@@ -185,7 +185,13 @@ v2/main/
 │                                       #   pack-and-verify.mjs, and lib/ shared helpers
 │                                       #   (tsc-program.mjs is the `tsc --listFilesOnly`
 │                                       #   measurement both coverage guards read a program
-│                                       #   through — #1965; resolve-node-bin.mjs resolves a
+│                                       #   through — #1965; announced-child.mjs owns the
+│                                       #   spawn-and-wait-for-a-readiness-line step, publishing
+│                                       #   the child via `onSpawn` BEFORE the wait so the
+│                                       #   caller's teardown reaches it on every throw path —
+│                                       #   the readiness timeout included, which is what used
+│                                       #   to orphan a live server holding its port — #2000;
+│                                       #   resolve-node-bin.mjs resolves a
 │                                       #   package's bin through its own package.json, so the
 │                                       #   verify/smoke scripts spawn it with `process.execPath`
 │                                       #   rather than the `npx` `.cmd` shim Node refuses to
@@ -773,7 +779,7 @@ The ⚠️ option-deletion hazard, the snapshot rule, and the recovery recipe ab
 
   **Every web smoke runs against a throwaway catalog (#1977).** The helper mints a temp dir per run and passes it as `MCP_CATALOG_PATH`; without it the web backend falls back to the developer's real `~/.mcp-inspector/mcp.json`, which made these smokes both destructive and non-deterministic — `smoke:web:app`'s deep link persists a `deep-link` server row, so a *second* run found it already on disk, raced hydration, and drew a spurious (swallowed, non-fatal) 409 that was really just residue from the previous run. CI never saw it: a fresh `HOME` per run made every CI run look like a first run. This matches `smoke:cli` / `smoke:tui`, which have always driven a temp `--catalog`. Only the **catalog** is redirected — other per-user state under `~/.mcp-inspector` (OAuth tokens, `storage/`) stays shared, because isolating it means redirecting `HOME` wholesale, which would also move the npx and Playwright caches these smokes depend on. Teardown uses **both** halves of `scripts/lib/child-cleanup.mjs` (`stopChild` to await the child's exit, then `removeSafe` to delete the dir) — a bare `kill()` only *delivers* the signal, so removing synchronously re-enters the #1801 ENOTEMPTY race. That makes `stop()` **async**, so every caller must `await` it (and a caller's own `fail()`/`shutdown()` becomes async in turn, or execution runs past the intended exit). The isolation contract is unit-tested in `scripts/lib/prod-web-server.test.mjs` via `test:scripts`, since the smokes exit immediately after teardown and so cannot detect a regression that silently reshared the catalog or stopped cleaning up: `createTempCatalog` and `buildWebServerEnv` cover *which* catalog the server gets, and `teardownWebServer` — extracted from `stop()` for exactly this reason — is driven against a stand-in child process so the teardown asserts on the real directory rather than a spy.
 - `smoke:web:browser` (`scripts/smoke-web-browser.mjs`, #1615) goes a step further than `smoke:web`: it boots the same prod `--web` server and then actually **runs** the bundle in headless Chromium (Playwright — already a `clients/web` devDependency for the Storybook tests), asserting the app renders its first meaningful frame (the "Add Servers" control) with **no uncaught error**. `smoke:web` only checks the served HTML, so a Node built-in reaching the browser bundle slipped through it; this smoke catches that regression as a _class_ (e.g. #1612). The mechanism is the uncaught error, not a magic string: under Vite the excluded module becomes an empty stub and the first _call_ into it (e.g. `fs.readFileSync(...)` during a transitive module's init) throws a `TypeError` that aborts app mount. A _synchronous_ such throw fires `pageerror`; its _async_ twin (the same `TypeError` via `await`/`.then()`, or a failed dynamic import) is logged on the console channel as `Uncaught (in promise) …` / `Failed to fetch dynamically imported module` — the smoke hard-fails on both. The literal `Module "…" has been externalized` text is, **in a prod build**, a build-time warning (`vite build` / `npm run build`), not a runtime message, so the browser never sees it (under `npm run dev` Vite's stub is instead a `Proxy` that `console.warn`s that string at runtime); and an externalized import that is never _called_ ships a harmless `{}` and is invisible here by design. Every _other_ console error is printed as a diagnostic, not a failure (so a benign font-CDN or React-warning `console.error` doesn't flake CI). Playwright is resolved via `createRequire` based at `clients/web/package.json` — a bare `import("playwright")` would resolve relative to `scripts/`, not the cwd, so it can't be reached that way (it only appears to work when an ancestor `node_modules` carries playwright, and fails in CI, which has none). The npm script's `cd clients/web` exists only so `npx playwright install chromium` finds the local playwright bin (a no-op when already installed).
