paseo/REPORT-claude-credentials-failure.md

Claude test failures: real root cause

Finding

The Claude E2E tests were not failing due to missing credentials in general; they were failing because the tests overwrite CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR with a fresh temp directory and do not carry forward Claude's credential store. This removes the SDK's .credentials.json file when the SDK is running in plaintext storage mode (common in CI), so the SDK cannot load OAuth/API credentials even though the user has valid credentials in the default config directory.

Evidence

• The Claude agent SDK stores credentials in a file named .credentials.json under its config directory:
  • node_modules/@anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk/cli.js shows the plaintext credential store path as join(storageDir, ".credentials.json").
• The tests set process.env.CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR to a temp dir in:
  • packages/server/src/server/agent/providers/claude-agent.test.ts (via useTempClaudeConfigDir)
  • packages/server/src/server/agent/agent-mcp.e2e.test.ts
• The temp config dir is populated with settings only, so the SDK can't find .credentials.json after the override.

Fix summary

• Copy .credentials.json from the original config directory (explicit CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR or ~/.claude) into the temp config dir used by tests.
• Remove the hardcoded env-var-only credential precheck so tests fail with the real SDK error if credentials are genuinely absent.

Files updated

• packages/server/src/server/agent/providers/claude-agent.test.ts
• packages/server/src/server/agent/agent-mcp.e2e.test.ts