bug(cli): aiwg remove --provider <name> crashes with TypeError instead of supporting or rejecting the flag

[ChronodeAi]

TL;DR

aiwg remove all --provider <name> crashes with TypeError: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received an instance of Object before doing any work. Two underlying issues: (1) aiwg remove doesn't recognise the --provider flag at all (silently swallowed by the arg parser), and (2) aiwg remove all treats the literal string all as a plugin id, then explodes downstream when no plugin metadata resolves.

I hit this trying to remove a stale Factory deployment after switching the project from providers: ["factory"] to providers: ["claude"]. There's no documented way to scope aiwg remove to a specific provider, so the natural reach-for-the-flag attempt fails ugly.

Environment (REQUIRED — issues missing any field will be returned for clarification)

• AIWG version: 2026.5.12 [stable]
• Operating system: Darwin mac-studio.tail10294f.ts.net 24.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 24.6.0: Mon Jan 19 22:01:58 PST 2026; root:xnu-11417.140.69.708.3~1/RELEASE_ARM64_T6041 arm64
• Provider (the AIWG harness you were running): claude-code
• Node version: v26.0.0
• Install location: npm-global

Steps to reproduce

# Starting state: aiwg.config has providers:["factory"] from an earlier install,
# you've since switched to claude and want to drop the factory deployment record.
aiwg remove all --provider factory

Expected behavior

One of:

1. Best: aiwg remove accepts --provider <name> and removes only the artifacts deployed to that provider, plus the deployedTo.<provider> block from aiwg.config.
2. Acceptable: clear error like Error: unknown flag --provider; remove takes <plugin-id> [--force] [--keep-data] [--dry-run] so the user knows to pick another path.
3. Acceptable: aiwg remove all errors clearly with Error: plugin id "all" not found; aiwg remove operates on a single plugin id rather than crashing inside path.

Actual behavior

$ aiwg remove all --provider factory
Error: The "path" argument must be of type string. Received an instance of Object

Exit code is non-zero, but no other context (no stack with --verbose, no hint about the flag being unknown).

Suggested fix

The arg parser at tools/plugin/plugin-uninstaller-cli.mjs lines 40–58 only recognises --force, --keep-data, --dry-run. Any other flag (including --provider) is silently dropped and the next positional becomes pluginId. Two changes:

1. Reject unknown flags in the parser:

   } else if (arg.startsWith('-')) {
     console.error(`Error: unknown flag ${arg}`);
     console.error(`Usage: aiwg remove <plugin-id> [--force] [--keep-data] [--dry-run]`);
     process.exit(2);
   }

2. Validate the plugin id before path operations. The TypeError originates downstream in dist/src/plugin/plugin-uninstaller.js when pluginId="all" doesn't resolve and something is passed to a path.* call as undefined/Object. Guard with a "plugin id 'X' not found in registry" check before the path resolution.

Optional but valuable:

3. Add --provider <name> as a real, documented flag — the use case (scoping removal to a single provider when the project is multi-provider) is legitimate and there's no other way to do it today. The workaround is manual: delete the deployed files, then hand-edit ~/.aiwg/aiwg.config to drop deployedTo.<provider>.

Acceptance criteria

• aiwg remove all --provider factory either works (option 1 above) or fails with a clear error naming the unknown flag — no TypeError, no path-argument crash.
• aiwg remove all (with no flag) errors with "plugin id 'all' not found" or equivalent — not a TypeError.
• Regression test added for unknown-flag handling and unknown-plugin-id handling in plugin-uninstaller-cli.mjs.
• If --provider is implemented, documented in aiwg remove --help.

Related

• Issues: (no duplicates found via gh issue list -R jmagly/aiwg --search "remove provider" or "TypeError path argument")
• PRs:
• Tracker source: filed directly (not imported)

Context

Workaround for users hitting this: manually delete the AIWG-deployed artifacts under the unwanted provider's directory (look for files with aiwg:managed frontmatter marker), then hand-edit ~/.aiwg/aiwg.config to remove installed.<bundle>.deployedTo.<provider>. That's what I did to clean up 229 AIWG-managed files from ~/.factory/{droids,rules} after switching to Claude Code.