What causes "stale mobile relay pairing journal" in stablyai/orca?

Load the current journal via loadMobileRelayPairingJournal before issuing updates and use its journalId.

stale mobile relay pairing journal

Error message

stale mobile relay pairing journal

What it means

Thrown in updateMobileRelayPairingJournal when there is no stored metadata (current === null) or its journalId does not equal the journalId argument. The update targets a journal that no longer exists or was superseded.

Source

Thrown at mobile/src/transport/mobile-relay-pairing-journal-store.ts:99

  return load
}

async function removeIncompleteJournal(): Promise<void> {
  // Why: metadata is the discoverable cleanup pointer; remove it before the
  // native secret so a second crash can only leave a self-cleaning orphan.
  await AsyncStorage.removeItem(JOURNAL_STORAGE_KEY)
  await deletePairingKeychainItem(JOURNAL_SECRET_KEY).catch(() => {})
}

export async function updateMobileRelayPairingJournal(
  journalId: string,
  update: (metadata: MobileRelayPairingJournalMetadata) => MobileRelayPairingJournalMetadata
): Promise<void> {
  const mutation = journalMutation.then(async () => {
    const raw = await AsyncStorage.getItem(JOURNAL_STORAGE_KEY)
    const current = raw ? parseMetadata(raw) : null
    if (!current || current.journalId !== journalId) {
      throw new Error('stale mobile relay pairing journal')
    }
    const next = MobileRelayPairingJournalMetadataSchema.parse(update(current))
    if (next.journalId !== journalId) {
      throw new Error('mobile relay pairing journal identity mismatch')
    }
    await AsyncStorage.setItem(JOURNAL_STORAGE_KEY, JSON.stringify(next))
  })
  journalMutation = mutation.catch(() => {})
  return mutation
}

export async function clearMobileRelayPairingJournal(journalId: string): Promise<void> {
  const mutation = journalMutation.then(async () => {
    const raw = await AsyncStorage.getItem(JOURNAL_STORAGE_KEY)
    const current = raw ? parseMetadata(raw) : null
    if (current && current.journalId !== journalId) {
      throw new Error('stale mobile relay pairing journal')
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to 1136503c6a)

Solutions

Load the current journal via loadMobileRelayPairingJournal before issuing updates and use its journalId.
Treat this error as a no-op/cancel for the stale callback rather than a hard failure.
Ensure update callers always hold a journalId obtained from a fresh load, not a cached one.

Example fix

// before
await updateMobileRelayPairingJournal(staleJournalId, setWinner)
// after
const current = await loadMobileRelayPairingJournal()
if (!current || current.metadata.journalId !== staleJournalId) return // stale, ignore
await updateMobileRelayPairingJournal(current.metadata.journalId, setWinner)

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

import { loadMobileRelayPairingJournal } from './mobile-relay-pairing-journal-store'
async function currentJournalIdOrNull(): Promise<string | null> {
  const current = await loadMobileRelayPairingJournal()
  return current ? current.metadata.journalId : null
}
// only call updateMobileRelayPairingJournal when this returns the id you hold

Try / catch

try {
  await updateMobileRelayPairingJournal(journalId, setWinner)
} catch (error) {
  if (error instanceof Error && error.message === 'stale mobile relay pairing journal') {
    // stale callback: the journal moved on; treat as no-op
  }
}

Prevention

Always load the current journal immediately before issuing an update and use the returned journalId.
Design late RPC callbacks to tolerate a missing/stale journal as a cancel, not an error.
Never cache journalId across async gaps that may include a user restart.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling updateMobileRelayPairingJournal after the journal was cleared, or with a journalId from a previous attempt that has since been replaced.

Common situations: A late install/resume-confirm RPC callback arriving after the user restarted pairing and the journal was replaced; recovery cleanup removed the journal between dispatch and callback.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of stablyai/orca@1136503c6a (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/69d1d273d027eb43. Report an issue: GitHub.