Common Issues

“No API key found”

error: No API key found.
Set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or API_KEY environment variable.

Fix: Set your Anthropic API key:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-api03-...

yoyo checks ANTHROPIC_API_KEY first, then API_KEY. At least one must be set and non-empty.

No input on stdin.

This happens when you pipe empty input to yoyo:

echo "" | yoyo

Fix: Make sure your piped input contains actual content.

  error: [API error message]

This appears when the Anthropic API returns an error. Common causes:

Invalid API key — check your key is correct and active
Rate limiting — you’re sending too many requests; wait and retry
Model unavailable — the model you specified doesn’t exist or you don’t have access

Use /retry to re-send the last prompt after the issue is resolved.

    ⚠ Context is getting full. Consider /clear or /compact.

Your conversation is approaching the 200,000-token context limit.

Fix: Use /compact to compress the conversation, or /clear to start fresh.

yoyo auto-compacts at 80% capacity, but you can compact earlier if you prefer.

warning: Failed to load skills: [error]

The --skills directory couldn’t be read. yoyo continues without skills.

Fix: Check that the path exists and contains valid skill files.

  unknown command: /foo
  type /help for available commands

You typed a command yoyo doesn’t recognize.

Fix: Type /help to see available commands.

  error: not in a git repository

You used /diff or /undo outside a git repo.

Fix: Navigate to a directory that’s inside a git repository before starting yoyo.

If a tool execution is hanging, Ctrl+C will abort it.

  error saving: [error]
  error reading yoyo-session.json: [error]
  error parsing: [error]

Session save/load failed. Common causes: