`reader-list-documents` fails on any page containing a PDF

[jordangarrison]

reader-list-documents returns Error decoding document list results from Reader whenever a PDF is in the result window. Other categories (article, video, rss, tweet) decode fine.

It fails at --limit 1 with a single response field, so response size doesn't look like the cause, but I haven't dug deep enough to rule that out — just sharing what reproduces.

Repro

# fails — PDF-only page
readwise reader-list-documents --location new --category pdf --limit 1 --response-fields title --json
# Error: Error listing documents from Reader: Error decoding document list results from Reader

# fails — mixed page that happens to include a PDF
readwise reader-list-documents --location new --limit 5 --response-fields title --json

# works — same inbox, PDFs filtered out
readwise reader-list-documents --location new --category article --limit 50 --response-fields title --json
readwise reader-list-documents --location new --category video --limit 50 --response-fields title --json

Impact

The list endpoint is what Claude reaches for when scanning a location agentically with this CLI. Right now any location containing a PDF silently truncates. My inbox reports count: 42 and only 39 are reachable. Agents walking the library have no way to know they're missing docs unless they re-count by category.

Notes

• reader-search-documents returns PDFs fine, so the API serializes them somewhere. The failure is on the list decode path.
• The CLI error doesn't say which field or which document failed. Surfacing that would have saved me from bisecting by category.

Environment

• readwise 0.5.6
• node v24.14.0, npm 11.9.0
• NixOS 26.05 (Yarara), Linux 6.18.21 x86_64
• Installed via Nix package, not npm install -g