fix: clarify scope error while creating issues for projects by elijahthis · Pull Request #12596 · cli/cli

elijahthis · 2026-02-01T22:34:42Z

Summary

Enhanced GraphQL error handling to provide more user-friendly and actionable messages when a token lacks the necessary permissions. Instead of a verbose technical trace, users now receive a concise list of missing scopes and a direct command to resolve the issue via gh auth refresh.

Changes

Modified handleResponse to intercept GraphQL errors and check for INSUFFICIENT_SCOPES types.
Implemented GenerateScopeErrorForGQL to extract specific required scopes from the API response message.
Added requiredScopesFromServerMessage using regex to parse scope requirements (e.g., project, repo) from the server's text.

Note

I basically replicated the logic being used for queries (handleError found in pkg/cmd/project/shared/queries/queries.go)

Example

Before (Raw GraphQL Trace):

GraphQL: Your token has not been granted the required scopes to execute this query. The 'addProjectV2ItemById' field requires one of the following scopes: ['project'], but your token has only been granted the: ['gist', 'read:org', 'read:project', 'repo', 'workflow'] scopes. Please modify your token's scopes at: https://github.com/settings/tokens.

Now (Clean CLI Error):

error: your authentication token is missing required scopes [project]
To request it, run:  gh auth refresh -s project

Test plan

Added test cases for newly-created functions
All existing tests pass

Fixes #12585

…ssage

BagToad · 2026-02-03T20:40:38Z

Hey @elijahthis, thank you for the PR. It looks like there are some issues with the tests. Could you have a look at those and @ mention me when it's ready for review? 🙏

elijahthis · 2026-02-03T22:47:26Z

Hey @elijahthis, thank you for the PR. It looks like there are some issues with the tests. Could you have a look at those and @ mention me when it's ready for review? 🙏

On it!

elijahthis · 2026-02-03T23:14:35Z

Hii @BagToad seems GitHub Actions was down when I pushed the last time. Just pushed an empty commit and checks all pass.

Ready for review !

elijahthis · 2026-02-12T23:41:04Z

Hi @BagToad
Any update on this?

gcomneno · 2026-02-28T09:04:14Z

Tested PR #12596 locally on Ubuntu 24.04 (linux/amd64) with Go 1.25.6.

Commands run:
gh pr checkout -R cli/cli 12596
go test ./...

Result:
All packages passed.

I also grepped the implementation: the missing-scope detection appears to rely on parsing the GraphQL error message text via requiredScopesFromServerMessage(...) (e.g. in api/client.go and pkg/cmd/project/shared/queries/queries.go), rather than deriving required scopes from a structured field/header.

This seems fine as a pragmatic fix, but it is potentially brittle if GitHub changes the wording. To reduce risk, it may be worth adding/keeping a regression test that uses the exact message shown in #12585 (including the addProjectV2ItemById case) to lock the behavior.

BagToad

@elijahthis, apologies for the delay. The team has been busy.

Tested this locally and it works correctly for the exact error from #12585, multi-scope scenarios, and non-scope errors. Approving as-is. I've opened #12823 to track deduplicating the scope error handling between api/client.go and queries.go - I do think we should do this at some point or at least document why it's not possible or practical.

@elijahthis, if you want to take a stab at that cleanup I've opened that issue up for contributing.

elijahthis · 2026-03-02T18:18:58Z

Thanks for the heads-up @BagToad ! Happy to try my hands at #12823 .

camjac251 · 2026-03-12T05:33:15Z

Hey @elijahthis, this PR appears to have introduced a regression that is now tracked in #12904.

The issue: GenerateScopeErrorForGQL() in api/client.go:184-186 rewrites INSUFFICIENT_SCOPES GraphQL errors inside handleResponse() before callers see the original error. This breaks ProjectsV2IgnorableError() (api/queries_projects_v2.go:328-339), which checks for the original API substring:

"field requires one of the following scopes: ['read:project']"

After rewriting, the error says:

"your authentication token is missing required scopes [read:project]"

The ignorable-error check no longer matches, so an optional projectItems query failure becomes fatal, breaking gh pr view, gh pr edit, etc. for any token without read:project (which was never required before).

