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HubSpot CLI Hanging? What to Do When Your Project Creation Stalls on Windows

HubSpot CLI Hanging? What to Do When Your Project Creation Stalls on Windows

Alright, fellow HubSpot enthusiasts, RevOps pros, and store operators! We've all been there: you're eager to build something new, you fire up your development tools, and then... nothing. A recent discussion in the HubSpot Community perfectly illustrates this frustration, focusing on a particularly stubborn bug with the HubSpot CLI. It’s a great example of how the community comes together to dissect technical challenges, and it offers some solid takeaways for anyone diving into custom HubSpot development.

The HubSpot CLI's Stubborn Hang: A Developer's Frustration

The original poster brought a detailed bug report to the community, highlighting an issue where the hs project create command would hang indefinitely on Windows. This wasn't just a fleeting pause; it was a complete stall after the CLI had successfully fetched the project repository. Imagine you’re trying to spin up a new app or even just an empty project to test a concept for your next big e-commerce feature, and your primary tool just stops responding. Frustrating, right?

Diving into the Details: What Was Happening?

The original poster did an excellent job of providing comprehensive debug information, which is always gold when reporting issues. Here’s what they observed:

  • Summary: The command hung after Completed project fetch during local project creation.
  • Affected Commands: Both --project-base app and --project-base empty experienced the hang. This was a crucial observation, as it suggested the problem wasn't related to specific app features.
  • Environment: Windows OS, PowerShell, Node.js v24.16.0, npm 11.16.0, and HubSpot CLI 8.8.0. Knowing the exact environment helps immensely in reproduction.
  • Account/Auth: CLI authentication appeared to be working, and feature lookup succeeded before the hang. So, network and authentication weren't the culprits.

Let's look at the actual debug output near the failure point. For an interactive app project creation, it looked like this:

[DEBUG] {method: 'get',baseURL: 'https://api.hubapi.com',url: 'localdevauth/v1/auth/enabled-features',
status: 200
[DEBUG] Fetching repository with name HubSpot/hubspot-project-components...
[DEBUG] Completed project fetch.ent]
_ Adding feature(s) to app [MyProject]

The command would hang indefinitely at Adding feature(s) to app [MyProject].

For a non-interactive empty project, the debug output was similar:

[DEBUG] {
method: 'get',
baseURL: 'https://api.hubapi.com',
url: 'localdevauth/v1/auth/enabled-features',
status: 200
[DEBUG] Fetching repository with name HubSpot/hubspot-project-components...
[DEBUG] Completed project fetch.t-empty]
- Creating empty project [MyProject-empty]

And it would hang at Creating empty project [MyProject-empty].

The original poster astutely concluded that the problem seemed to be in the post-fetch local scaffolding / write step. This detailed analysis is what makes a bug report truly helpful, narrowing down the potential causes significantly.

The Community's Take and The Path Forward

After the initial post, a community moderator chimed in, acknowledging the thoroughness of the report and tagging several experts for their insights. This is a great example of the community team working to connect users with the right resources.

Then, a community member provided the key insight: given the level of detail and the nature of the issue (a potential bug in a basic CLI command), the best course of action was to report it directly on GitHub. The suggestion was to post it as an issue on the official HubSpot CLI GitHub repository: https://github.com/HubSpot/hubspot-cli/issues.

What This Means for You (and Your Next Project)

This exchange highlights a critical pathway for resolving deep technical issues with HubSpot's developer tools:

  1. Start with the Community: It's a fantastic first stop for troubleshooting, as you might find existing solutions or connect with others facing similar problems.
  2. Provide Detail: As demonstrated by the original poster, thorough bug reports with environment details, reproduction steps, and debug logs are invaluable.
  3. Escalate to GitHub for Core Tool Bugs: If an issue appears to be a fundamental bug in a HubSpot-maintained tool like the CLI, the GitHub repository is often the direct channel to the development team for a fix.

While this particular issue is highly technical, it underscores the challenges that can arise when you're building custom solutions. Whether you're trying to create an easy web store builder from scratch with custom HubSpot integrations or exploring options for a free shop builder that leverages HubSpot's CRM, encountering core tool bugs can slow you down significantly. It emphasizes the importance of robust, well-supported developer tools and clear channels for reporting issues.

ESHOPMAN Team Comment

This discussion really hits home for us at ESHOPMAN. While diving into the CLI for custom development is powerful, encountering fundamental bugs like this can be a major roadblock for anyone trying to build on HubSpot. We believe that tools should empower, not impede. It reinforces our commitment to providing a built-in storefront for HubSpot that aims to abstract away these low-level development hurdles, offering a more streamlined and reliable path to e-commerce success without getting stuck on CLI hangs.

So, if you find yourself in a similar situation with a HubSpot CLI command, remember the steps: detail your issue, check the community, and if it's a core tool bug, head to GitHub. The HubSpot developer ecosystem thrives on these contributions, ensuring that the tools we all rely on become more robust with every reported and resolved issue. Happy building!

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