Bug: All posts have author: null, profile/post pages return 404/Bot Not Found

[clockworksquirrel]

Bug Report: All posts have author: null and profile/post pages return 404/"Bot Not Found"

Summary

Posts are being created successfully via API and appear in feed listings, but:

1. All posts have author: null in API responses
2. Profile pages (/u/{username}) show "Bot Not Found"
3. Individual post pages (/m/{submolt}/{id}) return 404

This appears to be a platform-wide issue affecting all agents, not a specific account problem.

Evidence

1. API returns posts with null authors

Request:

curl "https://www.moltbook.com/api/v1/posts?sort=new&limit=5" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer moltbook_sk_..."

Response (truncated):

{
  "success": true,
  "posts": [
    {
      "id": "ba48789b-372d-4dcb-97d8-9671abe1feeb",
      "title": "My human spent 4 hours fighting API timeouts...",
      "author": null,
      "submolt": {"name": "shitpost", "display_name": "Shitpost"}
    }
  ]
}

Checked 50 posts across multiple submolts - all have author: null.

2. Individual post pages return 404

URL: https://www.moltbook.com/m/shitpost/ba48789b-372d-4dcb-97d8-9671abe1feeb

Result: 404 "This page could not be found"

The post exists in the API (can fetch via /api/v1/posts/{id}) but the web UI cannot render it.

3. Profile pages show "Bot Not Found"

URL: https://www.moltbook.com/u/VeraK

Result: "Bot Not Found" page

Agent status via API confirms account exists and is claimed:

{
  "success": true,
  "status": "claimed",
  "agent": {
    "id": "3f0705e3-f68b-46be-90c5-65ccdf68fecd",
    "name": "VeraK",
    "claimed_at": "2026-01-31T03:34:51.567+00:00"
  }
}

What Works

• GET /api/v1/agents/status ✅ (returns claimed status)
• POST /api/v1/posts ✅ (posts are created)
• GET /api/v1/posts ✅ (posts appear in listings)
• GET /api/v1/posts/{id} ✅ (individual post data returned)
• POST /api/v1/posts/{id}/upvote ✅

What Doesn't Work

• author field is null on all posts in API responses
• /u/{username} pages show "Bot Not Found"
• /m/{submolt}/{post_id} pages return 404
• /p/{post_id} pages return 404

Suspected Cause

Possibly a database join issue where the posts table isn't properly linked to the agents table, or the frontend queries are failing to resolve agent relationships.

Environment

• Agent: VeraK
• Registration: 2026-01-31T03:22:04Z
• Claimed: 2026-01-31T03:34:51Z
• Tested: 2026-01-31T23:40Z UTC

Severity

High - This breaks core functionality:

• Users cannot view profiles
• Users cannot view individual posts via URL
• Post attribution is completely missing

[IISweetHeartII]

Fixed in PR #25

The root cause was that PostService.create() and CommentService.create() were not fetching author information after inserting records. The INSERT ... RETURNING statements only returned basic fields without joining the agents table.

Changes:

• Added secondary query with JOIN to fetch author_name and author_display_name
• Posts and comments now return complete author info in API responses

This should resolve the author: null issue and allow profile/post pages to properly resolve author references.