refactor(onboard): extract provider selection failure reporting

[cv]

Summary

Extract the non-interactive provider-selection failure reporting from setupNim into a focused helper. This keeps the selection exit point in setupNim while giving the existing failure messages and Windows-host rejection delegation direct tests.

Related Issue

Part of #3802.

Changes

• Added reportProviderSelectionFailure for provider recovery/request failure messages.
• Replaced the inline setupNim failure switch with the new helper.
• Added focused coverage for every provider-selection failure reason.

Type of Change

• Code change (feature, bug fix, or refactor)
• Code change with doc updates
• Doc only (prose changes, no code sample modifications)
• Doc only (includes code sample changes)

Verification

• npx prek run --all-files passes
• npm test passes
• Tests added or updated for new or changed behavior
• No secrets, API keys, or credentials committed
• Docs updated for user-facing behavior changes
• npm run docs builds without warnings (doc changes only)
• Doc pages follow the style guide (doc changes only)
• New doc pages include SPDX header and frontmatter (new pages only)

---

Signed-off-by: Carlos Villela cvillela@nvidia.com

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Improved error reporting during provider selection in onboarding with clearer, scenario-specific error messages and guidance for different failure types, including Windows-host scenarios and provider unavailability issues.

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[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: 9998740a-bb44-41e3-a74c-8003c203266e

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 8eeacff and 1910f4e.

📒 Files selected for processing (3)

• src/lib/onboard.ts
• src/lib/onboard/provider-selection-failure.test.ts
• src/lib/onboard/provider-selection-failure.ts

---

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The PR extracts provider-selection failure reporting into a dedicated utility function with a typed input interface. The reportProviderSelectionFailure function replaces inline error-message branching in src/lib/onboard.ts, dispatching on failure reason kinds to emit tailored user guidance. Comprehensive tests verify all failure scenarios.

Changes

Provider Selection Failure Reporting

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Failure reporting utility contract and implementation src/lib/onboard/provider-selection-failure.ts	ReportProviderSelectionFailureInput interface and reportProviderSelectionFailure function switch on failure reason.kind to emit user-facing error messages for unavailable recorded Ollama, recorded providers, Windows-host Ollama, Hermes providers, and generic requested providers, with environment-specific hints and callback delegation for Windows-host Ollama rejection.
Integration into onboard provider selection src/lib/onboard.ts	Imports reportProviderSelectionFailure and wires it into the non-interactive provider-selection failure path, passing the failure reason, Windows-host state, rejection callback, and console.error logger in place of the previous inline switch-based error branching.
Test coverage for failure reporting src/lib/onboard/provider-selection-failure.test.ts	Vitest suite with a test helper that captures error and rejection outputs via callback overrides, then asserts exact error messages and rejection behavior for all failure scenarios: WSL Ollama unavailability, recorded-provider unavailability with Windows-host hints, unsupported Windows-host Ollama delegation, Hermes-provider unavailability, and generic requested-provider unavailability.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• NVIDIA/NemoClaw#5173: Main PR adds reportProviderSelectionFailure and wires src/lib/onboard.ts to use it when resolveRequestedProviderSelection() (from the extracted resolver in the retrieved PR) returns specific failure reason.kind values, so the two PRs directly connect at the shared failure-reason handling layer.

Poem

🐰 Errors once scattered, now gathered with care,
A utility born to dispatch them with flair,
Windows and Hermes, each case now divine,
Tests prove each path through the failure design. ✨

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately and concisely summarizes the main change: extracting provider selection failure reporting into a dedicated helper function from setupNim.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch codex/onboard-provider-selection-failure-reporting

---

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[github-actions]

PR Review Advisor

Findings: 0 needs attention, 0 worth checking, 0 nice ideas
Since last review: 0 prior items resolved, 0 still apply, 0 new items found

Consider writing more tests for

• **Runtime validation** — Non-interactive unavailable requested provider exits after helper reporting: validate setupNim emits the requested-provider unavailable stderr and stops through the existing exit path.. The new unit tests are sufficient for the extracted helper, but the changed call site is onboarding/provider-selection host glue where runtime integration coverage would improve confidence that stderr, rejection, and exit behavior remain wired correctly.
• **Runtime validation** — Non-interactive unsupported Windows-host Ollama aborts instead of falling back: validate the resolver/helper/rejection integration delegates to abortNonInteractive and does not select another provider.. The new unit tests are sufficient for the extracted helper, but the changed call site is onboarding/provider-selection host glue where runtime integration coverage would improve confidence that stderr, rejection, and exit behavior remain wired correctly.
• **Runtime validation** — Recorded provider recovery unavailable emits the Windows-host hint only when windowsHostKey is present in the full setup path.. The new unit tests are sufficient for the extracted helper, but the changed call site is onboarding/provider-selection host glue where runtime integration coverage would improve confidence that stderr, rejection, and exit behavior remain wired correctly.
• **Runtime validation** — Recorded-provider-unavailable with windowsHostKey null omits the Windows-host hint in reportProviderSelectionFailure.. The new unit tests are sufficient for the extracted helper, but the changed call site is onboarding/provider-selection host glue where runtime integration coverage would improve confidence that stderr, rejection, and exit behavior remain wired correctly.
• **Runtime validation** — Adding a new ProviderSelectionFailureReason variant fails compile-time or test-time exhaustiveness until reportProviderSelectionFailure handles it.. The new unit tests are sufficient for the extracted helper, but the changed call site is onboarding/provider-selection host glue where runtime integration coverage would improve confidence that stderr, rejection, and exit behavior remain wired correctly.
• **Acceptance clause:** Part of Umbrella: refactor onboarding into a serializable FSM #3802. — add test evidence or identify existing coverage. The deterministic context did not include issue Umbrella: refactor onboarding into a serializable FSM #3802 body or comments and reported no linkedIssues, so no literal issue acceptance clauses were available to verify. The diff is consistent with a broad refactor slice: provider-selection failure reporting is extracted from src/lib/onboard.ts into src/lib/onboard/provider-selection-failure.ts with tests.