-- `smoke:web:app` (`scripts/smoke-web-app.mjs`, #1859) goes one step further again: `smoke:web:browser` stops at first paint and never connects to a server, so the Apps tab, the sandbox controller, and the UI-protocol bridge were unexercised by any smoke. This one boots the same prod `--web` server, spawns the `mcp-app-http.json` composable test server (the `mcp_app_demo` tool + its `mcp_app_demo_widget` UI resource), and drives the whole **connect → open app → widget ready** chain through a single deep-link navigate (`?serverUrl=…&autoConnect=<token>&openApp=…&appArgs=…&autoOpen=<token>`). The assertion is the `data-app-status="ready"` contract from [clients/web/README.md](clients/web/README.md) — the renderer reports `ready` only once the widget has loaded inside the sandbox iframe _and_ fired `notifications/initialized` back through the bridge, so one attribute covers the sandbox proxy being served, the UI resource loading, and the handshake completing. Two mechanics are load-bearing and easy to get wrong: the test server announces readiness on **stderr** (`console.error` in `server-composable.ts`), so both child streams are piped and scanned — watching stdout alone times out with an empty diagnostic; and its bound port is **not** the config's, because `createTestServerHttp` resolves through `findAvailablePort()`, which walks upward when the configured port is taken — so the smoke parses the announced URL rather than assuming `3130`. **Scope note:** this runs against the repo build tree like every other smoke, so it would _not_ have caught #1859 itself (a packaging failure — the file is always present in-repo); `pack:verify` owns that dimension. It does carry a cheap structural pre-check that the proxy page exists at the path `sandbox-controller.ts` resolves, so a move/rename fails fast with a clear cause instead of an opaque render timeout.
+- `smoke:web:app` (`scripts/smoke-web-app.mjs`, #1859) goes one step further again: `smoke:web:browser` stops at first paint and never connects to a server, so the Apps tab, the sandbox controller, and the UI-protocol bridge were unexercised by any smoke. This one boots the same prod `--web` server, spawns the `mcp-app-http.json` composable test server (the `mcp_app_demo` tool + its `mcp_app_demo_widget` UI resource), and drives the whole **connect → open app → widget ready** chain through a single deep-link navigate (`?serverUrl=…&autoConnect=<token>&openApp=…&appArgs=…&autoOpen=<token>`). The assertion is the `data-app-status="ready"` contract from [clients/web/README.md](clients/web/README.md) — the renderer reports `ready` only once the widget has loaded inside the sandbox iframe _and_ fired `notifications/initialized` back through the bridge, so one attribute covers the sandbox proxy being served, the UI resource loading, and the handshake completing. Two mechanics are load-bearing and easy to get wrong: the test server announces readiness on **stderr** (`console.error` in `server-composable.ts`), so both child streams are piped and scanned — watching stdout alone times out with an empty diagnostic; and its bound port is **not** the config's, because `createTestServerHttp` resolves through `findAvailablePort()`, which walks upward when the configured port is taken — so the smoke parses the announced URL rather than assuming `3130`. Both mechanics now live in `scripts/lib/announced-child.mjs` rather than in the smoke, so the failure path is testable: this smoke's happy path always receives the announcement, so nothing it could assert would prove that a child alive *through* the 30s timeout is still reachable by `shutdown()` — the case that orphaned a live server (#2000). The helper publishes the child via `onSpawn` before waiting, and `scripts/lib/announced-child.test.mjs` drives real `node -e` children (not spies) to assert it is published, still alive when the throw lands, and actually killable. Same reason `teardownWebServer` was extracted from `prod-web-server.mjs`'s `stop()`. **Scope note:** this runs against the repo build tree like every other smoke, so it would _not_ have caught #1859 itself (a packaging failure — the file is always present in-repo); `pack:verify` owns that dimension. It does carry a cheap structural pre-check that the proxy page exists at the path `sandbox-controller.ts` resolves, so a move/rename fails fast with a clear cause instead of an opaque render timeout.
