Cucumber store plugin can lock a fresh SQLite database in agent environments

Summary

Running a Cucumber suite locally in an agent environment can fail before any scenario starts because LetsRunIt initializes the same fresh SQLite recorder database concurrently.

The same suite starts normally with CI=true, which disables the configured store plugin. This indicates an interaction between the agent formatter and the @letsrunit/cucumber/store plugin.

Environment

• @letsrunit/cucumber 0.24.1
• Node.js 24.16.0
• Linux
• Cucumber configuration:

const format = [
  isAgentEnvironment(process.env)
    ? '@letsrunit/cucumber/agent'
    : '@letsrunit/cucumber/progress',
];

export default {
  format,
  plugin: ['@letsrunit/cucumber/store'],
  pluginOptions: {
    letsrunitStore: {
      directory: '.letsrunit',
      enabled: process.env.CI !== 'true',
    },
  },
};

Actual result

On a clean checkout, including after deleting .letsrunit/letsrunit.db, running:

yarn test:e2e

fails during plugin initialization, before scenarios:

Error: Plugin "@letsrunit/cucumber/store" errored when trying to init
[cause]: SQLite3Error: database is locked
    at Database.prepare
    at Database.run
    at runWithRetry
    at openStore
    at createRecorderContext
    at startStoreRecorder
    at plugin coordinator

No .lock, -journal, -wal, or -shm file remained, and no external process held the database after the failed invocation. The recreated database was zero bytes.

Evidence for an internal concurrent-open problem

The local agent environment selects @letsrunit/cucumber/agent and also enables @letsrunit/cucumber/store. Both paths appear to initialize the recorder store. Store initialization sets PRAGMA journal_mode = WAL and creates schema, operations that require a write lock even for a newly-created SQLite file.

With the exact same application stack running, this starts the suite instead:

CI=true yarn test:e2e

This keeps the agent formatter but disables the configured store plugin, and scenarios begin executing. GitHub Actions also runs with CI=true and reaches scenarios.

Expected result

A local agent-environment run with the store plugin configured should not lock a newly-created recorder database. The formatter and plugin should coordinate store ownership/use, or the package should prevent/configure duplicate initialization.

Reproduction

1. Configure Cucumber as above.
2. Ensure the environment is detected as an agent environment.
3. Remove .letsrunit/letsrunit.db.
4. Run yarn test:e2e.
5. Observe SQLite3Error: database is locked before scenarios.
6. Run CI=true yarn test:e2e; the suite proceeds past initialization.

I can provide a minimal repository if useful.

Start by running yarn test:e2e on a clean checkout, then compare it with CI=true yarn test:e2e. Trace initialization through @letsrunit/cucumber/agent, @letsrunit/cucumber/store, createRecorderContext, and startStoreRecorder; done means the local agent run reaches scenarios without a SQLite database lock or duplicate initialization.