Repro: register a new account, then click back from the password/verification step to /login →
500. Registration's `session` hook signs the user in at Kratos but routes to the verification UI,
not /auth/complete, so they hold a Kratos session with NO app JWT — ctx.user is null, the "already
signed in -> /dashboard" short-circuit can't fire, and initialising a login flow makes Kratos return
400 `session_already_available`. The flow-init catch only handled 403/404/410 and 5xx, so the 400
fell through to `throw` -> catch-all 500.
Recover instead: on `session_already_available` (already authenticated at Kratos), 303 to
/auth/complete to mint the JWT from the live session, preserving return_to. A genuinely unexpected
Kratos 400 still surfaces as 500. Verified live: /login (Kratos session, no JWT) now 303s to
/auth/complete, which mints plainpages_jwt and lands on /dashboard.
Also default LOG_LEVEL to debug in the dev override (compose.override.yml) for verbose local logs.
Tests-first: app.test asserts the session-race recovers to /auth/complete (return_to carried) while
an unrelated 400 stays a 500. typecheck + 361 units green.
The from-scratch dev login was broken: open the banner's http://localhost:3000, sign
in as the seeded admin, and you landed on http://127.0.0.1:3000/error "Page not found".
Root cause: the banner/APP_URL said localhost but kratos.yml hard-coded 127.0.0.1, and a
host-scoped Kratos CSRF cookie can't cross localhost<->127.0.0.1, so the cross-host login
POST lost it; Kratos redirected to its error sink, which the app had no route for (404).
Make APP_URL the single source of truth for the public host:
- Canonical-host redirect (app.ts): when APP_URL is set, an off-host GET/HEAD visitor is
308'd to it (path+query kept) before a flow starts, so the browser, the themed forms and
the cross-origin Kratos POST share one cookie host. After /public/ so static/health
checks stay host-agnostic; GET/HEAD only so a 308 never replays a cross-host POST.
- Opt-in (no NODE_ENV / no magic default): unset => no redirect, so a prod deploy that
forgets APP_URL can't bounce real users to a stale default. The dev stack sets it.
- kratos.yml browser URLs default to localhost (match APP_URL's dev value) and derive from
${APP_URL} via compose.override.yml; SERVE_PUBLIC_BASE_URL keeps the dev Ory port.
- Real /error page (views/error.ejs) replaces the catch-all 404 for genuine flow errors.
Tests-first: config (opt-in/validated), app (308 on mismatch, no-redirect on match, static
host-agnostic, POST untouched, /error page), updated kratos.test host pins. New devstack
regression (e2e/devstack-login.spec + compose.e2e-devstack.yml) drives the plain
docker-compose-up topology on the host network: login from localhost works and 127.0.0.1 is
canonicalised; wired into scripts/ci.sh. typecheck + 360 units + full ci.sh (visual 10 ·
auth 1 · oauth 2 · full 7 · devstack 2) green.
renovate-bot
lilleman