Troubleshooting
The refusals and failures you are most likely to meet, and what each one means.
Redline tries to fail at the earliest honest moment and to say what would fix it. This is what the common messages mean.
“Claude Code is not connected in this project”
The launch was refused before it spent anything. Open Agents, connect that agent with your own key or subscription, and make sure its switch is on — only enabled agents are offered to the builder, and the absence of a connection is read as off rather than as “probably fine”.
“My Agent is offline — run redline dev in its project first”
One of your own agents can only run while its worker is connected, because nothing else can execute it. Start it again in that repository:
cd ~/code/my-agent && npx redline devThe Agents page shows that exact line, with the directory it last ran in already filled in, and a Copy start command button beside it.
If a schedule hit this, it recorded the reason on its row and waited for its next slot rather than retrying.
“The judge has no API key”
The run finished but could not be judged. The evaluator thinks with OpenRouter: either your Redline was started with a key, or you connect one in the project — on Agents, connect OpenCode with its OpenRouter key method.
An experiment with no rubric needs no evaluator at all.
A run errored on “Cloning …”
A clone is a required step: a run whose repository never arrived cannot mean anything, so it stops rather than continuing without it. Almost always one of two things — the URL is wrong, or the repository is private. Redline holds no git credentials, so private repositories cannot be cloned. Attach the code as an upload instead.
The agent never saw my file
Check three things, in order:
- Was the file actually ticked? On the builder it belongs to the Files row in the Configuration rail; on a task it is the file picker in the task dialog. The run’s Instructions panel lists what the task carried.
- Did the task refer to it by the name it lands under? An upload keeps its own name in the working directory; a repository becomes a directory named after it. The Files table spells out both.
- Is this one of your own agents? Then the file is on the run’s machine, not on
your computer — read it with
machine_run.
“That file is larger than the 100 MB limit”
The ceiling is about memory rather than disk — every byte is read, encoded and pushed into the container in one go, so the machine’s tens of gigabytes are not the constraint. Split the file, or ask whoever runs your Redline to raise the limit.
My agent connected, but redline dev says “no agents found”
The file in redline/ does not export a defineAgent object (or, in Python,
agents.py has no @agent-decorated function). Every file in that directory is
imported by the CLI, so it must export agent definitions and must not start a
server on import.
If registration is rejected instead, the id collides with a catalog agent’s —
pick another slug.
I attached an MCP server but my own agent never called it
Run npx redline doctor. It reports whether the tools are reaching the framework
you use without spending a run.
The SDK injects attached tools into generateText, streamText and Agent
(Vercel AI SDK), createReactAgent and createToolCallingAgent (LangChain /
LangGraph), and Agent(...) in Pydantic AI. If your agent builds its own loop,
ask for them explicitly:
const attached = await redlineTools(task);
// spread attached.tools into your agent, then await attached.close()Skills are not affected — they arrive as text in task.prompt.
I attached a CLI and my own agent cannot run it
That is deliberate. Installing a CLI on a catalog run happens inside a disposable container; doing it for your agent would install software on your computer, so Redline never does.
The run has a machine of its own — reach it with machine_run, where the CLI is
installed. If you really do want it locally, call installClis(task) yourself.
A run took twenty minutes and then errored
That is the per-attempt time limit; the machine is killed when it is reached. Either the task is too large for one attempt, or the agent is stuck in a loop — the transcript’s last few entries usually say which. Split the task, or ask whoever runs your Redline to raise the limit.
The score column says “—”
No rubric was chosen for that experiment, so there is nothing to score. The verdict is whether the agent’s own process succeeded. Pick a rubric in the builder to get criteria, notes and a percentage.
The evaluator said it could not verify something
Two usual causes.
Either the criterion is not the kind of thing that can be established by looking — “the code is clean” — in which case rewrite it as a fact, and remember that a borderline criterion is failed on purpose.
Or the run was executed by one of your own agents with nothing attached, so no machine was built and there was no box to open. The evaluator judged the record and the final answer instead. Attaching a repository or an upload gives that run a machine.
“That task has runs. Archive the experiment instead.”
Deleting the task would orphan runs that were produced from it. Delete the experiment — which takes its runs with it — or leave the task in place. Tasks with no runs delete cleanly.
Machines have the same rule: one that experiments have run on cannot be deleted, and the default one cannot be deleted until another is made the default.
Runs are sitting in “queued” and nothing starts
Three possibilities, cheapest first:
- The experiment’s At once setting is 1 and one run is already going. Raise it on the experiment page.
- The server is at its own capacity because other experiments are running. Runs are claimed oldest-first, and an experiment at its limit is skipped rather than allowed to block the queue.
- The run belongs to one of your own agents and its worker is not connected.
Start
redline dev.
A schedule did not fire while my machine was asleep
Missed firings are not made up. A schedule that was due while nothing was running comes back to one launch at its next slot, not to every slot it missed — six stale copies of last night’s answer would cost real money and tell you nothing.
If it is failing rather than skipping, the row carries the reason as a warning.
Still stuck?
Ask the project agent. Ask Redline can read your experiments, open a failing run, read the evaluator’s notes against each criterion, and tell you what it found — which is usually faster than reading the transcript yourself.