fix(browse): daemon resilience on loaded machines — Bun conn errors, stop/restart flush, startup + git-root budgets

Four load-sensitivity fixes in the daemon lifecycle:

- sendCommand only recognized Node's ECONNREFUSED/ECONNRESET; the compiled
  CLI runs on Bun, which reports 'ConnectionRefused'/'ConnectionClosed'
  ("Unable to connect..."), so daemon crashes leaked the raw error and
  exited 1 instead of entering the busy-check/restart path. Match both.
- stop/restart called shutdown() inline, which exits before the HTTP
  response flushes — the CLI saw a dropped socket (and would now
  crash-retry a fresh daemon just to stop it). Defer shutdown ~100ms so
  the 200 lands first.
- Non-CI POSIX startup budget raised 8s -> 15s (cold Chromium measured
  ~5.7s at load avg 10; load 12+ blew the old budget while the detached
  daemon was still booting).
- getGitRoot's 2s git rev-parse timeout returned null under load (6.3s
  spikes measured), scattering state files across cwds into split-brain
  daemons. Raise to 8s, still bounded.

Contributed by @mplatts (PR #1732).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

browse/src/cli.ts

@@ -36,7 +36,13 @@ const IS_WINDOWS = process.platform === 'win32';
  * falls back to the platform default. Pure + exported for tests.
  */
 export function resolveStartTimeout(env: NodeJS.ProcessEnv = process.env): number {
-  const platformDefault = IS_WINDOWS ? 15000 : (env.CI ? 30000 : 8000); // Node+Chromium takes longer on Windows
+  // Cold Chromium launch measured ~5.7s at load avg 10 on a dev machine running
+  // many servers; at load 12+ it exceeds the old 8s budget, so the CLI gave up
+  // while the (detached) daemon was still booting → "Server failed to start
+  // within 8s". 15s matches the Windows budget and gives real headroom; the poll
+  // loop returns the instant the daemon is healthy, so this only costs time in a
+  // genuine-failure case.
+  const platformDefault = IS_WINDOWS ? 15000 : (env.CI ? 30000 : 15000); // Node+Chromium takes longer on Windows
   const override = parseInt(env.BROWSE_START_TIMEOUT || '', 10);
   return Number.isFinite(override) && override > 0 ? override : platformDefault;
 }
@@ -614,7 +620,17 @@ async function sendCommand(state: ServerState, command: string, args: string[],
       process.exit(1);
     }
     // Connection error — server may have crashed, OR may just be busy.
-    if (err.code === 'ECONNREFUSED' || err.code === 'ECONNRESET' || err.message?.includes('fetch failed')) {
+    // The compiled CLI runs on Bun, whose fetch reports a refused/dropped
+    // socket as err.code 'ConnectionRefused' / 'ConnectionClosed' (message
+    // "Unable to connect. Is the computer able to access the url?"), NOT Node's
+    // ECONNREFUSED/ECONNRESET. Match both, or daemon crashes leak the raw Bun
+    // error and exit 1 instead of triggering the busy-check/restart below.
+    const isConnError =
+      err.code === 'ECONNREFUSED' || err.code === 'ECONNRESET' ||
+      err.code === 'ConnectionRefused' || err.code === 'ConnectionClosed' ||
+      err.message?.includes('fetch failed') ||
+      err.message?.includes('Unable to connect');
+    if (isConnError) {
       const oldState = readState();
       // #1781 busy-vs-dead: a single-threaded daemon under beacon/extension load
       // can briefly stop answering HTTP while still alive. Before declaring a

browse/src/config.ts

@@ -34,7 +34,12 @@ export function getGitRoot(): string | null {
     const proc = Bun.spawnSync(['git', 'rev-parse', '--show-toplevel'], {
       stdout: 'pipe',
       stderr: 'pipe',
-      timeout: 2_000, // Don't hang if .git is broken
+      // Raised from 2s: under heavy machine load `git rev-parse` routinely
+      // takes >2s (measured 6.3s spikes). Timing out here returns null →
+      // resolveConfig falls back to process.cwd() → state files scatter across
+      // cwds (split-brain daemons; `goto` and `url` hit different servers). 8s
+      // still bounds a genuinely broken .git from hanging the CLI forever.
+      timeout: 8_000,
     });
     if (proc.exitCode !== 0) return null;
     return proc.stdout.toString().trim() || null;

browse/src/meta-commands.ts

@@ -421,15 +421,25 @@ export async function handleMetaCommand(
     }
 
     case 'stop': {
-      await shutdown();
+      // Defer shutdown so the response flushes before process.exit() (same
+      // reason as 'restart' below). Otherwise the CLI sees a dropped socket;
+      // and now that connection-loss triggers the crash-retry path, that would
+      // resurrect a fresh daemon only to stop it again. Send the 200, then exit.
+      setTimeout(() => { void shutdown(); }, 100);
       return 'Server stopped';
     }
 
     case 'restart': {
-      // Signal that we want a restart — the CLI will detect exit and restart
+      // Signal that we want a restart — the CLI will detect exit and restart.
       console.log('[browse] Restart requested. Exiting for CLI to restart.');
-      await shutdown();
-      return 'Restarting...';
+      // Defer shutdown one tick so this HTTP response actually flushes before
+      // process.exit(). shutdown() exits inline (server.ts), so the old
+      // `await shutdown(); return 'Restarting...'` never sent a response — the
+      // CLI saw a dropped socket and `browse restart` errored out. The daemon
+      // now exits ~100ms after the CLI gets its 200; the next browse command
+      // lazily cold-starts a fresh one.
+      setTimeout(() => { void shutdown(); }, 100);
+      return 'Restarting... (daemon exiting; next browse command starts a fresh one)';
     }
 
     // ─── Visual ────────────────────────────────────────

browse/test/commands.test.ts

@@ -884,7 +884,10 @@ describe('CLI lifecycle', () => {
     cliEnv.BROWSE_STATE_FILE = stateFile;
     const result = await new Promise<{ code: number; stdout: string; stderr: string }>((resolve) => {
       const proc = spawn('bun', ['run', cliPath, 'status'], {
-        timeout: 15000,
+        // Must exceed the CLI's startup budget (resolveStartTimeout, 15s
+        // non-CI POSIX) or a slow cold boot under full-suite load gets the
+        // child killed at the exact moment the CLI would have succeeded.
+        timeout: 18000,
         env: cliEnv,
       });
       let stdout = '';