From 94356ef928c1e0766d2360da0c73f33305d2ebec Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: William Jacoby <bonelifer@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2026 21:22:57 -0500
Subject: [PATCH] Add a TODO for the intermittent functional test failures in
 CI

Record where the empty-page failures actually happen (phpBB's own test
login/logout steps, on different databases, with identical code both
passing and failing), and the next step: collect the PHP error log from
a failing run. Link docs/TODO.md from the README.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
---
 README.md    |  4 ++++
 docs/TODO.md | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 25 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 docs/TODO.md

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 3cde32f..df96350 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -26,6 +26,10 @@ Ban a user straight from their profile, with options to clean up their content a
 3. Enable the **Ban Hammer** extension
 4. Choose the defaults under **ACP → Extensions → Ban Hammer**
 
+## TODO
+
+Ideas not yet built, practical and speculative alike: [`docs/TODO.md`](docs/TODO.md).
+
 ## Contributing
 
 Contributions are welcome!
diff --git a/docs/TODO.md b/docs/TODO.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f0abf0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/TODO.md
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+# TODO
+
+## Intermittent empty pages in the functional tests (CI)
+
+The functional test (`tests/functional/confirm_bypass_test.php`) sometimes fails in CI with:
+
+```
+Output found before DOCTYPE specification.
+Failed asserting that '' starts with "<!DOCTYPE".
+```
+
+The empty page comes from **phpBB's own test framework steps**, not from Ban Hammer code:
+
+- 09/27/2026, PR #37 runs: at the framework's `login()` (GET `ucp.php`), once on MSSQL 2019 and once on SQLite; other runs of the same code passed.
+- 09/27/2026, `master` after #38: at the framework's `logout()` inside `install_ext()` (called from `parent::setUp()`), on MSSQL 2022, twice in a row. The identical code passed every job, MSSQL 2022 included, in #38's own final run.
+
+The same code both passes and fails, on different databases and at different framework steps, so this looks like a problem in the CI test environment: phpBB's test web server returns an empty body, most likely a PHP fatal error whose output is hidden. It can't be confirmed yet because the CI run doesn't keep the PHP or web server error logs.
+
+**Next step:** get the PHP error log out of a failing run, for example with a small separate workflow that runs the same functional tests and uploads the PHP and nginx error logs as an artifact on failure. Then fix the actual cause, or report it upstream to [phpbb-extensions/test-framework](https://github.com/phpbb-extensions/test-framework) if it's in the test environment.
+
+Until then, rerunning the failed job is enough to tell a flaky run from a real failure.