Troubleshooting

Every refusal says what failed and what to do next, and writes nothing. These are the messages, as the built binary prints them.

lore: command not found

The shell cannot find lore on your PATH. Install it globally with npm install -g create-lorekeeper (see Installation), then check with lore --version. If npm's global bin directory is not on your PATH, npm prefix -g prints where it is; add its bin folder. Without a global install, npx create-lorekeeper runs the same program with the same arguments.

Capture says the directory is not a brain

$ lore capture notes "a thought"
lore capture: ~/notes is not a Lorekeeper brain — it has no .lorekeeper/manifest.json. Nothing was written.
  lore init notes
[exit 1]

Capture writes only into a brain, because it records what it writes in the manifest. Run lore init on that directory first. Nothing of yours there is rewritten.

Search says there is nothing to search

$ lore search breain "retry budget"
lore search: ~/breain is not a directory, so there is nothing to search.
  lore search <brain> "<wording>" ["<wording>" ...] [--limit <n>] [--json]
[exit 1]

The path does not exist, or is a file. Check the spelling. Search needs a directory; it does not need lore init to have run there.

Init says the target is not a directory

$ lore init notes.md
lore init: ~/notes.md is not a directory.
[exit 1]

Name a directory, or a path that does not exist yet. Init never replaces a file.

Capture refuses a URL

$ lore capture brain ftp://example.com/talk
lore capture: "ftp://example.com/talk" uses the ftp: scheme. A source URL must be http or https.
Capture a source as an http or https URL, or capture what you want to say about it as text.
[exit 1]

A source must be an http or https URL. To keep a note about something else, capture it as text.

Search refuses --limit

$ lore search brain "retry budget" --limit 0
lore search: --limit needs a whole number of at least 1, not "0".
  lore search <brain> "<wording>" ["<wording>" ...] [--limit <n>] [--json]
[exit 2]

Give --limit a whole number of at least 1, right after the flag.

Search finds nothing

$ lore search brain "zebra crossing"
No span shares a word with that query.
Try other wordings — that is what makes this kind of search work.
[exit 0]

This is not an error, and it is not proof the brain lacks the answer. No span shared a word with any wording. Ask again in the words the note would have used, and give several wordings in one call.

A command prints its usage line and exits 2

$ lore search brain
lore search: name the brain and what to search for.
  lore search <brain> "<wording>" ["<wording>" ...] [--limit <n>] [--json]
[exit 2]

Something was missing. Each wording goes in its own quotes after the brain: lore search ~/brain "first wording" "second wording".