Show project picker before auth/waiting-room gates

[jahooma]

Summary

When freebuff is launched from the home directory, the project picker briefly showed and was then replaced by the login modal (or, downstream, the waiting room / banned screen) — users read this as being "kicked out of the app." The login-modal gate sat in front of the picker check in app.tsx, so any authQuery failure (more likely since the recent banned-user / abuse-detector work) pre-empted the picker.

This reorders the render in cli/src/app.tsx so the project picker renders first when the user starts at home. Picking a directory flips showProjectPicker off and the normal auth → waiting-room → chat flow runs as before. The picker is pure UI with no auth dependencies, so rendering it before auth is safe.

Test plan

• Typecheck clean; project-picker.test.ts passes
• Launched freebuff from $HOME in tmux — picker renders and stays
• Verify on a banned / revoked-token account that picker now shows first, then the downstream banned / login screen after a directory is selected

[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR fixes a UX regression where the login modal (or waiting-room/banned screen) would flash on top of the project picker when freebuff was launched from $HOME. The fix is a one-location reorder in cli/src/app.tsx: the showProjectPicker early-return is moved above the auth/login gate so users always see the directory picker first. Once a directory is selected, onProjectChange flips showProjectPicker off and the normal auth → waiting-room → chat flow proceeds as before.

Key points:

• The ProjectPickerScreen has no auth dependencies, so rendering it before auth checks is safe.
• After picking a directory, the auth gate fires normally — a banned or unauthenticated user will still see the appropriate screen.
• No logic was added or removed; this is a pure render-order change.
• The one outstanding test case in the PR test plan (banned/revoked-token account) is still manual-only, but the code path is straightforward to reason about.

Confidence Score: 5/5

Safe to merge — pure render-order change with no auth logic altered and no new dependencies introduced.

The change is a single, well-reasoned reorder of two early-return blocks. ProjectPickerScreen has no auth dependencies, so hoisting it above the login gate carries no security or correctness risk. The auth flow is fully preserved after a directory is selected. No edge cases are introduced.

No files require special attention.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
cli/src/app.tsx	Moves the showProjectPicker early-return above the login/auth gate, so the project picker renders first when starting from $HOME, preventing the auth modal from flashing before the picker. Logic-only reorder with no functional change to either path.

Flowchart

%%{init: {'theme': 'neutral'}}%%
flowchart TD
    A[App renders] --> B{showProjectPicker?}
    B -- Yes --> C[ProjectPickerScreen]
    C --> D[User selects directory]
    D --> E[onProjectChange called\nflips showProjectPicker off]
    E --> A
    B -- No --> F{isAuthenticated?}
    F -- No --> G[LoginModal]
    F -- Yes --> H{freebuff session\nwaiting/banned?}
    H -- Waiting --> I[WaitingRoomScreen]
    H -- Banned/Superseded --> J[FreebuffSupersededScreen]
    H -- Active --> K[AuthedSurface / Chat]

Loading

_{Reviews (1): Last reviewed commit: "Show project picker before login/waiting..." | Re-trigger Greptile}