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

Token cannot be empty

Error message

Token cannot be empty

What it means

In the quickstart `claude setup-token` inline flow, ZeroClaw prompts for the token the subcommand printed; input that is empty or only whitespace bails before anything is written to `providers.models.anthropic.<alias>.api_key`.

Source

Thrown at src/main.rs:7421

}

#[cfg(feature = "agent-runtime")]
async fn run_anthropic_setup_token_inline(alias: &str, config: &mut Config) -> Result<()> {
    let status = tokio::process::Command::new("claude")
        .arg("setup-token")
        .status()
        .await
        .context("failed to run `claude setup-token`; is the Claude CLI installed and on PATH?")?;
    if !status.success() {
        bail!("`claude setup-token` exited with status {status}");
    }

    let token = read_auth_input(&t(
        "cli-quickstart-auth-anthropic-token-prompt",
        "Paste the token from `claude setup-token`",
    ))?;
    if token.trim().is_empty() {
        bail!("Token cannot be empty");
    }

    let path = format!("providers.models.anthropic.{alias}.api_key");
    config.set_prop_persistent(&path, token.trim())?;
    Box::pin(config.save_dirty()).await?;
    println!(
        "{}",
        ta(
            "cli-quickstart-auth-anthropic-saved",
            &[("alias", alias)],
            "  Saved Claude setup token.",
        )
    );
    Ok(())
}

#[allow(clippy::too_many_lines)]
#[cfg(feature = "agent-runtime")]

View on GitHub (pinned to 88bb9c8533)

Solutions

1. Re-run the flow and paste the full token printed by `claude setup-token`
2. In scripts, skip the prompt entirely: `zeroclaw auth paste-token --model-provider anthropic --token <value>`
3. Leading/trailing spaces are trimmed, so paste the whole value — only fully blank input is rejected

Example fix

# before: empty input at the 'Paste the token' prompt → bail
# after
claude setup-token   # prints the token
zeroclaw auth paste-token --model-provider anthropic --token "$TOKEN"

read -r tok
[ -n "$(printf '%s' "$tok" | tr -d '[:space:]')" ] || { echo "empty token; aborting"; exit 1; }

When it happens

Trigger: Pressing Enter (or pasting only whitespace) at the 'Paste the token from `claude setup-token`' prompt in run_anthropic_setup_token_inline.

Common situations: Non-interactive contexts where stdin is empty or closed (CI, piped scripts) so read_auth_input returns nothing; users pressing Enter to try to skip; clipboard paste failing silently.

Related errors

• `claude setup-token` exited with status {status}
• tag '{}' contains a comma, which is used as the tag separato
• empty bearer token
• Invalid JWT structure: expected 3 dot-separated parts
• empty session token

AI-assisted analysis of zeroclaw-labs/zeroclaw@88bb9c8533 (2026-08-23). Data as JSON: /api/errors/47100080bd56eb36. Report an issue: GitHub.