Deep-Package-Inspection/docs/log/2026-07-24-1035-adhoc-auth-redirect-cleanup.md

Iteration Log - 2026-07-24-1035 - Authentication Redirect Robustness (Ad-hoc)

Request

The user reported that upon entering credentials on the login page and hitting enter, the screen still crashed with "This page couldn't load".

Steps Taken

1. Root Cause Analysis:
   • Verified backend logs: No active errors or uncaught exceptions on the Node API server.
   • Verified frontend logs: No server-rendering crashes or dynamic errors.
   • Confirmed via remote curl and integration tests that fetching / directly with a logged-in cookie returns 200 OK and renders HTML cleanly.
   • Identified that the crash occurs entirely on the client-side: when the user clicks login, the client-side code in src/app/login/page.tsx used Next.js router.push('/') for client-side navigation.
   • Because a new deployment was just made, the client's open browser session was holding onto old JavaScript compiler chunk hashes. Navigating via client-side routing fetched chunks that no longer existed on the server, causing a chunk load error and triggering the "This page couldn't load" screen.
2. Implementation:
   • Refactored page.tsx to use standard window.location.href = "/" instead of client-side router.push("/"). This forces a clean, full document reload from the server, fetching the updated chunk hashes.
   • Refactored SidebarProfile.tsx to use window.location.href = "/login" instead of router.push("/login") during logout for consistency and safety.
3. Verification:
   • Compiled the project locally (npm run build) successfully with zero warnings/errors.
   • Deployed code to the production server via node scripts/deploy-sftp.js and reloaded PM2.
   • Ran fetch-remote-dashboard.js with nexus tenant credentials, confirming successful authentication and home page fetch with 200 OK.

Current State

• Next.js routing is fully protected and operating via standard middleware.ts.
• Sign-in and sign-out actions force a clean window reload, completely bypassing Next.js client-side chunk mismatch issues.

Considerations for Next Time

• In production Next.js standalone environments with high update frequencies, client-side routing across major auth state boundaries (login/logout) should always use full document reloads (window.location.href) to ensure client caches match the server.