache cleared (data itself is safe to lose for view preferences).
Verify no other code is holding/corrupting the `orca:nativeChatTabs:` key namespace.

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Try / catch

// updateSessionViewOverride already serialises via overrideUpdateBarriers and
// swallows the barrier rejection; callers should retry on transient I/O failure.
try {
  await updateSessionViewOverride(hostId, worktreeId, tabId, view)
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof Error && err.message === 'Session view overrides could not be read') {
    await wait(200)
    await updateSessionViewOverride(hostId, worktreeId, tabId, view)
  } else throw err
}

Prevention

Never overwrite the overrides map when the read failed — it would erase sibling tabs (the guard enforces this).
Retry transient AsyncStorage I/O rather than dropping sibling overrides.
Keep the overrideUpdateBarriers chain intact so concurrent mounts don't interleave reads/writes.

When it happens

Trigger: Toggling a tab's session view (terminal↔chat) where reading the current overrides map from AsyncStorage throws — native storage I/O error, disk full, keychain/storage backend unavailable on the OS.

Common situations: Disk pressure or filesystem error on the device; AsyncStorage backend corruption; an OS-level permission issue accessing the app's storage sandbox; a transient I/O fault during heavy memory pressure.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of stablyai/orca@1136503c6a (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ef0fd28c8053c643. Report an issue: GitHub.