Troubleshooting

Fix common issues when setting up or using Charlie

Below are solutions to the most frequent hurdles teams run into when getting Charlie up and running. If your question isn’t answered here, reach out on our shared Slack channel or email [e-mail].

Charlie doesn't appear in Linear assignee/search lists

Charlie must be invited to your Linear workspace and team before he can comment or be assigned issues.

Fix

1. In Linear, go to Settings → Teams → (choose your team) → Members.
2. Click Invite member → search for Charlie ([e-mail]).
3. Give him the Contributor role (minimum).
4. Re-run the action; Charlie should now show up in assignee menus.

Charlie isn't responding to GitHub pull-requests

• Verify the CharlieCreates GitHub App is Installed & Enabled for the repository.
• Review GitHub’s official guide on managing installed apps: GitHub’s guide to reviewing and modifying installed apps

@CharlieHelps can't be mentioned in the pull request

• Make sure CharlieHelps has been invited to the repo (or is a member of the organization).
  • “Read” permissions are all the helper account needs.
  • If the invite hasn’t been accepted in 15 minutes, reach out to support. This is typically caused by organizations having strict secrurity policies around invites.

Charlie says he commits, but no commits appear

Charlie reports “Committed changes to branch xyz” in the PR timeline, yet no new commits show up on GitHub. The most common culprit is a local pre-commit hook that fails after the commit is created.

• a script relying on Bash-specific features while being invoked with plain sh, or
• a Windows-style line ending in the shebang line (e.g. #!/bin/sh saved with CRLF).

When the hook exits non-zero Git aborts the commit, so nothing is pushed.

Fix

• Ensure every script is POSIX compliant.
• Ask Charlie to scan the repository for non-POSIX compliant scripts or script templates and open a PR to update them to POSIX compliance.

How to stop Charlie (for now you can't)

There is no stop button (yet)—once a Charlie run starts it will keep running until it either completes or errors out.

If you need to get back to a clean slate

• Wait until Charlie finishes.
• Then reset, revert, or manually edit the commits he pushed.
• Ask Charlie—leave a comment on the pull request requesting that he reset, revert, or edit the commits for you.

Alternative workaround

• Create a new branch from the current HEAD and continue your work there while Charlie completes its run on the original branch.

Heads-up on force pushes

Charlie pushes with git push --force-with-lease. If you manually force-push over his work before the run ends, Charlie’s next push will overwrite your changes.