Reword 404 "not found" error help - #77
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shwetamurali
marked this pull request as ready for review
July 10, 2026 17:54
brandonc
approved these changes
Jul 13, 2026
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Description
Reword the 404 "not found" error help so it no longer conflates "resource/path not found" with an authentication/authorization problem.
A customer reported their LLM-driven agent thrashing when driving
tfctl api. Reviewing the trace, the agent repeatedly hit 404s on paths that don't exist (e.g. no-code module sub-endpoints) and interpreted the error as an auth failure because the message led with "or you are unauthorized" and nudged towardtfctl auth status. That sent it down a token/credentials/curldebugging path instead of correcting the endpoint, costing many extra iterations.The 404 case (
tfe.ErrNotFound) is already cleanly separated from real 401s (tfe.ErrUnauthorized, which keeps its ownauth loginhelp), so this is purely a wording fix. The new message leads with the actual cause which is a wrong path/ID while still honestly noting that HCP/TFE can return 404 for resources the token can't see, without steering toward auth tooling.Example Output
Before:
After:
PR Checklist
npx changie newor install changie to prepare a new changelog entry for the next set of release notes.--json— Force machine readable output to stdout. Does not apply to stderr.--markdown— Force markdown output to stdout. Does not apply to stderr.--dry-run— Don't make any actual writes or other mutations. Describe what would have changed to stderr.--quiet— Don't render output to stdout.make gen/screenshotif the root command output changes.Autocompletefield to positional arguments and flags to assist shell autocomplete.PCI review checklist
I have documented a clear reason for, and description of, the change I am making.
If applicable, I've documented a plan to revert these changes if they require more than reverting the pull request.
If applicable, I've documented the impact of any changes to security controls.
Examples of changes to security controls include using new access control methods, adding or removing logging pipelines, etc.