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Project Discovery Failed

cli
Quarto found a _quarto.yml but could not load it as a project.

Q-7-8 — Project Discovery Failed

Quarto found a _quarto.yml but could not load it as a project.

What this means

Quarto’s project discovery walks upward from the input paths looking for _quarto.yml. This error fires when that walk succeeds but the file Quarto found cannot be loaded as a project: it is unreadable, malformed, or its content does not satisfy the project configuration schema. The message includes the underlying reason.

Why this happens

Common causes:

  • A malformed _quarto.yml — invalid YAML, or YAML that parses but does not match the project schema.
  • A permissions problem that prevents reading the file.
  • A _quarto.yml from a different tool that happens to share the name but has incompatible content.

How to fix

Read the underlying reason in the error message. For YAML syntax issues, fix the file — the per-file YAML errors in the yaml subsystem (Q-1-*) cover the most common shapes. For schema mismatches, consult the project configuration reference and align the file accordingly.