 - `smoke:web:elicit` (`scripts/smoke-web-elicitation.mjs`, #1854) is the app-rendered **elicitation** counterpart of `smoke:web:app`: same prod `--web` server and the same deep-link connect, but it then calls `app_choose_option` from the Tools tab, waits for `[data-testid="app-elicitation"][data-app-elicitation-status="ready"]`, clicks a choice **inside the sandboxed app** (two `frameLocator` hops — the trusted sandbox proxy, then the untrusted app), and asserts the app's standard `ElicitResult` comes back in the *tool result*, i.e. that it reached the server rather than merely the host. It then repeats against `app-elicitation-native-http.json` — the same tool and app on a server that never advertised the nested MCP Apps `elicitation` capability — and asserts the **native** elicitation dialog takes it and no app modal is rendered. That second half is the more valuable one: the failure this feature can produce is not "the app doesn't render" but "an app renders when it should not have been offered one", which strands every user of a server that never opted in. Set `SMOKE_SCREENSHOT_DIR` to capture PNGs of the three states (used for PR proof); unset, it asserts only. Two mechanics worth knowing: the main-view tabs are a Mantine `SegmentedControl`, so there is no `role="tab"` — the clickable element is the sibling `label[for$="-Tools"]`; and the prompt string also appears in the (hidden) Protocol-tab payload, so the fallback assertion is scoped to the dialog rather than a bare text lookup.
 
 - **The build gate for the browser-externalized-builtin class (#1769)** is the earlier, more complete companion to `smoke:web:browser`. A Vite plugin in `clients/web/vite.config.ts` (logic in `clients/web/server/browser-externalized-builtin-gate.ts`, unit-tested) turns Vite 8's _browser-externalization warning_ (`Module "node:*" has been externalized for browser compatibility`) into a hard `vite build` error, so a Node built-in in the browser graph now **fails `npm run build` / `validate`** instead of shipping a `{}` stub. This catches **both** the _called-at-init_ case (which `smoke:web:browser` also catches, but later/at runtime) **and** the _imported-but-never-called_ case (the `{}` stub that is invisible to the runtime smoke "by design" — see above). Because rolldown **swallows a throw inside `onLog`** (the one hook where a thrown error doesn't abort — verified against vite@8.0.0), the plugin _records_ the warning in `onLog` and re-throws in `buildEnd`. There is **no stable log `code`**, so the gate keys off the documented message phrasing; `npm run verify:build-gate` (`scripts/verify-build-gate.mjs`, in `npm run ci` and the GitHub workflow) runs a real build with a `node:fs` probe forced into `src/main.tsx` and asserts the build fails via the gate — the only check that catches the message phrasing **drifting** in a future Vite bump and silently disabling the gate. The gate is scoped to `vite build` (`apply: 'build'`) — never `vite dev` or the vitest projects — **and** to the browser (`client`) environment (`applyToEnvironment`), so a future SSR/node environment built from this config isn't failed for a legitimate `node:*` import; the Node runner build (tsup, `build:runner`) is a separate config where built-ins are legitimate. `smoke:web:browser` stays as the runtime backstop for crashes the build can't reason about.