'gbk' codec can't decode byte 0xad in position 138: illegal multibyte sequence

[KaiSun Rao]

Failed to start Rovo Dev CLI: 'gbk' codec can't decode byte 0xad in position 138: illegal multibyte sequence

[Pallavi Shirodkar · Accepted solution]

Hi @KaiSun Rao 

The error message "Failed to start Rovo Dev CLI: 'gbk' codec can't decode byte 0xad in position 138: illegal multibyte sequence" indicates a Unicode decoding problem. Your system or Python environment is trying to read a file or string using the GBK encoding (commonly used for Chinese Windows systems), but the file contains characters or bytes that are not valid in GBK.

This is a classic case of encoding mismatch. Making sure that all files and terminal contexts utilize UTF-8 encoding and, whenever feasible, explicitly specifying UTF-8 in your code or tool settings is the most reliable approach.

Hope this helps!

[Dr Valeri Colon _Connect Centric_]

@Pallavi Shirodkar a rising star, shining bright! Thanks for your response. To add to that @KaiSun Rao run this in your terminal before starting the CLI:
set PYTHONUTF8=1 (Windows) or export PYTHONUTF8=1 (macOS/Linux) This forces UTF-8 encoding, which handles multibyte characters properly.

Check out https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Rovo-for-Software-Teams-Beta/gh-p/rovo-dev-ai-agents  for more.