zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw · error · anyhow::Error

DALL-E failed ({status}): {body_text}

Error message

DALL-E failed ({status}): {body_text}

What it means

try_dalle posts to OpenAI's image generation endpoint and bails on any non-2xx status with the body embedded. The OpenAI key was already found in .env, so this error reflects the API response: invalid credentials, billing/quota limits, parameter rejection, or content policy.

Source

Thrown at crates/zeroclaw-tools/src/linkedin_client.rs:1090

            "prompt": prompt,
            "n": 1,
            "size": self.config.dalle.size,
            "response_format": "b64_json"
        });

        let resp = client
            .post(url)
            .header("Authorization", format!("Bearer {api_key}"))
            .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
            .json(&body)
            .send()
            .await
            .context("DALL-E request failed")?;

        let status = resp.status();
        if !status.is_success() {
            let body_text = resp.text().await.unwrap_or_default();
            anyhow::bail!("DALL-E failed ({status}): {body_text}");
        }

        let json: serde_json::Value = resp.json().await?;
        let b64 = json
            .pointer("/data/0/b64_json")
            .and_then(|v| v.as_str())
            .ok_or_else(|| {
                ::zeroclaw_log::record!(
                    ERROR,
                    ::zeroclaw_log::Event::new(module_path!(), ::zeroclaw_log::Action::Fail)
                        .with_outcome(::zeroclaw_log::EventOutcome::Failure)
                        .with_attrs(::serde_json::json!({"image_provider": "dalle"})),
                    "linkedin_client: DALL-E response missing image data"
                );
                anyhow::Error::msg("No image data in DALL-E response")
            })?;

        let bytes = base64_decode(b64)?;

View on GitHub (pinned to 88bb9c8533)

Solutions

1. Read the embedded body_text; OpenAI's message distinguishes auth, billing, invalid_request_error, and content policy
2. Update the key in the env var named by the dalle api_key_env config if 401
3. Check org billing and rate limits on 429, then back off
4. Fix the size/model parameters per the current OpenAI images API, and configure a second provider for fallthrough

Per-provider failure consumed by generate(); on terminal failure, read the WARN log entry carrying the DALL-E status/body: 401 means fix the key, 429 means billing/quota, content_policy means rephrase.

When it happens

Trigger: 401 for an invalid or revoked OPENAI_API_KEY; 429 when the org hits rate limits or has no billing; 400 for an invalid size/quality/model combination or malformed prompt; 400 with content_policy_violation for disallowed prompts.

Common situations: Key rotated in the OpenAI dashboard but not in workspace .env; trial credits exhausted; requesting dall-e-2 sizes on a dall-e-3 config (or vice versa); prompts that mention public figures.

Related errors

• Embedding API error {status}: {text}
• Stability AI failed ({status}): {body_text}
• Imagen failed ({status}): {body_text}
• Flux failed ({status}): {body_text}
• OpenAI TTS API error ({}): {}

AI-assisted analysis of zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw@88bb9c8533 (2026-08-23). Data as JSON: /api/errors/800d0011dadc30ea. Report an issue: GitHub.