Exit Codes

🔢 Understand CLI exit codes for scripting and automation.

ReasonKit uses standard exit codes to indicate success or failure, making it easy to integrate into scripts and CI/CD pipelines.

Exit Code Reference

Code	Name	Description
`0`	Success	Command completed successfully
`1`	General Error	Unspecified error occurred
`2`	Invalid Arguments	Invalid command-line arguments
`3`	Configuration Error	Invalid or missing configuration
`4`	Provider Error	LLM provider connection failed
`5`	Authentication Error	API key invalid or missing
`6`	Rate Limit	Provider rate limit exceeded
`7`	Timeout	Operation timed out
`8`	Parse Error	Failed to parse input or output
`10`	Validation Failed	Confidence threshold not met

Using Exit Codes in Scripts

Bash

#!/bin/bash

# Run analysis and check result
if rk-core think "Should we deploy?" --profile quick; then
    echo "Analysis complete"
else
    exit_code=$?
    case $exit_code in
        5)
            echo "Error: API key not set"
            ;;
        6)
            echo "Error: Rate limited, try again later"
            ;;
        7)
            echo "Error: Analysis timed out"
            ;;
        *)
            echo "Error: Analysis failed (code: $exit_code)"
            ;;
    esac
    exit $exit_code
fi

Check Specific Conditions

# Retry on rate limit
max_retries=3
retry_count=0

while [ $retry_count -lt $max_retries ]; do
    rk-core think "question" --profile balanced
    exit_code=$?

    if [ $exit_code -eq 0 ]; then
        break
    elif [ $exit_code -eq 6 ]; then
        echo "Rate limited, waiting 60s..."
        sleep 60
        retry_count=$((retry_count + 1))
    else
        exit $exit_code
    fi
done

CI/CD Integration

# GitHub Actions example
- name: Run ReasonKit Analysis
  run: |
    rk-core think "Is this PR ready to merge?" --profile balanced --output json > analysis.json
  continue-on-error: true

- name: Check Analysis Result
  run: |
    if [ $? -eq 10 ]; then
      echo "::warning::Analysis confidence below threshold"
    fi

Verbose Exit Information

Use --verbose to get more details on errors:

rk-core think "question" --profile balanced --verbose

On error, this outputs:

Error message
Error code
Suggested resolution
Debug information (if available)

Exit Code Categories

Success (0)

Analysis completed
Output written successfully
All validations passed

Client Errors (1-9)

User-fixable issues
Configuration problems
Invalid input

Provider Errors (10-19)

LLM provider issues
Network problems
External service failures

Validation Errors (20-29)

Confidence thresholds not met
Output validation failed
Quality gates not passed

Scripting Best Practices

Always check exit codes — Don’t assume success
Handle rate limits — Implement exponential backoff
Log failures — Capture stderr for debugging
Use timeouts — Set reasonable --timeout values
Fail fast — Exit early on critical errors

Scripting — Full scripting guide
Environment Variables — Configure via environment
Commands — Full command reference

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ReasonKit Documentation