---
title: Common errors
description: What to check for each error code before assuming it's a bug.
order: 0
---

Start with the `code` field in the `problem+json` body — see the [full errors reference](/docs/api-reference/errors) for every value. This page is the "what do I actually do about it" version of that list.

## `401 unauthorized`

- Confirm the header is `Authorization: Bearer dike_live_xxxxxxxx` — not `X-API-Key`, not a raw key with no `Bearer ` prefix.
- Check you're not sending your dashboard **session token** (JWT from `/account/login`) to a `/v1/*` route, or an API key to an `/account/*` route — see [Authentication](/docs/getting-started/authentication). They're not interchangeable and both fail with `401`.
- Confirm the key hasn't been revoked from the dashboard — a revoked key fails immediately, not on next rotation.

## `403 plan_required`

Only shows up on `POST /v1/reason`. It means the account is on the Free plan — `/v1/reason` requires Pay As You Go. `/v1/search`, `/v1/cite`, and `/v1/graph/traverse` all work on Free.

## `404 citation_not_found` vs `422 citation_unparseable`

These look similar but mean different things on `/v1/cite`:

- `citation_not_found` (404): the string parsed fine, Dike understood exactly what law/ruling you meant — it's just not in the corpus. Check [/coverage](/coverage) before assuming it's a bug; some jurisdictions/years have real gaps.
- `citation_unparseable` (422): Dike couldn't match the string to any supported citation pattern at all. Check `detail` in the response for the normalized form it attempted — a common cause is a citation shape outside the supported set (see [Cite reference](/docs/api-reference/cite) for the list).

## `422 validation_error`

Almost always a request-shape issue, not a data issue: missing a required field (`query`, `question`, `citation`, `canonical_id`), or a value outside the documented range (`top_k` over 50, `depth` over 3). Check the field constraints on the relevant [API reference](/docs/api-reference/search) page.

## `429 rate_limited`

See [Rate limiting](/docs/troubleshooting/rate-limiting) for how to diagnose which limit you hit and how to back off correctly.

## `503 upstream_unavailable`

A downstream dependency (Mongo, Qdrant, the embedding service, or the LLM) is unreachable — this is Dike-side, not something in your request to fix. Retry with backoff; if it persists for more than a few minutes, it's worth reporting rather than continuing to retry.