From 612f0a17d32cf7fe9bde5f31703a37b49c98ea2f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "7. Sun" <jhao.sun@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2026 01:41:12 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] fix: improve error message for unknown input item type in
 responses API (#15424)

The default branch in unmarshalResponsesInputItem had two issues:
- It referenced typeField.Type instead of itemType; these differ when the
  shorthand role-based format promotes an empty type to "message", meaning
  an unhandled type would show the wrong value in the error string.
- It used %s formatting, so an empty type field produced the unhelpful
  message "unknown input item type: " with no indication what was missing.

Fix by using itemType (the resolved value) with %q quoting, and add a
dedicated message when itemType is empty (both type and role absent):
"input item missing required 'type' field".

Tests added for the empty-type and missing-type cases.

Co-authored-by: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 openai/responses.go      |  5 ++++-
 openai/responses_test.go | 23 +++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 27 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/openai/responses.go b/openai/responses.go
index 4420eec53..4caa564b6 100644
--- a/openai/responses.go
+++ b/openai/responses.go
@@ -281,7 +281,10 @@ func unmarshalResponsesInputItem(data []byte) (ResponsesInputItem, error) {
 		}
 		return reasoning, nil
 	default:
-		return nil, fmt.Errorf("unknown input item type: %s", typeField.Type)
+		if itemType == "" {
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("input item missing required 'type' field")
+		}
+		return nil, fmt.Errorf("unknown input item type: %q", itemType)
 	}
 }
 
diff --git a/openai/responses_test.go b/openai/responses_test.go
index 3d08f2aa5..bcc79ce19 100644
--- a/openai/responses_test.go
+++ b/openai/responses_test.go
@@ -253,6 +253,29 @@ func TestUnmarshalResponsesInputItem(t *testing.T) {
 		if err == nil {
 			t.Error("expected error, got nil")
 		}
+		if err != nil && err.Error() != `unknown input item type: "unknown_type"` {
+			t.Errorf("unexpected error message: %v", err)
+		}
+	})
+
+	t.Run("missing type field", func(t *testing.T) {
+		_, err := unmarshalResponsesInputItem([]byte(`{"content": "hello"}`))
+		if err == nil {
+			t.Error("expected error for missing type, got nil")
+		}
+		if err != nil && err.Error() != "input item missing required 'type' field" {
+			t.Errorf("unexpected error message: %v", err)
+		}
+	})
+
+	t.Run("empty type field", func(t *testing.T) {
+		_, err := unmarshalResponsesInputItem([]byte(`{"type": ""}`))
+		if err == nil {
+			t.Error("expected error for empty type, got nil")
+		}
+		if err != nil && err.Error() != "input item missing required 'type' field" {
+			t.Errorf("unexpected error message: %v", err)
+		}
 	})
 }