Three interacting bugs caused "Failed to initialize chat" toast spam and
prevented fresh session creation:
1. Race condition in handleCreateFreshSession — setting chatMode/
selectedAgentId before startFreshSession triggered the session-init
useEffect, which called switchSession and resumed the old session
instead of creating a new one. Fixed with skipNextSessionInitRef.
2. Infinite retry loop — shouldRetrySessionInit retried indefinitely
when initializeSession failed, producing unbounded toast spam.
Fixed with a 3-retry cap (initRetryCountRef).
3. Cascading re-renders — switchSession depended on activeSession in
its closure, getting a new identity on every state change and
re-triggering the consumer's useEffect. Fixed by reading
activeSession from a ref instead.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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