the owner can create accounts

POST /api/users plus an Add-account form in Settings > User management. Until now
createUser had one call site — bootstrap, gated on an empty user table — so every
non-owner account anywhere had been inserted into Postgres by hand.

Created accounts are Active. The column defaults to Unverified and signin refuses
anything else with a bare UNAUTHORIZED, which is exactly what made the hand-INSERT
route look like a wrong password.

Also closes a hole found while reading the write path: a second Super Admin was
storable. The CHECK constraint pins user 1's role but cannot see other rows, and
getOwnerUser() was LIMIT 1 with no ORDER BY, so two holders would have made "who owns
this server" a question the query plan answered — and that answer feeds the agent
sidecar's identity, vault access and origin scoping. Both write paths now refuse the
role and getOwnerUser() orders by id.

USER_DIRS and provisionUserDirs move into data-path.ts so the create handler and
scripts/provision-user-dirs.ts cannot disagree about what an account's skeleton is.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

TODO.md

@@ -14,10 +14,26 @@ the owner's OS user and can never be granted. Indirection there really is accide
 
 ## Multi-user
 
-- [ ] **No way to create a second account.** `createUser` has one call site, `auth/bootstrap.ts`, gated
+- [x] **No way to create a second account.** Fixed 2026-08-11 on `sidecar-app-store`: `POST /api/users`
-      on an empty user table. There is no signup route, no invite flow and no admin create-user
+      (`api/users/create-user.ts`, owner-gated) plus an Add-account form in
-      handler, so every member on this instance was inserted into Postgres by hand. This is the
+      Settings → User management. Created accounts are `status: 'Active'` — the column defaults to
-      blocker for onboarding anyone who is not already in the database.
+      `'Unverified'` and `signin.ts` refuses anything else with a bare UNAUTHORIZED, which is the trap
+      the hand-INSERT route fell into. The owner sets the password and reads it out; `passwordChangedAt`
+      stays null. Directories come from the shared `provisionUserDirs`/`USER_DIRS` in `data-path.ts`,
+      which `scripts/provision-user-dirs.ts` now imports rather than restating.
+
+- [ ] **Still no invite flow, and no password reset for a member.** The owner types the password and
+      tells the person, which means the owner knows it and the member cannot change it back if they
+      forget theirs — recovery today is delete-and-recreate. An invite (token, expiry, member sets
+      their own) needs a mail path. This is the next piece, not a nice-to-have.
+
+- [x] **A second Super Admin was storable, and made the owner nondeterministic.** Fixed 2026-08-11.
+      `ck_users_owner_is_super_admin` pins user 1's role but a row-level CHECK cannot see other rows, and
+      `updateUserRoleHandler` happily promoted anyone — while `getOwnerUser()` was
+      `WHERE role='Super Admin' LIMIT 1` with no ORDER BY. Two holders would have made "who owns this
+      server" a question the query plan answered, and that answer feeds the agent sidecar's identity,
+      vault access and origin scoping. Both write paths now refuse the role, the list endpoint offers
+      `assignableRoles` without it, and `getOwnerUser()` orders by id.
 
 - [ ] **`dashboards.id` is a global primary key, and ids are `slugify(name)`.** Two accounts cannot
       both have a dashboard named "Home". Reachable today: six accounts exist. The recommendation on

scripts/provision-user-dirs.ts

@@ -16,26 +16,10 @@
 
 import { mkdirSync, existsSync } from 'node:fs';
 import { join } from 'node:path';
-
+// The list and DATA_PATH itself come from the platform rather than being restated here. The owner's
-const DATA_PATH = process.env.DATA_PATH ?? join(process.cwd(), 'data');
+// create-account handler provisions the same skeleton, and a script that drifted from it would produce
-
+// accounts that differ by how they were made. Importing data-path.ts pulls in no database and no server.
-// Mirrors the shape the owner's root grew organically. Most of these are also created on demand by
+import { DATA_PATH, USER_DIRS } from '../src/servers/data-path';
-// whichever feature owns them (attachments, dashboards, email_accounts…), so pre-creating them buys
-// legibility more than function — the tree shows what a user has without having to use it first.
-//
-// `home` is the exception, and the reason this exists at all: nothing creates it today. getOwnerHomeDir
-// returns process.env.HOME_DIR whenever it is set, which it always is on a real install, so the
-// per-user home has never actually been reached. It is where a non-owner's sessions will run.
-const USER_DIRS = [
-  'home',
-  'attachments',
-  'cache',
-  'dashboards',
-  'email_accounts',
-  'general_chat_sessions',
-  'logs',
-  'sidecar',
-] as const;
 
