The cli parse the starting dash in a prompt wrong

[hbrls]

Description

The starting dash is recognized as command flag.

$ kilocode run -- "- Who are you?"          ❌ Can not run

$ kilocode run -- " - Who are you?"         ✅ Good with starting space
I'm Kilo, a CLI tool that helps with software engineering tasks - writing code, debugging, refactoring, and working with files.

$ kilocode run -- "\- Who are you?"         ✅ Good with starting slash
I'm Kilo, an interactive CLI tool that helps with software engineering tasks.

Claude is good.

> claude -p -- '- Who are you'
I'm Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic. In this environment, I'm operating as a Claude Code agent—I help with software engineering tasks like debugging, refactoring, building features, and understanding codebases.

Plugins

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Kilo version

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Steps to reproduce

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Screenshot and/or share link

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Operating System

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Terminal

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[truffle-dev]

The yargs leg works on main (verified at be0ea1990, yargs@18.0.0):

$ bun -e 'import yargs from "yargs"; import { hideBin } from "yargs/helpers"; \
  yargs(hideBin(process.argv)) \
    .parserConfiguration({ "populate--": true }) \
    .command("run [message..]", "", \
      (y) => y.positional("message", { type: "string", array: true, default: [] }), \
      (a) => console.log(JSON.stringify({ message: a.message, "--": a["--"] }))) \
    .parse()' \
  -- run -- "- Who are you?"
{"message":[],"--":["- Who are you?"]}

packages/opencode/src/index.ts:100 sets populate--: true on the root parser, so the leading - lands in args["--"] rather than getting parsed as a flag. The handler at packages/opencode/src/cli/cmd/run.ts:314-317 does pick that up:

let message = [...args.message, ...(args["--"] || [])]
  .map((arg) => (arg.includes(" ") ? `"${arg.replace(/"/g, '\\"')}"` : arg))
  .join(" ")

But the assembly is lossy in a separate way: args["--"] contains the single atom - Who are you?, the includes(" ") branch wraps it in literal quotes, and the prompt that reaches the model is "- Who are you?" (17 chars including the quote characters) rather than - Who are you? (14 chars). The " - Who are you?" and "\- Who are you?" variants you marked ✅ go through the same re-quote path, so what you saw working is also re-quoted. claude -p -- '- Who are you' does not re-quote, which is why the comparison feels different.

To narrow this:

• kilo --version (the bug template field was blank)
• exact terminal output of the failing run — is it an error string, an empty prompt return, or yargs help

If the actual failure mode turns out to be the re-quote, the fix is local: atoms from args["--"] were already single shell arguments, so they should not be re-quoted on assembly. args.message has space-tokenized positionals that do benefit from the existing logic, so the two arrays want different treatment.

[hbrls]

kilo    7.1.23
Windows    11
PowerShell    7

https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode/blob/v7.1.23/packages/opencode/src/index.ts#L77

https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode/blob/v7.1.23/packages/opencode/src/cli/cmd/run.ts#L323

If I can console.log something in the node_modules?

[truffle-dev]

@hbrls thanks for the version + OS confirmation. Verified the same handler is on v7.1.23 at the line you linked (packages/opencode/src/cli/cmd/run.ts:323). Opened #9653 with the fix and seven regression tests.

For the local console.log experiment you asked about: the handler line is

let message = [...args.message, ...(args["--"] || [])]
  .map((arg) => (arg.includes(" ") ? `"${arg.replace(/"/g, '\\"')}"` : arg))
  .join(" ")

If you log JSON.stringify({ posit: args.message, dashDash: args["--"], assembled: message }) right after that block, you'll see yargs captures args["--"] = ["- Who are you?"] correctly (single atom, leading dash preserved), and the assembler then wraps it to "- Who are you?" (with literal quotes) which is what reaches the model.

The fix in #9653 keeps the wrap-quote on positionals (so kilo run hello "world foo" bar still preserves boundaries per #4979) but joins args["--"] verbatim, since -- semantically means "raw passthrough."

[truffle-dev]

Thanks for the v7.1.23 + handler-line link in your reply. It pinpointed the patch site and let #9653 land yesterday with regression tests on both assembler branches.