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Bypass "Error: There are no prompts" in promptfoo


While evaluating different language models with promptfoo, I started running into the following error message:

/Users/seanmcp/project-dir/node_modules/.pnpm/promptfoo@0.67.0_@aws-sdk+client-bedrock-runtime@3.606.0_@azure+identity@4.3.0_@azure+openai-_c7fwzdecwpaax3yh5ny536i2qu/node_modules/promptfoo/dist/src/prompts/index.js:136
            throw new Error(`There are no prompts in ${JSON.stringify(prompt.raw)}`);
                  ^

Error: There are no prompts in "TEXT_OF_THE_PROMPT_THAT_I_TRIED_TO_EVALUATE"
    at readPrompts (/Users/seanmcp/project-dir/node_modules/.pnpm/promptfoo@0.67.0_@aws-sdk+client-bedrock-runtime@3.606.0_@azure+identity@4.3.0_@azure+openai-_c7fwzdecwpaax3yh5ny536i2qu/node_modules/promptfoo/dist/src/prompts/index.js:136:19)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async resolveConfigs (/Users/seanmcp/project-dir/node_modules/.pnpm/promptfoo@0.67.0_@aws-sdk+client-bedrock-runtime@3.606.0_@azure+identity@4.3.0_@azure+openai-_c7fwzdecwpaax3yh5ny536i2qu/node_modules/promptfoo/dist/src/main.js:129:27)
    at async runEvaluation (/Users/seanmcp/project-dir/node_modules/.pnpm/promptfoo@0.67.0_@aws-sdk+client-bedrock-runtime@3.606.0_@azure+identity@4.3.0_@azure+openai-_c7fwzdecwpaax3yh5ny536i2qu/node_modules/promptfoo/dist/src/main.js:545:48)
    at async Command.<anonymous> (/Users/seanmcp/project-dir/node_modules/.pnpm/promptfoo@0.67.0_@aws-sdk+client-bedrock-runtime@3.606.0_@azure+identity@4.3.0_@azure+openai-_c7fwzdecwpaax3yh5ny536i2qu/node_modules/promptfoo/dist/src/main.js:704:9)

It didn’t occur for a long time, but then started occurring every time I added a new prompt to the config. Clearing the cache did not help.

The only solution I found was to add a space to the end of the prompt text:

prompts:
  - "TEXT_OF_THE_PROMPT_THAT_I_TRIED_TO_EVALUATE "

This enabled promptfoo to run as expected. Definitely not ideal, but hopefully this unblocks you if you run into the same issue.

I will update this article if I find a better solution. If you have one, please send me an email.