Failed to copy secret reference

I can "construct" the secret references myself by using 

op item list --tags xxx # get the ID /UUID of the item

op read "op://MyVaultName/<UUID>/password"

or by using "Copy Private Link" and getting the Vault id (v=XXX) and the item ID (i=XXXX) from the links and use that to 

op read "op://<vaultid>/<itemid>/password"

But I would like to know why I can't just use "Copy Secret Reference" for this particular item. 

I wanted to chime in, since I spent an hour last night poking around.

My problem is that the UI (web or e.g. Mac App), does not always display the full structure of the secret.

So for example, in my case, it failed with the same error message, I googled, found this thread and then I poked around and ultimately created references with the UUIDs etc. (which are terribly hard to find btw). Ultimately it let to an error message from the SDK: "field is matched more than once" (I don't remember the exact wording).

This let me to look for the duplicate field and the only way I can find it is by exporting the JSON structure of the secret (in the Mac app, view the secret, then the three vertical dots: "Copy item JSON". This showed me something like this:

{
  "overview": {
    "title": "name",
    "ainfo": "something",
    "ps": 100,
    "url": "http://example.org/",
    "URLs": [
      {
        "u": "http://example.org/",
        "l": "website",
        "m": "host"
      }
    ]
  },
  "details": {
    "password": "",
    "fields": [
      {
        "value": "XXX",
        "id": "",
        "name": "username",
        "type": "T",
        "designation": "username"
      },
      {
        "value": "XXX",
        "id": "",
        "name": "password",
        "type": "P",
        "designation": "password"
      }
    ]
  },
  "createdAt": "2025-04-23T16:45:24Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-13T15:54:46Z",
  "faveIndex": 0,
  "trashed": "N",
  "templateUuid": "001",
  "uuid": "whatever"
}

The caveat is in details - the first (empty) password field is not rendered in the app or in the web.

Anyway, what I did was: I didn't copy the item, I created a new secret and moved the data around. Now the structure does no longer include the empty password field. Now once I recreated the secret, I can copy secret references in the app and also use it via the SDK.

I suspect I may have changed the type of the secret when I created it — which is how the empty password was created. But I don't recall the exact steps. But I figured I share this as it may help figure out the error — maybe there is a clean-up procedure missing for when the secret type is changed or when you add additional fields, etc.. It just seems that the structure I have is wrong.