I think I'm missing something fundamental

@loziniak There’s another thread specifically about the debugging problem.

I was indeed talking about the browser console. In fact, in your post, @Joseph_Meagher suggests the workaround I found noted by @waynenilsen in the this thread: PSA on SAFE Beaker Browser Developer Tools

I tested the Inspect Element workaround and it’s the only way I can access the console for the website, as opposed to the console which debugs for the SAFE Browser itself. I suspect everyone who is encountering this particular problem has built their own browser, while the people who do not encounter it are using a prepackaged one. It’s hard to tell since people don’t report OS, browser version, whether browser was downloaded or built, git commit if built, mocknet support if built, nvm and node versions, etc. These are all necessary factors to tracing down an issue in this fairly complex environment, and I’m sure there are even more factors on top.