[ffroliva]

Summary

Part of #796. A corrupt Chrome cookie database was reported as a network problem: gflow auth status said "Check network connectivity and retry", and the MCP gflow_auth_status tool returned verification_error (HTTP 503, retryable: true), which tells an agent to retry. This is the "adjacent finding" recorded on #796 when #797 landed: same wrong advice, different trigger.

Root cause

browser_cookie3.chrome() raises sqlite3.DatabaseError("file is not a database") for a cookie file that is not a valid SQLite database. Its connection check only catches OperationalError. _get_chrome_cookies3 (src/gflow_cli/auth/cookies.py) only turns decryption errors into PermissionError for the Playwright fallback, so the DatabaseError reached the catch-all except Exception in verify_flow_profile (src/gflow_cli/auth/verification.py) and became VERIFICATION_ERROR. I checked this by running the real browser_cookie3 on a garbage file, which raised sqlite3.DatabaseError.

Fix

• A new FlowSessionOutcome.COOKIE_STORE_UNREADABLE. verify_flow_profile catches sqlite3.DatabaseError (which also covers OperationalError) before the catch-all and returns this outcome.
• It does not go into the Playwright fallback the way PermissionError does. That would launch Chrome on a corrupt file during a read-only status probe, where Chrome may discard (raze) the database. On a profile with no marker it would also stop at the marker gate and give the wrong advice.
• CLI gflow auth status says: "This profile's cookie store is corrupt or unreadable. Close any Chrome window using this profile, then re-run gflow auth login --profile ."
• MCP twin: cookie_store_unreadable, HTTP 409, retryable: false. This matches the existing profile_marker_missing envelope (a local-state fault, neither 503 nor 401). retryable: false is measured, not guessed: two back-to-back live runs gave the same outcome 2/2, because a retry reads the same broken file again.
• Login strategies: UNVERIFIED_MESSAGE / UNVERIFIED_HINT get the new outcome, so a login that verifies into it gets a clean message and not a KeyError.
• Docs: the gflow_auth_status entry in docs/MCP.md, plus the regenerated website mirror. CHANGELOG [Unreleased] ### Fixed.

Evidence

TDD: three new tests failed for the right reason before the fix. The log showed auth_flow_session_probe_error error=DatabaseError, and the CLI output contained "check network connectivity".

• tests/auth/test_verification.py::...::test_corrupt_cookie_store_is_not_reported_as_a_network_fault: a real corrupt file in tmp_path and the real browser_cookie3. It asserts the new outcome and that Playwright is never launched.
• tests/cli/test_auth_status.py::test_corrupt_cookie_store_is_not_blamed_on_the_network: end to end through the real probe. verify_flow_profile and browser_cookie3 are not mocked.
• tests/mcp/test_auth_status_tool.py::test_an_unreadable_cookie_store_is_not_retryable_and_not_a_network_fault

Live, $0, no browser launched. A real profile's marker files, Local State and cookie DB were copied into a temporary GFLOW_CLI_HOME. The copied Cookies was then overwritten with random bytes. The original profile was not modified, and the copy has since been deleted.

develop 624992d9:

{"source": "status", "error": "DatabaseError", "event": "auth_flow_session_probe_error", ...}
Could not verify the Flow session. Check network connectivity and retry;
re-login is only needed if the session is actually dead.
EXIT=1
MCP: {"outcome": "verification_error", "status": 503, "retryable": true, "remediation_hint": "...Check connectivity and retry..."}

this branch:

{"source": "status", "error": "DatabaseError", "event": "auth_cookie_store_unreadable", ...}
This profile's cookie store is corrupt or unreadable. Close any Chrome window
using this profile, then re-run gflow auth login --profile corrupt796.
EXIT=1   (2/2 runs)
MCP: {"status": "cookie_store_unreadable", "error": {"status": 409, "retryable": false, "remediation_hint": "This profile's Chrome cookie database is corrupt or unreadable. Close any Chrome window using this profile, then re-run `gflow auth login` for it.", ...}}

E2E scope: this does not touch a Flow surface. The fault is a local file, and the path fails before any network call or browser launch. The live run above goes through the real CLI and MCP entry points.

Verification status

• Repo hygiene, doc links, website PII, website mirror --check, council memory: all exit 0
• ruff check clean, ruff format --check clean
• uv run pyright src: 0 errors, 0 warnings
• pytest tests/auth tests/cli tests/mcp -n 8 -m "not live and not e2e and not smoke": 1161 passed
• Live CLI + MCP before/after on a corrupted copy of a real profile
• Re-login on a profile with a corrupt cookie DB really recovers it. The hint assumes Chrome rebuilds the database on launch. Not exercised here.

What remains on #796 (not in this PR)

Not touched here: the marker rollback after a failed verification (real_chrome.py), which permanently demotes a chrome profile, and the GOOGLE_SESSION_ONLY re-login loop. The macOS Keychain leg is also still unverified (no Mac here). Hence Refs, not Closes.

Refs #796

[coderabbitai]

Caution

Review failed

The pull request is closed.

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