 const DRY_RUN = process.env.DRY_RUN === '1';
 const emails = process.argv.slice(2).filter(Boolean);

src/apps/officer-web/Screens/Dashboard/Settings/UserManagement/CreateUserForm.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,214 @@
+import { useState } from 'react';
+import { useQueryClient } from '@tanstack/react-query';
+import { toast } from 'sonner';
+import { Loader2, UserPlus, Dices, Copy, X } from 'lucide-react';
+import { useClient } from 'hooks/useClient';
+import { Button } from '@/components/ui/button';
+import { Input } from '@/components/ui/input';
+import { Label } from '@/components/ui/label';
+import { Select, SelectContent, SelectItem, SelectTrigger, SelectValue } from '@/components/ui/select';
+
+// The owner creating an account. Until this existed the only way to add one was an INSERT in Postgres.
+//
+// The password is visible, not masked, and that is the point: the owner has to be able to read it back
+// to the person they are creating it for. Masking a value nobody has yet only makes it easy to typo
+// twice. When there is an invite flow this whole field goes away.
+
+type CreateUserFormProps = {
+  /** Roles the server will actually accept. Excludes the owner role — see manage-users.ts. */
+  roles: string[];
+  /** Invalidated on success so the list below refreshes. */
+  usersKey: readonly unknown[];
+};
+
+// Mirrors validatePassword on the server: length, both cases, a digit and a symbol. Generated rather
+// than demanded so the owner is not sitting there inventing one that passes.
+function generatePassword(): string {
+  const lower = 'abcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz';
+  const upper = 'ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ';
+  const digits = '23456789';
+  const symbols = '!@#$%^&*-_=+';
+  const all = lower + upper + digits + symbols;
+
+  const pick = (set: string, count: number) =>
+    Array.from(crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint32Array(count)), (n) => set[n % set.length]!);
+
+  // One of each class first, so the result cannot fail the server's rules by chance, then filled out.
+  const chars = [...pick(lower, 4), ...pick(upper, 3), ...pick(digits, 3), ...pick(symbols, 2), ...pick(all, 8)];
+
+  // Shuffled so the classes are not in fixed positions. Fisher-Yates with crypto randomness.
+  const noise = crypto.getRandomValues(new Uint32Array(chars.length));
+  for (let i = chars.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {
+    const j = noise[i]! % (i + 1);
+    [chars[i], chars[j]] = [chars[j]!, chars[i]!];
+  }
+  return chars.join('');
+}
+
+const EMPTY = { email: '', name: '', username: '', password: '', role: 'Member' };
+
+export const CreateUserForm = ({ roles, usersKey }: CreateUserFormProps) => {
+  const client = useClient();
+  const queryClient = useQueryClient();
+  const [open, setOpen] = useState(false);
+  const [saving, setSaving] = useState(false);
+  const [form, setForm] = useState(EMPTY);
+
+  const set = (key: keyof typeof EMPTY) => (value: string) => setForm((prev) => ({ ...prev, [key]: value }));
+
+  const close = () => {
+    setOpen(false);
+    setForm(EMPTY);
+  };
+
+  const submit = async (ev: React.FormEvent) => {
+    ev.preventDefault();
+    setSaving(true);
+    try {
+      await client.post('/users', form);
+      await queryClient.invalidateQueries({ queryKey: usersKey });
+      // The password is named in the toast on purpose. It is the only moment it is recoverable — the
+      // server stores an argon2 hash and there is no reset flow yet, so an owner who closed the form
+      // without noting it would have to delete the account and make it again.
+      toast.success(`${form.email} created`, {
+        description: `Password: ${form.password}`,
+        duration: 30_000,
+      });
+      close();
+    } catch (ex) {
+      // The server's message is the useful one here — which field, and why.
+      toast.error(ex instanceof Error ? ex.message : 'Could not create the account');
+    } finally {
+      setSaving(false);
+    }
+  };
+
+  if (!open) {
+    return (
+      <Button variant="outline" size="sm" onClick={() => setOpen(true)}>
