Reported on Discord by winecountrygames — Spotify auth granted, then
re-banned for 4 hours within ~30 seconds, repeatedly. Trace from his
captured log:
< 12:05 [pre-log] Spotify ban active when log starts
15:21:27 First ban EXPIRED → 5-minute post-ban cooldown begins
15:26:27 Cooldown ends, spotify_client.is_authenticated() probe
allowed again → client initialized
15:26:59 First Spotify API call after cooldown — get_artist_albums
for an artist whose discography a background worker was
enriching — gets 429 immediately with no Retry-After
header → new ban activated for 14400s (4 hours)
Root cause: `_POST_BAN_COOLDOWN = 300` (5 minutes) is shorter than
Spotify's actual server-side memory of the previous offense. The
cooldown exists specifically to prevent the "ban expires → we probe →
re-ban" cycle (`spotify_client.py:65-68` documents that intent
explicitly), but the value was wrong: Spotify's server still
considered this user banned 5 minutes after our local ban window
ended, so the very first call after cooldown got slapped.
The 4-hour re-ban itself is correct behavior — `_BASE_MAX_RETRIES_BAN`
fires when spotipy reports "max retries", which means the client
exhausted its internal retry budget on 429s before raising. That's a
severe-ban signal and a long default is the right response.
Fix: bump `_POST_BAN_COOLDOWN` to 1800 seconds (30 min). This is the
smallest change that addresses the immediate "re-probe → re-ban" loop
in the report. 30 minutes is an empirical floor — long enough for
Spotify to actually clear its server-side memory in the cases we've
observed, short enough not to keep functional users locked out beyond
necessary. Can be revisited if reports persist.
What this PR does NOT fix (important context for the same user):
This bump only helps the "ban expires → we re-probe → re-ban" loop.
It does NOT help winecountrygames's other symptom — Spotify being
banned within 30 seconds of his FIRST EVER authorization (no prior
ban). That's a separate failure mode: on first auth, enrichment
workers immediately fan out across the user's library (250 artists
in his case), hammering Spotify endpoints with bulk get_artist_albums
calls before any rate-limit feedback can land. Spotify's hidden
per-endpoint daily quotas — which BoulderBadgeDad has empirically
documented but the global rate limiter doesn't see — flag the burst
and impose a multi-hour cooldown that LOOKS like a bot-detection ban
to us. A proper fix needs a fresh-auth ramp-up: start with very low
Spotify QPS for the first N minutes, scale up only if no rate-limit
feedback arrives. That's a separate PR.
Documented as additional follow-ups (NOT in this change):
- Adaptive cooldown that scales with the size of the previous ban —
a 4-hour MAX_RETRIES ban probably warrants a 1-hour cooldown,
while a 60-second Retry-After-honored ban can resume in 5 minutes.
The system already distinguishes these in `_set_global_rate_limit`,
it just doesn't propagate the distinction to cooldown duration.
- Probe-with-light-call pattern — make the first post-cooldown call
a single inexpensive endpoint (`current_user`) rather than
allowing a background worker's heavy `get_artist_albums` to be
the canary. Failed probe extends cooldown silently instead of
triggering a fresh 4-hour ban.
- Fresh-auth ramp-up (per the limitation above).
Files:
- core/spotify_client.py — `_POST_BAN_COOLDOWN` 300 → 1800. Comment
expanded to cite the report so the value isn't bumped back without
context.
- webui/static/helper.js — WHATS_NEW entry under 2.40 explaining
the change for affected users.
No tests added — the cooldown logic itself is unchanged, only the
constant. Tests asserting on a constant value are theater.
Reported on Discord by winecountrygames — his captured log made the
"ban-expires-to-re-ban" timing chain unambiguous.
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