ReGen Windows Environment

Mined 2026-07-17 from session memory that only Cowork could see. These quirks break builds and tests for any agent that does not know them. Deterministic recipes, no judgment calls.

Test and typecheck

• A global NODE_ENV=production env var breaks vitest React component tests (React.act is not a function). Always run npx cross-env NODE_ENV=test vitest run ....
• The typecheck script is pnpm check. (pnpm typecheck exists now only as an alias; older docs referencing it were wrong for months.)

Cowork sandbox limits

• The sandbox cannot run the node toolchain: pnpm's Windows junction symlinks in node_modules give I/O errors through the mount. Pure-python repo scripts against the mount are fine (audit-truncation.py works).
• The FUSE mount can serve STALE state: phantom truncated files, phantom deletions in git diff, phantom index.lock (observed 2026-07-12). Never trust git status/diff or sandbox file reads for this repo; verify on the real filesystem. Host-path Read/Write/Edit tools are fine.
• Background processes do not survive between sandbox bash calls, so anything needing a live server or browser install cannot run there.

Desktop Commander (cmd.exe) recipes

• Syntax: cd /d "path" && ....
• Long jobs: output capture times out around 2 to 3 minutes and can falsely return "0 lines". Redirect to a file and poll it: ... 2>&1 | Add-Content .verify.log then read the file. Launch with start /b cmd /c "... > log 2>&1" for anything long.
• PowerShell -Command strings get $ stripped ($_ arrives as _). Avoid variables; pipe to Select-Object/Format-List.
• Commit and push as separate process calls: multi-part git commit -m -m inside a cmd /c chain can swallow the following && into the commit body.
• Stale 0-byte .git/index.lock with no git.exe running is safe to delete. Use git pull --rebase --autostash since the tree usually carries unrelated local edits.

Worktree gate recipe (isolated verification)

1. git worktree add .claude\worktrees\<name> origin/main --detach INSIDE the connected folder.
2. pnpm install --prefer-offline in the worktree (~70s). A node_modules JUNCTION breaks tsc resolution (hundreds of phantom TS2307s); a real install avoids it.
3. Run pnpm gate DETACHED via Start-Process powershell writing to a file; MCP timeouts kill child processes otherwise.
4. Targeted git add only (parallel sessions sweep loose edits into their commits), then git push origin HEAD:main.