[$250] Can't clone repo on Windows due to Invalid Filename

[SvbZ3r0]

error: invalid path 'docs/articles/new-expensify/settings/title: Personal-Expense-Rules.md

Filenames can't have : in them

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Version Number:
Reproducible in staging?:
Reproducible in production?:
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack:
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers):
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by:
Slack conversation (hyperlinked to channel name):

Action Performed:

git clone git@github.com:Expensify/App.git expensify-app

Expected Result:

Successful cloning

Actual Result:

Cloning into 'expensify-app'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 2031333, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (404/404), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (129/129), done.
remote: Total 2031333 (delta 335), reused 275 (delta 275), pack-reused 2030929 (from 2)
Receiving objects: 100% (2031333/2031333), 2.12 GiB | 2.58 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1659924/1659924), done.
error: invalid path 'docs/articles/new-expensify/settings/title: Personal-Expense-Rules.md'
fatal: unable to checkout working tree
warning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed.
You can inspect what was checked out with 'git status'
and retry with 'git restore --source=HEAD :/'

Workaround:

This is a dev issue

Platforms:

Select the officially supported platforms where the issue was reproduced:
Windows development

Screenshots/Videos

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Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @abzokhattab

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022025838741186660655
• Upwork Job ID: 2025838741186660655
• Last Price Increase: 2026-02-23

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to Contributor-plus team member for initial proposal review - @abzokhattab (External)

[melvin-bot]

📣 @SvbZ3r0! 📣
Please report bugs or suggest features in the #expensify-open-source Slack channel, don't directly open issues in this repo!
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[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @brianlee-expensify (Bug), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/14418 for more details. Please add this bug to a GH project, as outlined in the SO.

[melvin-bot]

Job added to Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022025838741186660655

[MelvinBot]

Proposal

Please re-state the problem that we are trying to solve in this issue.

Cloning the Expensify/App repository fails on Windows because a file exists with a colon (:) in its name: docs/articles/new-expensify/settings/title: Personal-Expense-Rules.md. The colon character is reserved by NTFS/Windows and cannot be used in filenames, so git clone succeeds at fetching objects but fails at checkout with:

error: invalid path 'docs/articles/new-expensify/settings/title: Personal-Expense-Rules.md'
fatal: unable to checkout working tree

What is the root cause of that problem?

In PR Expensify/App#82356 ("[No QA] Help site updates for new feature: Rules R 1-3"), commit 2ef36f1a by @stephanieelliott created a new docs file with the filename title: Personal-Expense-Rules.md. The title: prefix was accidentally included in the filename — it appears to have been copied from the YAML frontmatter. All other files in docs/articles/new-expensify/settings/ follow the convention Article-Name.md (e.g., Account-Settings.md, Close-Account.md, Two-Factor-Authentication.md).

The file contains valid frontmatter with title: Personal Expense Rules, confirming the title: in the filename is a mistake.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

Rename the file:

• From: docs/articles/new-expensify/settings/title: Personal-Expense-Rules.md
• To: docs/articles/new-expensify/settings/Personal-Expense-Rules.md

This matches the naming convention used by every other file in the same directory and removes the problematic colon from the filename.

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

No alternatives needed — this is a clear filename typo. The only fix is to rename the file to remove the colon.

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Next Steps for Contributor+ team: Reply with @MelvinBot implement this to create a draft PR, or @MelvinBot <your feedback> to refine this analysis.