The 600-req/min/IP bucket is sized for SaaS where each tenant has
a distinct client IP. On a local Docker setup every panel shares
one IP — hydration (/workspaces + /templates + /org/templates +
/approvals/pending) plus polling (A2A overlay + activity tabs +
approvals + schedule + channels + audit trail) can burst past the
bucket inside a minute, blanking the canvas with 429s. The user
reported it after dragging workspaces — dragging itself is
release-only (savePosition in onNodeDragStop), but the polling
that's always running added onto startup tripped the limit.
Two-layer fix:
Server: RateLimiter.Middleware short-circuits when isDevModeFailOpen
is true (MOLECULE_ENV=development + empty ADMIN_TOKEN), matching
the Tier-1b hatch already applied to AdminAuth, WorkspaceAuth, and
discovery. SaaS production keeps the bucket.
Client: api.ts auto-retries a single 429 on idempotent GET requests,
waiting the server-provided Retry-After (capped at 20s). Mutations
(POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE) never auto-retry to avoid double-applying.
Users on SaaS hitting a legitimate rate-limit spike get one
transparent recovery instead of an immediately-blank Canvas.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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