clawwork-ai/ClawWork

[Bug] DB migration silently swallows errors in ALTER TABLE catch blocks

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#215 opened on Mar 31, 2026

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Description

Summary

packages/desktop/src/main/db/index.ts — several ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN calls use empty catch {} blocks:

for (const col of ['session_key TEXT', 'agent_id TEXT', 'run_id TEXT']) {
  try {
    sqlite.exec(\`ALTER TABLE messages ADD COLUMN \${col}\`);
  } catch {}
}

While "duplicate column" errors are expected and safe to ignore, other errors (disk full, permission denied, schema corruption) are also silently swallowed with no logging.

Expected behavior

Only suppress the expected "duplicate column" error, log unexpected ones:

} catch (e: unknown) {
  const msg = e instanceof Error ? e.message : String(e);
  if (!msg.includes('duplicate column')) {
    console.error(\`[db] migration failed for \${col}:\`, msg);
  }
}

Files

  • packages/desktop/src/main/db/index.ts — migration section (line ~89)

Context

Introduced in PR #210.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Find the catch blocks in the migration code and add conditional error logging for non duplicate column errors.
Tech stack
typescriptsqlite
Domain
backenddatabase
Issue type
Bug
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
1
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
TypeScriptSQLite
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
80