fix(ui): Fix email link race with sign up if missing

[dmoerner]

Follow up fix for #7928 after additional testing in staging.

With development instances, there can be races between the polling and new email link tabs when processing a sign up through the sign-in-or-up flow with strict enumeration protection enabled. Late in the review process on that PR, I added an attempt to avoid these kinds of races, but it was a regression on dev instances when the sign up completes without extra requirements. ec83f7c

Revert that fix, and also add improved redirect handling in the case where the flow completes immediately.

This has the cost that if someone closes the original tab, they are unable to complete the sign up. (That was what we were trying to fix during PR review.) However, there is no easy solution to that problem (and the solution that we attempted to implement to fix it was not successful.) Since email links are so little used, I think we should accept that as a cost for now. If someone closes the original tab, they will just need to start the flow again.

This was tested locally against staging and I was no longer able to produce races with dev instances.

End to end validation I performed on this branch:

• Email link sign in with existing user
• Email link sign in transfer to sign up missing requirements
• Email link sign in transfer to sign up complete (this was the regression)
• Email link sign up
• Email code sign in transfer to sign up missing requirements
• Email code sign in with existing user

Description

Checklist

• pnpm test runs as expected.
• pnpm build runs as expected.
• (If applicable) JSDoc comments have been added or updated for any package exports
• (If applicable) Documentation has been updated

Type of change

• 🐛 Bug fix
• 🌟 New feature
• 🔨 Breaking change
• 📖 Refactoring / dependency upgrade / documentation
• other:

[vercel]

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
clerk-js-sandbox	Ready	Preview	Aug 4, 2026 3:54pm
swingset	Ready	Preview	Aug 4, 2026 3:54pm

[changeset-bot]

🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: 05b94d6

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 3 packages

Name	Type
@clerk/ui	Patch
@clerk/chrome-extension	Patch
@clerk/swingset	Patch

Not sure what this means? Click here to learn what changesets are.

Click here if you're a maintainer who wants to add another changeset to this PR

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Transferable email-link verification now uses the sign-up-if-missing transfer flow from the sign-in factor card. The verification tab no longer consumes transfers through a local callback. Completed transfers activate the session. Pending tasks use in-component navigation, while terminal redirects use window navigation. Tests cover these flows.

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~25 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• clerk/javascript#7928: Introduced the transferable email-link handling refined by this change.

Suggested reviewers: wobsoriano

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly identifies the email-link race fix in the sign-up-if-missing flow.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description explains the race condition, redirect handling, trade-offs, and validation performed for the changeset.

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commit: 05b94d6

[github-actions]

API Changes Report

Generated by Break Check on 2026-08-04T15:54:18.462Z

Summary

Metric	Count
Packages analyzed	19
Packages with changes	0
🔴 Breaking changes	0
🟡 Non-breaking changes	0
🟢 Additions	0

No API Changes Detected

All packages have stable APIs with no detected changes.

---

Report generated by Break Check

_{Last ran on 05b94d6.}

[wobsoriano]

i got you