If you’re working on a Gatsby site and encounter the frustrating “Cannot find module gatsby-cli/lib/reporter” error, don’t worry - you’re not alone. Many developers have faced the same issue, and there is a simple solution to fix it.

The Error

When you run gatsby develop to start a local server, you may see an error message with red color in your terminal. The error typically looks like this:

Gatsby error

The Solution

After conducting thorough research on GitHub and Stack Overflow, I finally found a solution that worked for me. Here are the steps you can follow to fix this error:

  1. Delete the node_modules folder in your Gatsby project directory. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:

    rm -rf node_modules

  2. Instead of using npm install, I recommend using yarn to reinstall all the packages. Run the command below in your terminal:

    yarn

    This will fetch and install all the necessary packages for your Gatsby site.

  3. Once the packages are installed, run gatsby develop again, and you should no longer encounter the “Cannot find module gatsby-cli/lib/reporter” error.

Successful Gatsby develop

Additional Notes

It’s important to note that although this solution worked for me, the root cause of the error is still unclear. Interestingly, running npm install instead of yarn did not resolve the issue for me. Therefore, I recommend sticking with yarn for package installation in your Gatsby projects.

By following these steps, you should be able to fix the “Cannot find module gatsby-cli/lib/reporter” error and continue working on your Gatsby site without any further hindrance.