This is the real cause of the login loop. mam-api sets its session cookie
with Secure=true (production config). express-session refuses to emit a
Secure Set-Cookie unless req.secure is true. With `app.set('trust proxy')`
on, req.secure derives from X-Forwarded-Proto.
web-ui's nginx was unconditionally sending `X-Forwarded-Proto: $scheme`.
Inside the web-ui container nginx listens on port 80, so $scheme is always
"http" — regardless of whether the outer NPM proxy terminated TLS. mam-api
saw http, decided the connection was insecure, and silently dropped the
Set-Cookie from the login response. Login succeeded server-side (session
row landed in PG, last_login_at updated) but the browser never received a
cookie, so the very next /auth/me check came back 401 and AuthGate bounced
to the login screen. Infinite loop.
The previous Connection: "upgrade" → $connection_upgrade fix wasn't wrong
(the hardcode is a real latent bug worth fixing) — it just wasn't the
proximate cause.
Fix: a second `map` directive forwards the outer X-Forwarded-Proto through
when present, falling back to $scheme only when no proxy header exists (so
direct localhost curls still work). Both /api/ and /capture/ now send the
correct value upstream, mam-api sees https, req.secure is true, Set-Cookie
flows through, login works.
Verified by curling the existing direct-to-mam-api path: with X-Forwarded-
Proto: https on the request, Set-Cookie comes back; without it, no
Set-Cookie. That's the exact difference between web-ui-proxied and
direct-to-mam-api in our previous diagnostic curls.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>