block / block/buzz

Bug: phone identity recovery immediately reports expired or lost connection on Desktop 0.5.6

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Dominant language
Rust
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Description

## Summary

On a fresh Buzz Desktop 0.5.6 identity-recovery screen, **Recover from your phone** immediately opens an expired/disconnected state instead of generating the recovery QR/code. **Try again** does not recover the session.

## Environment

- Buzz Desktop: 0.5.6 (`desktop-v0.5.6`)
- macOS: 26.6
- Architecture: Apple Silicon
- Installation: signed release app in `/Applications`
- Existing signed-in Buzz phone is available

## Reproduction

1. Launch Buzz Desktop without a usable local identity.
2. Select **Use an existing key**.
3. Select **recover from your phone**.
4. Observe the recovery modal.
5. Select **Try again**.
6. Fully quit and relaunch Buzz, then repeat steps 2–3.

## Actual behavior

The recovery modal immediately displays:

> This pairing code expired or lost its connection. Create a new code and try again.

No QR code or copyable pairing code is displayed. **Try again** leaves the modal in the same error state. A full application restart reproduces the failure from a clean welcome screen.

During reproduction, the desktop process showed no established outbound TCP connection for the recovery session—only its localhost listener.

## Expected behavior

Desktop should generate and display a fresh recovery QR/code, allowing the signed-in phone to use **Settings → Send identity to desktop**, followed by SAS confirmation and durable identity import.

## Impact

The new 0.5.6 phone-recovery path is unusable in this environment. A user whose encrypted backup password is unavailable cannot recover the existing desktop identity, leaving creation of a separate replacement identity as the only immediate workaround.

## Safety notes

- No replacement identity was completed during testing.
- The existing phone identity and community remain intact.
- No private key, encrypted backup content, pairing code, or credential is included in this report.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the Buzz Desktop 0.5.6 phone-recovery flow and trace how the recovery session creates its connection and pairing code. Reproduce the clean-launch sequence, then verify that a fresh QR/code appears, Try again creates a usable session, and phone recovery reaches SAS confirmation and durable identity import.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
desktop, security
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
64/100

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