Imported from jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace (skills/.curated/clickup-common-errors/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace --skill clickup-common-errors. Copyright stays with the author (MIT).

ClickUp Common Errors

Overview

Reference for ClickUp API v2 errors. All errors return JSON with err (message) and optionally ECODE (error code).

Error Response Format

{
  "err": "Space not found",
  "ECODE": "ITEM_015"
}

HTTP Status Errors

400 Bad Request

401 Unauthorized — OAuth Errors

# Diagnose: verify your token works
curl -s -w "\nHTTP %{http_code}\n" \
  https://api.clickup.com/api/v2/user \
  -H "Authorization: $CLICKUP_API_TOKEN"

403 Forbidden

404 Not Found

# Common causes: wrong ID, deleted resource, wrong hierarchy level
# Verify the resource exists:
curl -s https://api.clickup.com/api/v2/task/TASK_ID \
  -H "Authorization: $CLICKUP_API_TOKEN" | jq '.id, .name'

429 Rate Limited

Rate limits vary by plan (per token, per minute):

• Free/Unlimited/Business: 100 req/min
• Business Plus: 1,000 req/min
• Enterprise: 10,000 req/min

# Check rate limit headers on any response
curl -s -D - https://api.clickup.com/api/v2/user \
  -H "Authorization: $CLICKUP_API_TOKEN" 2>&1 | grep -i ratelimit

# Headers returned:
# X-RateLimit-Limit: 100
# X-RateLimit-Remaining: 95
# X-RateLimit-Reset: 1695000060  (Unix timestamp)

500/503 Server Errors

Check ClickUp Status Page first.

# Quick status check
curl -s https://status.clickup.com/api/v2/summary.json | \
  jq '.status.description'

Diagnostic Script

#!/bin/bash
echo "=== ClickUp API Diagnostics ==="

# 1. Auth check
echo -n "Auth: "
HTTP_CODE=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  https://api.clickup.com/api/v2/user \
  -H "Authorization: $CLICKUP_API_TOKEN")
[ "$HTTP_CODE" = "200" ] && echo "OK" || echo "FAILED ($HTTP_CODE)"

# 2. Rate limit check
echo -n "Rate limit remaining: "
curl -s -D - https://api.clickup.com/api/v2/user \
  -H "Authorization: $CLICKUP_API_TOKEN" 2>&1 | \
  grep "X-RateLimit-Remaining" | awk '{print $2}'

# 3. Workspace access
echo "Workspaces:"
curl -s https://api.clickup.com/api/v2/team \
  -H "Authorization: $CLICKUP_API_TOKEN" | jq -r '.teams[] | "  \(.id): \(.name)"'

Error Handler Pattern

async function handleClickUpError(response: Response): Promise<never> {
  const body = await response.json().catch(() => ({ err: 'Unknown' }));

  switch (response.status) {
    case 401:
      throw new Error(`Auth failed (${body.ECODE}): Re-check token or re-authorize`);
    case 429: {
      const resetAt = response.headers.get('X-RateLimit-Reset');
      const waitMs = resetAt ? (parseInt(resetAt) * 1000 - Date.now()) : 60000;
      throw new Error(`Rate limited. Retry after ${Math.ceil(waitMs / 1000)}s`);
    }
    case 404:
      throw new Error(`Resource not found: ${body.err}`);
    default:
      throw new Error(`ClickUp API ${response.status}: ${body.err}`);
  }
}

Prerequisites

• Authorized access to the affected environment and a scoped diagnostic identity
• Redacted request/correlation metadata and last certified integration state
• A known owner for workspace, token, task data, and production change approval
• Access to rate-limit and platform-status information

Instructions

Identify the target workspace/list and error class, collect only the minimum redacted response metadata, then apply the matching recovery path. Change one variable at a time and preserve the prior certified state; do not retry 401, 403, 429, or data-integrity errors with broader credentials or unbounded loops.

Error Handling

Output

Produce a diagnostic record with environment, affected resource ID, symptom, safe correlation data, containment action, retry/rollback decision, and escalation owner. Never include tokens, full task content, attachments, or unapproved member data in general logs or tickets.

Examples

On a 429, capture the reset header and defer the same idempotent job; do not submit a duplicate task. On a 401, halt the worker and verify the secret reference with its owner. If a mapping is wrong, compare the certified target state before retrying rather than overwriting tasks.

Resources

• ClickUp Common Errors
• ClickUp API Error Handling
• ClickUp Status Page

Next Steps

For comprehensive debugging, see clickup-debug-bundle.