Preserve picker request failure details through `picker.session` #431

New issue

Closed

opened 2026-04-26 23:33:01 +00:00 by barrettruth · 0 comments

barrettruth commented

2026-04-26 23:33:01 +00:00

Problem

forge.picker.session currently collapses request and decode failures to false, nil. That drops stderr/stdout and JSON decode context before picker-specific code can decide whether the fetch failed, the response failed to decode, or the result was simply empty.

This makes many picker failures degrade into generic messages like failed to fetch ..., and it blocks follow-up fixes that want to distinguish empty results from real transport/parse failures.

Proposed solution

Preserve structured failure details through request_json, decode_json, prefetch_json, and pick_json so picker callers can surface real request/decode errors without reimplementing command parsing.

Notes

root tracker: #170

## Problem `forge.picker.session` currently collapses request and decode failures to `false, nil`. That drops stderr/stdout and JSON decode context before picker-specific code can decide whether the fetch failed, the response failed to decode, or the result was simply empty. This makes many picker failures degrade into generic messages like `failed to fetch ...`, and it blocks follow-up fixes that want to distinguish empty results from real transport/parse failures. ## Proposed solution Preserve structured failure details through `request_json`, `decode_json`, `prefetch_json`, and `pick_json` so picker callers can surface real request/decode errors without reimplementing command parsing. ## Notes - root tracker: #170