Errors and exit codes

Without --json, CLI errors are written to standard error as human-readable text beginning with error:. With --json, errors contain schema_version and an error object with code, message, and exit_code.

Exit code	Meaning	Recovery
`0`	Success	Consume stdout.
`1`	Database, Cloud API, or operation failure, or an unhealthy `doctor` report	Read the reported action. For `doctor`, inspect the JSON report and confirm app and CLI compatibility.
`2`	Meeting, note, or other requested data not found	List meetings again and use a returned ID.
`3`	Database file not found	Open Anarlog once to create it, or provide the correct database path.
`4`	Export output already exists	Choose another path or explicitly pass `--force` to replace the file.

Invalid arguments use the invalid_arguments error code with Clap’s nonzero exit code. Cloud meeting commands preserve hosted error codes: unauthorized, insufficient_scope, subscription_required, cloud_api_not_enabled, invalid_request, internal_error, and rate_limited. Re-run anarlog auth login for an expired session, enable Cloud API & Connectors for cloud_api_not_enabled, and follow the retry delay for rate_limited. MCP maps missing meetings and proposals to invalid parameters. Validation and conflict failures—such as empty proposal content, multiple summaries without target_id, or declining a non-pending proposal—are reported as internal MCP errors. Database and serialization failures are also internal errors.

Do not recover by creating tables, running migrations, or issuing SQL. The desktop app owns schema initialization and migrations, and manual changes can corrupt the database.

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Errors and exit codes