Exit codes

Every command exits with a code that says what kind of failure it was, so a script or an agent can branch without reading any output.

Code	Meaning	Retryable?
0	Success
1	An error with no more specific code	No
4	Not found — workspace, service or project	No
5	Already exists	No
6	No minato.toml was found	No
7	minato.toml is invalid	No
8	Not inside a git repository	No
9	The container runtime cannot be reached	Yes
10	A runtime operation failed	No
11	Unsupported	No

"Retryable" means the same command may succeed later without anything being changed. Only code 9 qualifies: start Docker or Apple Container and try again.

exec is different

minato exec returns the command's own exit code, not one of the above:

$ minato exec web -- npm test; echo $?
1

So test success is readable from exit status alone. A code above cannot be told apart from the same code coming out of your command — check --json output if you need to be sure which happened.

In JSON

$ minato url nope --json; echo $?
{
  "error": {
    "code": "not_found",
    "message": "no service named `nope`. Available: web, api",
    "hint": "…"
  }
}
4

error.code is the machine-readable name; the exit code is its numeric counterpart. hint, when present, says what to do next.

Errors print to stdout under --json, so a caller watches one stream and one exit code.