[DenysKuchma]

Summary

Fixes #5769.
In run-workers --by pool, a Before hook failing after loginAs() left the 'teardown' recorder session unbalanced. Every subsequent failure re-started it, pushing stale promises onto the shared session stack (oldPromises), until session.restore() chained a promise onto itself — "Chaining cycle detected" rejections grew exponentially and the worker died of OOM with OK | 0 passed

[gololdf1sh]

Thanks! Works for the #5769 repro. But with retry: { Before: 1 } in the config (we use { Scenario: 1, Before: 1 }) it still breaks in --by pool: the failed Before error keeps coming back as UNHANDLED REJECTION (16 → 1,957 → 133K …), the worker runs out of memory, and the summary says OK | 0 passed.

Repro: https://github.com/gololdf1sh/codeceptjs-5769-repro (npm install && npm test)

npm test output (trimmed)

     1 [Worker 01] Suite 10 --
    16 [Worker 1] UNHANDLED REJECTION: element (#missing) still not present on page after 1 sec
…
     1 [Worker 01] Suite 07 --
  1957 [Worker 1] UNHANDLED REJECTION: element (#missing) still not present on page after 1 sec
…
     1 [Worker 01] Suite 04 --
133505 [Worker 1] UNHANDLED REJECTION: element (#missing) still not present on page after 1 sec
…
     1 [Worker 01]   FAIL  | 11 passed, 11 failed, 6 failedHooks   // 2s
…
     1 [Main] Worker Error: Error [ERR_WORKER_OUT_OF_MEMORY]: Worker terminated due to reaching memory limit: JS heap out of memory
     1   OK  | 0 passed   // 59s

[DenysKuchma]

@gololdf1sh done

[DavertMik]

👷‍♀️ Is it done
Partially. Prevent worker crashes after authenticated setup failures.

The added cleanup is skipped with retry: { Before: 1 }, leaving the reported retry case unaddressed. This is a static review; scenarios were not executed.

🦕 Backwards Compatibility
Existing configurations remain valid, but nested execution scopes are affected by the regression below.

🌋 Merge Risks
Nested scopes restore the wrong parent — authors nesting within blocks lose the outer execution boundary in lib/recorder.js.

🔬 What must be verified
What if a QA engineer retries failing authenticated setup once — retry completes; remaining pooled tests execute; failures are reported.
What if a QA engineer runs repeated authenticated setup failures — all suites execute without memory exhaustion or false success.
What if a QA engineer’s saved login expires during setup — authentication recovers; subsequent failures remain isolated.