IndeeHub worked all year and broke when the gate rolled out. Cause, verified on
the node: GET /manifest.json returns 401 + the gate's login HTML. A browser
fetches <link rel="manifest"> in no-credentials mode unless the tag opts in
with crossorigin="use-credentials", so the session cookie is NEVER offered and
the gate challenges a fully authenticated user. The app's service worker then
serves its cached shell, whose every network call fails — which reads as "the
app is broken" rather than "the gate refused it". Any gated app with a PWA
manifest has the same failure.
Passed through unauthenticated on purpose, and deliberately as small as the
problem: an EXACT-match allowlist of /manifest.json, /site.webmanifest and
/favicon.ico. Static, non-user-specific, and no more revealing than the gate's
own login page, which already shows the app's name and icon.
Exact match, never a prefix — a prefix would let /manifest.json/../api/secrets
ride through. A test pins that: 8 near-miss paths (traversal, query-string
traversal, /api/manifest.json, /manifest.jsonx, case variants, /admin,
/api/auth/nostr/session) must all still be challenged.
19/19 appgate tests pass. This does NOT address the app's own auth endpoints
being intercepted — that needs a session-aware decision and is recorded
separately.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
