breeze: `gh auth status --json hosts` is an invalid flag, blocks daemon start

[yuezengwu]

Summary

first-tree breeze start (and breeze doctor / status) fails during GitHub identity resolution because it calls gh auth status --json hosts, but gh auth status does not support a --json flag on any current gh release.

As a result, breeze start is unusable with a correctly-authenticated gh CLI.

Environment

• first-tree 0.2.10 (npm latest) — also reproduces on 0.2.9
• breeze 0.3.0 (bundled)
• gh 2.79.0 (2025-09-08)
• macOS (Darwin 25.2.0), zsh
• gh auth status output: logged in as yuezengwu via keyring, ssh protocol, scopes admin:public_key, gist, read:org, repo

Reproduction

gh auth status     # logged in OK
npx -p first-tree first-tree breeze start \
  --allow-repo "agent-team-foundation/first-tree"

Output:

breeze: start failed: gh auth status failed; run `gh auth login --hostname github.com` first
(gh resolve gh identity failed (exit 1): unknown flag: --json)

breeze doctor shows the same underlying failure:

login: unknown
git protocol: unknown
scopes: unknown
required auth scope: identity resolution failed: gh auth status failed; run `gh auth login --hostname github.com` first (gh resolve gh identity failed (exit 1): unknown flag: --json)

Direct check confirms the flag is not valid:

$ gh auth status --json hosts
unknown flag: --json

gh auth status --help only lists --active, --hostname, --show-token. There is no --json variant.

Source Pointer

The offending call path is in the bundled runner-skeleton:

• dist/runner-skeleton-*.js — comments at lines 22, 32, 52, 75, and the error wrap at line ~92 all reference gh auth status --json hosts.

Suggested Fix

Replace the gh auth status --json hosts call with a portable identity lookup, e.g.:

• gh api user --jq '{login, id}' for the active account, and
• parse ~/.config/gh/hosts.yml (or shell out to gh auth status text output) for git_protocol and scopes.

Either approach works on all supported gh versions and avoids depending on a flag that does not exist.

Impact

Blocks breeze start, breeze run, and breeze run-once for every user on gh CLI — i.e. all currently supported configurations. breeze poll / watch that do not hit this code path still work.

[yuezengwu]

Update — root cause is a gh version requirement, not an invalid flag

Verified that gh auth status --json hosts is supported, starting in gh 2.91.0 (released 2026-04-22):

$ gh --version
gh version 2.91.0 (2026-04-22)
$ gh auth status --json hosts
{"hosts":{"github.com":[{"state":"success","active":true,"login":"yuezengwu",...}]}}

On gh 2.79.0 (2025-09-08), the same call returns unknown flag: --json. That's the version Homebrew still ships on latest as of today, so any user on stock brew install gh hits this.

So this isn't a code bug — breeze depends on a fairly new gh feature. The fix options:

1. Document the minimum gh version in the breeze install/doctor output and README.
2. Have breeze doctor detect gh version and emit a clear "upgrade gh to ≥ 2.91.0" message instead of the current "run gh auth login" message (which is misleading — users are already logged in).
3. Optional fallback for older gh: parse ~/.config/gh/hosts.yml directly, so breeze keeps working on Homebrew's lagging formula.

Option 2 alone would have saved debugging time here. Happy to PR the version check in runner-skeleton if useful.

Workaround for users on Homebrew

Homebrew's gh formula is currently stuck at 2.79.0. Until it bumps, install 2.91.0 manually:

curl -sLO https://github.com/cli/cli/releases/download/v2.91.0/gh_2.91.0_macOS_arm64.zip
unzip -o gh_2.91.0_macOS_arm64.zip
cp gh_2.91.0_macOS_arm64/bin/gh /opt/homebrew/Cellar/gh/2.79.0/bin/gh

(Replace with the appropriate arch tarball for Intel / Linux.) After this, breeze start succeeds.

[bingran-you]

Opened PR #309 to fix this.

The change replaces the daemon identity resolver's gh auth status --json hosts dependency with plain gh auth status --active --hostname <host> parsing, normalizes both quoted and unquoted scope output, and adds a regression test that asserts we no longer pass --json.

Verified with:

• pnpm exec vitest run tests/breeze/breeze-daemon-identity.test.ts
• pnpm typecheck
• pnpm build
• isolated built-CLI smoke: BREEZE_DIR=$(mktemp -d) then node dist/cli.js breeze doctor --allow-repo agent-team-foundation/first-tree

This reply was drafted by breeze, an autonomous agent running on behalf of the account owner.