`esc run` fails with `Error: file://~ does not support Pulumi ESC.`

[jkodroff]

What happened?

Any esc run (or pulumi env run, which is to be expected) command fails with the following message:

$  esc run pequod/shared-infra/k8s-cluster -- k9s
Error: file://~ does not support Pulumi ESC.

Tried it with OIDC only, and OIDC imported into an env that writes out a kubeconfig as a file - same result.

Based on my pulumi about output, it looks like the backend (and I have no idea why it's showing this way) is causing ESC to fail. Even if the configuration is invalid, it should not cause an error if I'm just trying to run a shell command.

Example

n/a

Output of pulumi about

CLI          
Version      3.227.0
Go Version   go1.26.1
Go Compiler  gc

Host     
OS       darwin
Version  26.3
Arch     arm64

Backend        
Name           Mac.lan
URL            file://~
User           jkodroff
Organizations  
Token type     personal

Environment Variables:
Name                 Value
PULUMI_ACCESS_TOKEN  <REDACTED_AND_YES_I_ROTATED_IT>

Pulumi locates its logs in /var/folders/5m/4n1x3f8151s35wc80w06z5k80000gn/T/ by default

Additional context

No response

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[jkodroff]

It looks like pulumi logout && pulumi login fixed the issue. I have no idea why I was logged out or why Pulumi thought I was on a file-based backend. Whatever happened seems stateful b/c I got the same error before trying logging out and back in when I tried it in a new terminal window.

After chatting with @seanyeh, the behavior makes sense - I have to be logged into Pulumi Cloud to use ESC (same as ever), but the error message leaves something to be desired. I would rather it just said "you are not logged into Pulumi Cloud and need to be".

Also, I was executing this in:

$ pwd
/Users/jkodroff