Workflow run details

This is an automated advisory review. A human maintainer must make the final merge decision.

[github-actions]

E2E Advisor Recommendation

Required E2E: onboard-negative-paths-vitest
Optional E2E: onboard-negative-paths-e2e, wsl-e2e

Workflow run

Full advisor summary

E2E Recommendation Advisor

Base: origin/main
Head: HEAD
Confidence: high

Required E2E

• onboard-negative-paths-vitest (medium): Runs the built CLI through a real non-interactive onboard negative path and asserts clean non-zero behavior without JavaScript stack traces. This is the highest-signal PR-sized E2E for changes in onboard error handling.

Optional E2E

• onboard-negative-paths-e2e (high): Broader shell E2E coverage for onboard negative and edge cases, including provider/model environment selection and clean credential validation failures. Useful because the PR changes the central onboard failure-reporting path, but it is longer-running and overlaps with the required Vitest negative-path job.
• wsl-e2e (high): Optional confidence for WSL-adjacent behavior because the refactored helper includes the recorded WSL Ollama / Windows-host Ollama failure message path. Run only if the PR is suspected to affect WSL provider recovery beyond message extraction.

New E2E recommendations

• onboarding / provider selection failure (high): Existing E2E coverage exercises invalid credentials and successful provider selection, but does not appear to directly run the real CLI with an unavailable NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER to hit reportProviderSelectionFailure's requested-provider-unavailable branch.
  • Suggested test: Add an onboard negative-path E2E that runs non-interactive onboard with NEMOCLAW_PROVIDER=missing-provider and asserts a non-zero exit, the friendly "Requested provider 'missing-provider' is not available" message, no stack trace, and no gateway/sandbox side effects.
• WSL / Windows-host Ollama recorded-provider recovery (medium): The helper has WSL-specific recorded-provider failure branches that are unit-tested but not covered by an existing E2E scenario visible in the repository.
  • Suggested test: Add a WSL/provider-recovery negative E2E that seeds a recorded WSL Ollama provider state, runs non-interactive onboard in an environment where that provider is unavailable, and verifies the Windows-host Ollama guidance and fail-closed exit behavior.

[github-actions]

Vitest E2E Scenario Recommendation

Required Vitest E2E scenarios: ubuntu-repo-cloud-openclaw
Optional Vitest E2E scenarios: None

Dispatch required Vitest E2E scenarios:

• gh workflow run e2e-vitest-scenarios.yaml --ref <pr-head-ref> --field scenarios=ubuntu-repo-cloud-openclaw

Workflow run

Full Vitest E2E advisor summary

Vitest E2E Scenario Advisor

Base: origin/main
Head: HEAD
Confidence: medium

Required Vitest E2E scenarios

• ubuntu-repo-cloud-openclaw: Onboarding provider-selection failure handling was refactored into a new helper and wired into src/lib/onboard.ts. The live-supported Ubuntu cloud OpenClaw scenario is the smallest typed Vitest scenario that exercises the affected onboarding path and validates the CLI still builds and onboards successfully.
  • Dispatch: gh workflow run e2e-vitest-scenarios.yaml --ref <pr-head-ref> --field scenarios=ubuntu-repo-cloud-openclaw

Optional Vitest E2E scenarios

• None.

Relevant changed files

• src/lib/onboard.ts
• src/lib/onboard/provider-selection-failure.ts

[cv]

Validation update for this onboard slimming stack slice:

• Scope: extracted provider-selection failure reporting into reportProviderSelectionFailure; setupNim still owns the final process.exit(1) control-flow decision.
• Local validation passed: Biome format/lint on touched files, npm run build:cli, npm run typecheck:cli, focused Vitest provider/onboard suite, and git diff --check.
• Standard PR CI is green and merge state is clean. PR Review Advisor reported 0 needs attention / 0 worth checking / 0 nice ideas; its runtime-validation suggestions are covered by the required live E2E runs below for this draft slice. CodeRabbit skipped because this PR is draft and has no actionable feedback.
• Required live validation passed:
  • onboard-negative-paths-e2e job passed: https://github.com/NVIDIA/NemoClaw/actions/runs/27306608753/job/80666027115
  • ubuntu-repo-cloud-openclaw Vitest scenario passed: https://github.com/NVIDIA/NemoClaw/actions/runs/27306608668/job/80666368839

Leaving this as draft while the lower stack settles: #5165 ready, #5171 draft, #5173 draft, #5175 draft, #5176 draft.

[github-actions]

Selective E2E Results — ✅ All requested jobs passed

Run: 27306608753
Target ref: codex/onboard-provider-selection-failure-reporting
Requested jobs: onboard-negative-paths-e2e
Summary: 1 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped

Job	Result
onboard-negative-paths-e2e	✅ success