web: native Basic auth prompt re-fires every second while entering credentials

[RateteDev]

Description

When a browser opens a password-protected V2 web UI without credentials, the app shell now loads and boots unauthenticated while the event stream client reconnects to /api/event every second (reconnectDelay = 1_000 in packages/client/src/solid/connection.ts). Every reconnect returns 401 with WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Secure Area" (packages/server/src/middleware/authorization.ts). In Chromium-based browsers, each challenged request re-raises the native HTTP Basic auth prompt: while the user is typing the password, the dialog keeps being re-triggered roughly every second — it looks like screen flicker and keeps interrupting input. Firefox shows the prompt only once and is not visibly affected.

This became reachable with #46702 (merged 2026-09-02, 46c33630b7, "fix(server): authenticate only API requests"): authentication now applies only to /api, /api/*, and /openapi.json, so the HTML shell is public and the app starts issuing unauthenticated API requests before any credential exists. Before that commit, the document request itself was challenged once at navigation, so the native prompt appeared a single time before the app booted. The other two ingredients are older: the event-stream reconnect loop (dd296f7033, 2026-02-12, initially 250 ms) and the WWW-Authenticate challenge on API 401s (101566131d added it to UI fallback responses; 8cbc43fbb0, 2026-05-09 extended it to typed API 401s, which is what /api/event returns). The reconnect delay has been 1 s since 154f298fe9 (2026-08-13, #41930).

OpenCode version

v0.0.0-beta-18866

Steps to reproduce

1. Run opencode serve in the foreground without a configured password (V2 generates a random one and prints server password ...).
2. Open http://127.0.0.1:<port>/ in Chrome. The app shell renders, then the native Basic auth dialog appears. Firefox also shows the dialog, but only once — no flicker there.
3. Watch the network tab: GET /api/event fires about once per second, each returning 401 with WWW-Authenticate: Basic (alongside periodic /api/health 401s). Measured with headless Chromium against the same server: 12 × 401 on /api/event in 12 s. Headless suppresses native auth prompts, so the dialog behavior needs a real browser.
4. Start typing the password into the native dialog: the dialog is re-triggered by the incoming 401s and input keeps getting interrupted.

Plugins

none

Operating System

Linux (Ubuntu), x64

Additional context

• Verified with a direct connection to the server (no proxy in between); an injected-CSS proxy behind a tunnel was ruled out as the cause.
• The server in this environment tracks the beta channel and already includes fix(server): authenticate only API requests #46702; the symptom is observed on every login on this build.
• Related closed issues: Repeated Auth Prompts when using Opencode Web from an authenticated Opencode Server #19920 (V1: repeated prompts from a WebSocket URL bug) and [Bug][Web] Basic auth causes 401 on /site.webmanifest and /global/event, then crashes with PasteTypeError #16493 (V1: /global/event 401 crash) predate the auth challenge; auth_token query param bypasses auth for HTML but not for subresource loads (CSS/JS) #31484 (static-asset 401s break auth_token) shares the same challenge mechanism, just on a different request surface.
• Browsers tested (real devices, Android 17 on Pixel 10 Build/CP2A.260805.005): Chrome 152.0.7977.64 re-fires the prompt roughly every second; Firefox 154.0.1 (Build #2016180583, GV 154.0.1-20260824154132) shows the prompt once with no flicker.
• Workaround: open the UI with ?auth_token=<URL-encoded base64 of "opencode:<password>"> — the app then sends its own Authorization header and the native prompt never appears. URL-encoding matters: the app reads the token with URLSearchParams, which turns a bare + into a space.

[holny]

I'd like to take this. The loop in packages/client/src/solid/connection.ts retries every reconnectDelay (1s) regardless of why the stream died, so a 401 with WWW-Authenticate: Basic keeps re-triggering the browser prompt every second. Plan: stop the auto-reconnect loop when the failure is a 401 (surface the auth requirement instead) or fall back to a long backoff — happy to go whichever way the maintainers prefer.

[holny]

Heads-up: the PR for this issue (#47204) was accidentally closed earlier today - its head fork got deleted unintentionally, which force-closed it. Re-filed as #48161 with the same commits. Sorry for the noise.