Docs access unavailable for authenticated users

Update timeline

1. identified Feb 27, 2026, 12:18 PM UTC

   Authenticated users are currently unable to access documentation content despite having valid credentials, preventing them from viewing and using Docs as expected.

2. resolved Feb 27, 2026, 12:22 PM UTC

   The incident has been resolved, and authenticated users can now access the documentation content as expected. Access controls have been restored to normal operation.

3. postmortem Feb 27, 2026, 12:38 PM UTC

   **Impact** At least one user encountered an access failure where authenticated sessions were unable to load documentation content, resulting in server-side errors, while the same content remained fully accessible to unauthenticated users. The issue started on UTC-5 26-02-24 18:12 and was proactively discovered 57.6 minutes \(TTD\) later by a staff member who observed that authenticated users were unable to access documentation due to repeated server errors, indicating a problem with how the backend handled authenticated requests. No customer reports were received. The problem was resolved in 4.9 hours \(TTF\), resulting in a total window of exposure of 5.9 hours \(WOE\) [\[1\]](https://gitlab.com/fluidattacks/universe/-/issues/20805). **Cause** The error was caused by content that the client expected to receive from the server but was never sent. The root cause was the complexity introduced by dynamic tag filtering from the UI, where the server had to reconstruct all existing documentation tags in order to enable filtering [\[2\]](https://gitlab.com/fluidattacks/universe/-/merge_requests/95254),[\[3\]](https://gitlab.com/fluidattacks/universe/-/merge_requests/96030). **Solution** Support for tag filtering from the UI was removed, while preserving the same functionality in the search bar. By reducing the use case to only displaying tags related to each article, server-side complexity was significantly reduced, and the bug was eliminated at its root [\[4\]](https://gitlab.com/fluidattacks/universe/-/merge_requests/96068). **Conclusion** By removing UI-based tag filtering, the issue was fully resolved, and the overall complexity of the tagging feature was substantially reduced. In the future, we will implement unit tests for Docs to proactively detect and prevent similar issues. **INCOMPLETE\_PERSPECTIVE < MISSING\_TEST**