Q179: a failed first load says why and keeps retrying visibly

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

tests/e2e/startup-failure.spec.ts

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+import { _electron as electron, expect, test } from "@playwright/test";
+import { mkdirSync } from "node:fs";
+import { tmpdir } from "node:os";
+import { join, resolve } from "node:path";
+import { randomUUID } from "node:crypto";
+import { DatabaseSync } from "node:sqlite";
+
+test("a first load that fails says why, keeps retrying, and recovers", async () => {
+  const profileDir = join(tmpdir(), `agentcompany-new-e2e-startup-${randomUUID()}`);
+  mkdirSync(profileDir, { recursive: true });
+  const launch = () => electron.launch({
+    args: [resolve("out/main/index.js")],
+    env: { ...process.env, AGENTCOMPANY_NEW_PROFILE_DIR: profileDir, AGENTCOMPANY_NEW_AUTORUN: "0" },
+  });
+  const setDraft = (json: string | null) => {
+    const db = new DatabaseSync(join(profileDir, "agentcompany.db"));
+    db.prepare("update app_state set onboarding_draft_json = ? where id = 1").run(json);
+    db.close();
+  };
+
+  let app = await launch();
+  let page = await app.firstWindow();
+  await expect(page.getByRole("heading", { name: "Welcome" })).toBeVisible();
+  await app.close();
+
+  // A stored value the snapshot cannot read makes every load fail.
+  setDraft("{");
+  app = await launch();
+  page = await app.firstWindow();
+  const failure = page.getByRole("alert");
+  await expect(failure).toContainText("AgentCompany could not load its data.");
+  await expect(failure).toContainText("JSON");
+  await expect(failure).toContainText(/attempt [2-9]/);
+
+  setDraft(null);
+  await page.getByRole("button", { name: "Retry now" }).click();
+  await expect(page.getByRole("heading", { name: "Welcome" })).toBeVisible();
+  await app.close();
+});