The Worktree That Never Merged, and the Invite Button That Stopped Working

Timeline

1. 1

   Start

   Ran ignition — concurrent-session check reported another active session, moved into a worktree per concurrency.md

   Worktree was resumed, not fresh — it already carried 8 unmerged commits from a prior session

2. 2

   Correction

   Zeb flagged there should be no concurrent session — re-ran the check from inside the worktree, confirmed CLEAR; the original detection was almost certainly this session's own heartbeat read back within 7 seconds of being written, misread as a second session

   Exited the worktree back to the main checkout rather than defend a wrong detection

3. 3

   Discovery

   Attempted to remove the now-unneeded worktree — ExitWorktree refused, revealing 8 real commits (a full MedinaCHF welcome-page/onboarding feature plus its own retro) that had never reached master

   Confirmed via git log master..worktree-branch and git branch --contains — genuinely absent from master, not just uncommitted

4. 4

   Merge

   Merged the worktree branch into master; four generated-artifact files conflicted (cross-session-findings.json, engine-health.md x3) — resolved by taking HEAD's newer regenerated versions, since both sides were independently-regenerated scan output, not hand-authored content

   Verified the merge carried real product changes: schema column, welcome page, onboarding action

5. 5

   Verify before claiming

   Rather than trust the merged retro's own claim that the feature was 'deployed and verified live,' independently curled the production /welcome route — confirmed 307 (redirect to sign-in), matching the retro's claim

   Per Verification Gate — a prior session's record is not current truth until checked

6. 6

   Sync

   Pushed the merge to origin/master per Zeb's explicit 'why wouldn't we merge it' — local and remote were out of sync before this

   Cleaned up the now-fully-merged worktree branch and directory (directory removal partially blocked by a Windows file lock, branch itself deleted safely since -d confirmed full merge)

7. 7

   Live incident

   Courtney's bug report arrived mid-session: member invitation sending returning a server error, for both first sends and resends, after having worked once earlier in testing

   Prioritized the live production bug over the still-pending process-fix request, per explicit user choice

8. 8

   Investigate

   vercel logs CLI could not retrieve overnight logs regardless of --since (hard ~1-3hr retention window, confirmed by testing multiple values) — pivoted to code + git history review instead of guessing from a live log that wasn't retrievable

   Found and ruled out a prior, already-fixed instance of the same failure SHAPE (invalid non-async export breaking the Server Actions file) via git history — confirmed current file has no such export

9. 9

   Root cause

   Traced sendMemberInvitation line by line — found cleanUpOrphanedClerkUser (added 2026-08-17) runs unconditionally on every send/resend, OUTSIDE the function's own try/catch, with its Clerk getUserList() call and a per-result db.select() completely unguarded

   Matches Courtney's exact symptom: not resend-specific, breaks ALL sends including brand-new invites with no orphan involved

10. 10

    Fix + verify

    Wrapped the cleanup check in its own try/catch — on failure, logs and falls back to pre-2026-08-17 behavior (skip check, proceed to createInvitation) rather than crashing the whole action

    Verified via real tsc, real next build, then deployed and confirmed live (200 on homepage, 307 on /welcome, /coordinator/members)

11. 11

    Process fix

    Added a new CLOSE Step 0 to ignition-core.md and a cross-linked section in concurrency.md: any worktree session must merge to master and push BEFORE deploying or closing; deploy only ever runs from the main checkout on master

    Directly addresses the root gap this session started by discovering — a worktree deploy that never synced back to master's own history

What shipped

• products/medinaCHF/lib/actions/member-management.ts — cleanUpOrphanedClerkUser wrapped in try/catch, falls back to pre-existing safe behavior on failure instead of crashing sendMemberInvitation

• Merged 8 stranded commits (welcome page, Getting Started card, onboarding schema/action) from worktree-ignite-session into master, pushed to origin

• .claude/rules/ignition-core.md — new CLOSE Step 0: worktree merge-to-master + push required before any deploy or close

• .claude/rules/concurrency.md — cross-linked section: deploy only from the main checkout on master, never from inside a worktree

• Deployed medinachf to production twice this session (merge verification, then the invitation-bugfix), both independently verified live via curl