First run, onboarding and sign-in

Gotchas and known limits

• Use a fresh run or browser reset for every first-run check, and never onboard --skip first. The browser profile lives in <run>/private/browser-profile. browser reset clears only the browser, so the server keeps the consent answer (the consent modal does not return), the LLM profile and the agent kind.
• control-openhands login passes both key prompts: the onboarding backend step, and the API-key screen, where it names the backend Local when Host Name is empty (after Skip and after restart --rotate-key, with no duplicate backend). Use it when the screen is only in the way. To check the screen itself (the disabled Connect, the wrong-key line, a chosen name), use the explicit fills above.
• Inactive onboarding slides stay mounted and are translated off-screen. Plain browser testids lists only the active slide, but count and wait still find handles on the others. Assert the active step with data-current-step, for example browser wait '[data-testid=onboarding-modal][data-current-step="2"]'. The testid= selector cannot carry attribute filters.
• Slide indices renumber. After the public backend step succeeds, "Choose your agent" becomes index 0 and has no Back. previewOnboardingStep counts phases with the backend step included, so 0 and 1 look identical on a healthy backend.
• The consent modal (z-70) sits over the onboarding modal, and clicks at the screen center land on agent tiles once it closes. A forced click on first-run-onboarding-screen selected Codex. Check backdrop non-dismissal with browser mouse-click 40 40, a corner outside the modal.
• The say-hello default message ("Create a basic webpage…") makes the agent work for a while. Replace it with a tiny prompt to keep model cost down.
• On a local backend, Next on the LLM step also points the default agent profile at the profile it just created. Activating another LLM profile does not move that pointer, and while it stays, deleting the onboarding profile answers 409 LLM profile is referenced by 1 agent profile(s): default. control-openhands llm preset deepseek moves it to deepseek-flash and reports repointed; llm set does not. In the UI, edit default in Settings → Agents and pick the profile in testid=agent-profile-llm-selector.
• The LLM step saves only the fields that differ from the saved settings, and the profile it creates is built from that same diff. That is the cause of the F01.onboarding-repeat-endpoint failure (#17884, fix in #17889). It is also why the mock-LLM onboarding e2e failed after earlier specs had saved the mock endpoint. The first pass of that bullet passes on a run whose saved Base URL is still empty.
• The tab title prefixes a status emoji to the stored title. A generated title that already starts with an emoji therefore shows twice (✅ ✅ Reply hello without tools | OpenHands). Right after launch the title is Conversation <id prefix> until a reload picks up the generated one.
• Right after Next, the ACP step reads "Checking for an existing Claude Code login…" with Next disabled. Wait for testid=onboarding-acp-auth-detected before reading the banner. The "already signed in" banner depends on the host's CLI login. On a clean CI machine the fields become required, and Next is blocked until they are filled.
• Choosing an ACP agent saves agent_kind: acp immediately. Re-choose OpenHands before leaving, or later conversations in the run use the ACP agent.
• In preview mode, Skip and Close are inert. The LLM slide shows gpt-5.6-sol even when another model is saved, so do not read it as data loss.
• browser toasts --history lists every status or alert text (toasts and alert banners) seen since the page loaded, including success toasts and progress lines such as Checking your backend connection…. Read it on a page that has just loaded (or reloaded) to check that no error toast appeared. A page with a standing banner never reads []: the app shell of a backend with no LLM lists the Your LLM isn't set up yet alert.