[Bug]: "turn/setPermissionMode failed" masks provider CLI startup death — macOS TCC EPERM kills both Claude and Codex when project is in a protected folder

[yossi837]

Before submitting

• I searched existing issues and did not find a duplicate.
• I included enough detail to reproduce or investigate the problem.

Area

apps/server

Steps to reproduce

On macOS:

1. Have a project inside a TCC-protected folder (~/Desktop/..., ~/Documents/..., ~/Downloads/...)
2. Remove T3 Code's Files-and-Folders permission — or simply delete + re-download the app, which can invalidate the existing grant silently (macOS shows no re-prompt)
3. Send any prompt in any thread, with any provider

Expected behavior

1. When the provider CLI process exits before/during the control-protocol handshake, the UI error should surface the child's stderr and exit code, not the name of the first RPC that happened to fail against the dead process.
2. On macOS, when the spawn fails with EPERM and the project path is under Desktop/Documents/Downloads, show actionable guidance ("grant T3 Code access in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Files and Folders").

Actual behavior

• Claude threads fail with Provider turn start failed — turn/setPermissionMode failed and a "Claude runtime stream failed." banner
• Codex threads fail with ProviderAdapterProcessError: ... Codex App Server process exited with code 1
• Neither error mentions the real cause. The truth is only in ~/.t3/userdata/logs/server.trace.ndjson:

[cause]: Error: Claude Code process exited with code 1.
stderr: error: An internal error occurred (EPERM)

The spawned CLI dies instantly on startup (macOS TCC denies file access under the protected folder for child processes of the app), and the first control request (set_permission_mode) fails against a dead process — so the user-facing error blames permission modes. This sends users down entirely the wrong debugging path (reinstalling the app, changing the permission-mode dropdown, etc.), and I suspect some existing reports of this error tag (e.g. #4495) are actually this failure mode misdiagnosed.

Verified during diagnosis: the same pinned CLI binary, run from Terminal in the same project directory, works perfectly — including every set_permission_mode value (default, acceptEdits, plan, bypassPermissions, auto) sent over the stream-json control protocol. The failure only occurs when the CLI is spawned as a child of T3 Code without the folder grant.

Impact

Major degradation or frequent failure

Version or commit

0.0.32

Environment

macOS (Darwin 25.5), T3 Code 0.0.32 desktop app, claude CLI 2.1.223 (SDK-pinned, @anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk 0.3.223), codex-cli 0.147.0. Both providers fail identically; both work standalone from Terminal.

Workaround

tccutil reset All com.t3tools.t3code

then relaunch the app and re-grant folder access when prompted. Fixes both providers immediately.