Solutions to common problems.
Symptom: The installer stops or shows an error during Node.js or WebCopy installation.
Fix: Close any open programs that might be using Node.js or WebCopy. Disable antivirus temporarily if it is flagging the installers. Re-run HippopotamooseSetup.exe as Administrator.
Symptom: Clicking the Start Menu shortcut does nothing, or a brief window flashes and closes.
Fix: Open a PowerShell window as Administrator and run:
cd "C:\Program Files\Hippopotamoose"
.\Hippopotamoose.exeAny startup error will be visible in the console output.
Possible causes:
Fix: The API key doesn't have access to the Places API (New). Go to Google Cloud Console → APIs & Services → Library → search for "Places API (New)" → ensure it is enabled.
Fix: Google Places returns at most 20 results per call. Increase the Chunks count to split the area into multiple tiles.
Symptom: The progress bar shows a low number and doesn't move for several minutes.
Cause: The target site may have many large files, a very slow server, or WebCopy may be stuck on an auth wall or CAPTCHA page.
Fix: Wait up to 5 minutes — WebCopy has a hard timeout. If it consistently fails, the site may not be copyable (requires login, uses SPA routing, etc.). Press PASS on this lead.
Fix: The path to wcopy.exe in Settings is wrong or WebCopy is not installed. Check Settings → WebCopy Executable Path and ensure it points to a valid wcopy.exe.
Symptom: The terminal opens and closes almost instantly, and the step turns failed.
Possible causes:
claude auth in a terminalclaude is accessible from PowerShellFix: The Claude CLI may not be in PATH. Check that C:\Program Files\Hippopotamoose\ or the Node.js global bin directory is in your system PATH. Run where claude in PowerShell to verify.
Symptom: The Demo step completes but edited_sites/<slug>/ contains little or nothing useful.
Fix: Re-run the Demo step (click the cell again). The AI will see its previous attempt and may fix it. Alternatively, use the Reiterate button with specific instructions about what to fix. Using a higher-quality model (Opus instead of Sonnet) also helps.
Fix: Wrangler may not have been installed correctly by the post-install script. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:
npm install -g wranglerFix: Your Cloudflare API Token is invalid or expired. Generate a new token in the Cloudflare Dashboard and update it in Settings.
Cause: DNS propagation takes 1–5 minutes after deployment.
Fix: Wait 5 minutes and try again. If it's still not accessible after 10 minutes, check your Cloudflare DNS zone for the CNAME record <slug>.demos. It should point to a *.pages.dev URL.
Cause: The React app was not built — only the source files were deployed, not the compiled output.
Fix: The AI should have run npm run build and the deploy script should be pointing at the dist/ or build/ folder. Use Reiterate to ask the AI to run the build step.
Cause: The downloaded site may not contain contact information (some sites only have contact forms, no direct details).
Also check: Ensure the site was downloaded successfully — if downloaded_sites/<slug>/ is empty or missing, the AI has nothing to parse.
Cause: The edited site doesn't contain any .html files at the path the auditor looks in. If the site is a React SPA that generates HTML only after a build, make sure npm run build was run so the compiled HTML exists in dist/.
Fix: Check for .corrupt files in the data/ directory. If found, the JSON file was unreadable and was replaced with an empty file. You can try to manually inspect the .corrupt file in a text editor to recover data. If you have a recent export ZIP, import it from Settings.
Fix: Restart the app. The startup recovery process resets all in_progress steps to not_started automatically.
If your issue is not listed here:
data/ directly — they are plain text and show the current state of every entrypython main.py) to see any Python tracebacks