Call chain: gh pr view/edit -> finder.Find() -> ProjectsV2ItemsForPullRequest() -> client.Query() -> handleResponse() rewrites error -> ProjectsV2IgnorableError() fails to match -> fatal error.

#12845 (cc @yuvrajangadsingh) further refactored this path but inherited the same issue.

Suggested fix: The simplest correct fix would be to move GenerateScopeErrorForGQL out of handleResponse() and into the specific callers that need fatal scope errors (e.g. gh issue create --project). The original behavior was correct: scope errors were non-fatal by default, and ProjectsV2IgnorableError could recognize and suppress them. Making all scope errors fatal at the lowest level, then expecting callers to un-fatalize them via brittle string matching, inverts that contract.

Alternatively, a typed ScopeError struct that ProjectsV2IgnorableError can check with errors.As would also work and be more future-proof.

yuvrajangadsingh · 2026-03-12T10:36:15Z

@camjac251 good catch, yeah #12845 inherited this. opened #12913 to fix it, just removes the GenerateScopeErrorForGQL call from handleResponse so the original GraphQLError flows through to ProjectsV2IgnorableError. project commands still handle scope errors through their own handleError.

williammartin · 2026-03-12T12:06:06Z

Hey @elijahthis, I've reverted this PR in #12915 because it unfortunately resulted in a pretty bad bug. Don't worry about it though, it was the result some nasty fragile code far away in the codebase that you never could have predicated, and was even hard to catch for us in review. I've reopened the original issue.

When a GraphQL query fails with INSUFFICIENT_SCOPES, the GitHub API error message tells users to visit token settings, which is unhelpful for OAuth users. This adds a scopes suggestion to GraphQLError (matching the pattern already used by HTTPError) that prints "gh auth refresh -s <scope>" after the error. Unlike the reverted PR cli#12596, this does NOT rewrite the original error message. The suggestion is stored separately on GraphQLError and printed by the top-level error handler. This preserves the original error text so ProjectsV2IgnorableError can still match against it, avoiding the regression that caused the revert.

elijahthis added 2 commits February 1, 2026 23:12

fix: clarify scope error while creating issues for projects

6f73903

test: TestGenerateScopeErrorForGQL and TestRequiredScopesFromServerMe…

71564fd

…ssage

elijahthis requested a review from a team as a code owner February 1, 2026 22:34

elijahthis requested a review from babakks February 1, 2026 22:34

elijahthis temporarily deployed to cli-automation February 1, 2026 22:34 — with GitHub Actions Inactive

cliAutomation added the external pull request originating outside of the CLI core team label Feb 1, 2026

BagToad mentioned this pull request Feb 3, 2026

fix(project): suggest 'project' scope instead of 'read:project' #12601

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BagToad self-requested a review February 4, 2026 17:15

This was referenced Mar 2, 2026

Add regression test for required scopes parsing #12803

Closed

Deduplicate scope error handling between api/client.go and project queries #12823

Closed

BagToad approved these changes Mar 2, 2026

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BagToad merged commit e725e38 into cli:trunk Mar 2, 2026
11 checks passed

This was referenced Mar 12, 2026

Spurious missing read:project scope warnings #12904

Closed

fix: preserve GraphQL error type for scope errors in handleResponse #12913

Closed

williammartin mentioned this pull request Mar 12, 2026

Revert "fix: clarify scope error while creating issues for projects" #12915

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raajheshkannaa mentioned this pull request Mar 14, 2026

fix: suggest gh auth refresh for GraphQL scope errors #12938

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fix: clarify scope error while creating issues for projects#12596

fix: clarify scope error while creating issues for projects#12596
BagToad merged 3 commits intocli:trunkfrom
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Summary

Changes

Note

Example

Before (Raw GraphQL Trace):

Now (Clean CLI Error):

Test plan

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