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Troubleshooting

docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md

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Troubleshooting

Community-reported workarounds for current Claude Code bugs that can affect ECC users.

These are upstream Claude Code behaviors, not ECC bugs. The entries below summarize the production-tested workarounds collected in issue #644 on Claude Code v2.1.79 (macOS, heavy hook usage, MCP connectors enabled). Treat them as pragmatic stopgaps until upstream fixes land.

Community Workarounds For Open Claude Code Bugs

False "Hook Error" labels on otherwise successful hooks

Symptoms: Hook runs successfully, but Claude Code still shows Hook Error in the transcript.

What helps:

  • Consume stdin at the start of the hook (input=$(cat) in shell hooks) so the parent process does not see an unconsumed pipe.
  • For simple allow/block hooks, send human-readable diagnostics to stderr and keep stdout quiet unless your hook implementation explicitly requires structured stdout.
  • Redirect noisy child-process stderr when it is not actionable.
  • Use the correct exit codes: 0 allows, 2 blocks, other non-zero exits are treated as errors.

Example:

bash
# Good: block with stderr message and exit 2
input=$(cat)
echo "[BLOCKED] Reason here" >&2
exit 2

Earlier-than-expected compaction with CLAUDE_AUTOCOMPACT_PCT_OVERRIDE

Symptoms: Lowering CLAUDE_AUTOCOMPACT_PCT_OVERRIDE causes compaction to happen sooner, not later.

What helps:

  • On some current Claude Code builds, lower values may reduce the compaction threshold instead of extending it.
  • If you want more working room, remove CLAUDE_AUTOCOMPACT_PCT_OVERRIDE and prefer manual /compact at logical task boundaries.
  • Use ECC's strategic-compact guidance instead of forcing a lower auto-compact threshold.

MCP connectors look connected but fail after compaction

Symptoms: Gmail or Google Drive MCP tools fail after compaction even though the connector still looks authenticated in the UI.

What helps:

  • Toggle the affected connector off and back on after compaction.
  • If your Claude Code build supports it, add a PostCompact reminder hook that warns you to re-check connector auth after compaction.
  • Treat this as an auth-state recovery step, not a permanent fix.

Hook edits do not hot-reload

Symptoms: Changes to settings.json hooks do not take effect until the session is restarted.

What helps:

  • Restart the Claude Code session after changing hooks.
  • Advanced users sometimes script a local /reload command around kill -HUP $PPID, but ECC does not ship that because it is shell-dependent and not universally reliable.

Repeated 529 Overloaded responses

Symptoms: Claude Code starts failing under high hook/tool/context pressure.

What helps:

  • Reduce tool-definition pressure with ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH=auto:5 if your setup supports it.
  • Lower MAX_THINKING_TOKENS for routine work.
  • Route subagent work to a cheaper model such as CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL=haiku if your setup exposes that knob.
  • Disable unused MCP servers per project.
  • Compact manually at natural breakpoints instead of waiting for auto-compaction.

ECC Dashboard Does Not Start

Symptoms: npm run dashboard or python3 ecc_dashboard.py fails, often with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'tkinter'.

What helps:

  • The GUI dashboard needs Tkinter, which many Python installs omit:
    • Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python3-tk
    • Fedora: sudo dnf install python3-tkinter
    • macOS (Homebrew): brew install python-tk
    • Windows: re-run the python.org installer and enable "tcl/tk and IDLE"
  • Or use the browser dashboard, which only needs Node: npm run dashboard:web, then open the printed localhost URL.
  • Both commands must be run from a full clone of the ECC repo (git clone https://github.com/affaan-m/ECC), not from inside the Claude Code plugin directory — plugin installs do not ship package.json scripts.

Anthropic Cyber Safeguards Block Security Audits Of Your Own Code

Symptoms: Running security reviews/audits (e.g. ecc:security-reviewer) fails with an API error citing the Usage Policy and "cyber-related safeguards", even though you are auditing your own codebase.

What helps:

  • This is an upstream Anthropic model-level safeguard, not GateGuard and not an ECC block. No ECC configuration can bypass it.
  • Apply to Anthropic's Cyber Verification Program — the error message includes a tokenized link for your account. Approved accounts get legitimate security workflows unblocked.
  • Until approved, structure prompts defensively: state up front that you own the code and the goal is remediation ("review this module I own for vulnerabilities and propose fixes"), keep scope to one module at a time, and avoid exploit-generation phrasing ("write a PoC", "craft a payload").
  • Prefer remediation-oriented skills (security-review, security-scan) over offensive framing, and run static tooling (semgrep, bandit, npm audit) yourself, then ask the model to interpret results.