Claude Code failing with Cryptic message - Error: write EPIPE

Question

In short: although tool was working perfectly, it started failing.

Full output:

➜ claude
Error: write EPIPE
    at afterWriteDispatched (node:internal/stream_base_commons:159:15)
    at writeGeneric (node:internal/stream_base_commons:150:3)
    at Socket._writeGeneric (node:net:971:11)
    at Socket._write (node:net:983:8)
    at writeOrBuffer (node:internal/streams/writable:570:12)
    at _write (node:internal/streams/writable:499:10)
    at Writable.write (node:internal/streams/writable:508:10)
    at n6.sendToShell (file:///home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/cli.mjs:343:423)
    at file:///home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/lib/node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-code/cli.mjs:340:1714
    at new Promise (<anonymous>) {
  errno: -32,
  code: 'EPIPE',
  syscall: 'write'
}
╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ ✻ Welcome to Claude Code research preview!                 │
│                                                            │
│   /help for help                                           │
│                                                            │
│   cwd: /home/dimitrios/path/to/project/in/question/thanks  │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

╭─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ > Try "fix typecheck errors"                                                                                                │
╰─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  ! for bash mode · / for commands · esc to undo                                                               \⏎ for newline



Total cost: $0.0000
Total duration (API): 0.0s
Total duration (wall): 0.9s

Node is installed with brew on Ubuntu.

I had used the tool in the same directory/repository and all were OK. It also runs with no issues on another directory.

Tried to run with npx with the same results.

Answer 1

Root caused it:

I had asked Claude to change some HTML comments <-- ADD CODE HERE --> to code, most probably this broke some parsing.

The prompts were stored in a history entry inside .claude.json. Removed history and "it works" again.

Obviously a bug, which needs to be corrected at some point, can clean up history or structure better prompts in between.