“Not allowed in tags-type agenda” using custom agenda

Question

I set up habits in org mode and using C-k to toggle the habits on/off in the normal agenda is working fine.

However, in my custom agenda (taken from Bernt Hansen GTD implementation link) I get the following error when using C-k:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Not allowed in tags-type agenda buffers")
signal(error ("Not allowed in tags-type agenda buffers"))
error("Not allowed in %s-type agenda buffers" tags)
org-agenda-check-type(t agenda)
org-habit-toggle-habits()
call-interactively(org-habit-toggle-habits nil nil)
command-execute(org-habit-toggle-habits)

The same is true for changing week and day view:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Not allowed in tags-type agenda buffers")
signal(error ("Not allowed in tags-type agenda buffers"))
error("Not allowed in %s-type agenda buffers" tags)
org-agenda-check-type(t agenda)
org-agenda-change-time-span(week nil)
org-agenda-week-view(nil)
call-interactively(org-agenda-week-view nil nil)
command-execute(org-agenda-week-view)

Any hints on how to toggle habits in the custom agenda? Or why is toggling not possible in tags-type agendas?

By the way I am using spacemacs 0.105.21 (emacs 24.5.1)

---

The solution is to change (agenda "" nil) to (agenda ""). Here is a part of the custom agenda:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      (quote (("N" "Notes" tags "NOTE"
               ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Notes")
                (org-tags-match-list-sublevels t)))
              ("h" "Habits" tags-todo "STYLE=\"habit\""
               ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Habits")
                (org-agenda-sorting-strategy
                 '(todo-state-down effort-up category-keep))))
              (" " "Agenda"
               ((agenda "")      ;; delete nil
                (tags "REFILE"
                      ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Tasks to Refile")
                       (org-tags-match-list-sublevels nil)))
                (tags-todo "-CANCELLED/!"
                           ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Stuck Projects")
                            (org-agenda-skip-function 'bh/skip-non-stuck-projects)
                            (org-agenda-sorting-strategy
                             '(category-keep))))
...

Thanks to @elethan

Answer 1

If your custom agenda view does not have an agenda portion, you will not be able to toggle habits on and off from that view. One of the first things that the function org-habit-toggle-habits (the command you are invoking with C-k, but which is just K for me) does before actually toggling habits, is the following check:

(org-agenda-check-type t 'agenda)

If the agenda type is anything other than agenda, e.g., if it is a tags-based agenda, it will raise the error that you are seeing. I am not sure if there is a way to get around this, or if you would want to.

However, if you add an agenda portion to your custom agenda view, all you need to do is make sure point is in that part of the view, and then org-habit-toggle-habits should work as expected.