Hit a brick wall using task-master with claude-code (not anymore)

[calhouny]

PEBKAC Confession from a Product guy

parse-prd Getting Stuck (Solved: Outdated Bun Version)

TL;DR

If you're getting stuck on ⠼ Parsing PRD and generating tasks... when using parse-prd, check if your bun version is up to date. Turns out my outdated bun was causing streaming errors that weren't surfaced to the me in the terminal.

Background

I'm no software engineer, just a product guy working on a SaaS product, and I'm a daily Claude Code user. Installed task-master yesterday to test it out with my project workflow.

What Went Well

• Install and init was a breeze
• Basic task-master commands worked perfectly
• claude worked fine independently

What Happened?!

Once I tried parse-prd, I hit a brick wall. The command appeared to start successfully but would get permanently stuck on:

⠼ Parsing PRD and generating tasks...

What I Tried (an embarrassing day debugging 🤦🏼‍♂️)

1. Verified claude CLI worked independently
2. Confirmed basic task-master commands functioned properly
3. Uninstalled and reinstalled task-master multiple times
4. Searched through READMEs, issues, PRs, and discussions
5. Tried various config modifications

The Detective Work (mostly Warp Agent!)

When manual debugging failed, I resorted to Warp agent to dig deeper. Here's what we found:

1. Surface level: claude command was returning stderr: 1
2. Deeper dive: running parse-prd was spawning claude with a bun executable
3. Root cause: Bun was throwing a streaming error:

   EINVAL: Invalid argument
   syscall: "fstat"
   

I'm Clueless

This was puzzling because I was running task-master and claude in my Node.js project. Why TF was bun even involved?

I discovered that claude-code has an executable option (node | bun | deno), so I tried adding that to .taskmaster/config.json but it didn't help.

Why Not Try Everything?

Had a lightbulb moment: "Let me just upgrade bun."

And go figure, that solved the problem! Turns out, my bun installation was outdated. After upgrading, parse-prd and other commands worked perfectly.

What Might Have Saved Me Hours

I know this isn't a bug, and I'm not even sure if this is related to a task-master or claude-code config, but I thought of a couple of improvements that might have surfaced the root cause and solution a lot faster:

1. Update Docs

Consider adding minimum version requirements for runtime dependencies (node, bun, deno, etc.) in the task-master README.

2. Better Error Handling

Improve error handling in task-master commands to surface feedback when spawned subcommands fail. This would help both users and AI debugging agents identify issues faster.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Hope this helps someone avoid the same debugging adventure. 🙏

My environment:

• macOS
• Node.js project
• Outdated bun version (i think i was on 1.1 or something like that)
• Claude Code via task-master

[Crunchyman-ralph]

Hey @calhouny seems like this has been resolved ?