vercel/ai · error · Error

google.interactions: cannot poll a background interaction wi

Error message

google.interactions: cannot poll a background interaction without an id. The POST response did not include an interaction id.

What it means

pollGoogleInteractionUntilTerminal requires a non-empty interactionId to issue GET polls. If called with a null/empty id (typically because the initial POST response lacked one), it throws immediately with an explanatory message.

Source

Thrown at packages/google/src/interactions/poll-google-interactions.ts:68

  interactionId,
  headers,
  fetch,
  abortSignal,
  initialDelayMs = DEFAULT_INITIAL_DELAY_MS,
  maxDelayMs = DEFAULT_MAX_DELAY_MS,
  timeoutMs = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_MS,
}: {
  baseURL: string;
  interactionId: string | null | undefined;
  headers: Record<string, string | undefined>;
  fetch?: FetchFunction;
  abortSignal?: AbortSignal;
  initialDelayMs?: number;
  maxDelayMs?: number;
  timeoutMs?: number;
}): Promise<PollGoogleInteractionResult> {
  if (interactionId == null || interactionId.length === 0) {
    throw new Error(
      'google.interactions: cannot poll a background interaction without an id. ' +
        'The POST response did not include an interaction id.',
    );
  }

  const startedAt = Date.now();
  let nextDelayMs = initialDelayMs;
  const url = `${baseURL}/interactions/${encodeURIComponent(interactionId)}`;

  /*
   * When the caller aborts, fire a best-effort `POST /interactions/{id}/cancel`
   * so the run stops billing on Google's side. Wrap every exit path that's
   * triggered by an abort -- the explicit `abortSignal.aborted` check, the
   * AbortError thrown by `delay()`, and any AbortError thrown by `getFromApi`.
   */
  const cancelOnServer = () =>
    cancelGoogleInteraction({ baseURL, interactionId, headers, fetch });

View on GitHub (pinned to 69428b1f8b)

Solutions

Check the POST response for an interaction id before polling and handle the error case explicitly
Inspect why the POST omitted the id (API error payload, auth/quota issue, wrong endpoint)
Update @ai-sdk/google for current interactions API schema
Retry the initial POST request

Example fix

// before
pollGoogleInteractionUntilTerminal({ model, interactionId: postResponse.id });
// after
if (postResponse.id == null || postResponse.id.length === 0) {
  throw new Error('Background POST returned no interaction id: ' + JSON.stringify(postResponse));
}
pollGoogleInteractionUntilTerminal({ model, interactionId: postResponse.id });

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

if (interactionId == null || interactionId.length === 0) {
  throw new Error('Cannot poll: background POST returned no interaction id.');
}

Type guard

function isPollableId(id: unknown): id is string {
  return typeof id === 'string' && id.length > 0;
}

Try / catch

try {
  const result = await pollGoogleInteractionUntilTerminal({ model, interactionId });
} catch (error) {
  if (error instanceof Error && error.message.includes('cannot poll a background interaction without an id')) {
    // re-run the POST or surface the upstream failure
  }
  throw error;
}

Prevention

Always validate the POST response id before wiring it into polling
Capture the POST response body when id is missing to diagnose the upstream cause
Centralize background interactions handling in one helper that enforces id checks

When it happens

Trigger: Invoking pollGoogleInteractionUntilTerminal with interactionId null or '' — usually the result of a background POST response that did not include an interaction id (see error 358), passed straight through to polling.

Common situations: Custom polling code wiring the POST response id into the poll helper without checking it; upstream API error responses missing id.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of vercel/ai@69428b1f8b (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/92d35e82bee43cc9. Report an issue: GitHub.