+        <UserPlus className="mr-2 h-4 w-4" />
+        Add account
+      </Button>
+    );
+  }
+
+  return (
+    <form onSubmit={submit} className="space-y-4 rounded-lg border p-4">
+      <div className="flex items-start justify-between gap-2">
+        <div>
+          <h3 className="text-sm font-medium">New account</h3>
+          <p className="text-xs text-muted-foreground">
+            Created active — they can sign in straight away. Tell them the password; it is not recoverable afterwards.
+          </p>
+        </div>
+        <Button type="button" variant="ghost" size="icon" onClick={close} aria-label="Cancel">
+          <X className="h-4 w-4" />
+        </Button>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="grid gap-4 sm:grid-cols-2">
+        <div className="space-y-1.5">
+          <Label htmlFor="new-user-email">Email</Label>
+          <Input
+            id="new-user-email"
+            type="email"
+            autoComplete="off"
+            value={form.email}
+            onChange={(ev) => set('email')(ev.target.value)}
+            required
+          />
+        </div>
+
+        <div className="space-y-1.5">
+          <Label htmlFor="new-user-name">Name</Label>
+          <Input
+            id="new-user-name"
+            autoComplete="off"
+            value={form.name}
+            onChange={(ev) => set('name')(ev.target.value)}
+            required
+          />
+        </div>
+
+        <div className="space-y-1.5">
+          <Label htmlFor="new-user-username">Username</Label>
+          <Input
+            id="new-user-username"
+            autoComplete="off"
+            value={form.username}
+            onChange={(ev) => set('username')(ev.target.value)}
+            required
+          />
+          <p className="text-xs text-muted-foreground">Letters, numbers, dots, hyphens and underscores.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div className="space-y-1.5">
+          <Label htmlFor="new-user-role">Role</Label>
+          <Select value={form.role} onValueChange={set('role')}>
+            <SelectTrigger id="new-user-role">
+              <SelectValue />
+            </SelectTrigger>
+            <SelectContent>
+              {roles.map((role) => (
+                <SelectItem key={role} value={role}>
+                  {role}
+                </SelectItem>
+              ))}
+            </SelectContent>
+          </Select>
+          <p className="text-xs text-muted-foreground">
+            What the role may reach is set under Permissions. A role with no grants can sign in and reach nothing but
+            its own profile.
+          </p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div className="space-y-1.5 sm:col-span-2">
+          <Label htmlFor="new-user-password">Password</Label>
+          <div className="flex gap-2">
+            <Input
+              id="new-user-password"
+              // Deliberately visible — see the note at the top of this file.
+              type="text"
+              autoComplete="off"
+              spellCheck={false}
+              className="font-mono"
+              value={form.password}
+              onChange={(ev) => set('password')(ev.target.value)}
+              required
+            />
+            <Button type="button" variant="outline" size="icon" onClick={() => set('password')(generatePassword())}>
+              <Dices className="h-4 w-4" />
+              <span className="sr-only">Generate a password</span>
+            </Button>
+            <Button
+              type="button"
+              variant="outline"
+              size="icon"
+              disabled={!form.password}
+              onClick={() => {
+                void navigator.clipboard.writeText(form.password);
+                toast.success('Password copied');
+              }}
+            >
+              <Copy className="h-4 w-4" />
+              <span className="sr-only">Copy the password</span>
+            </Button>
+          </div>
+          <p className="text-xs text-muted-foreground">
+            At least 12 characters, with upper and lower case, a number and a symbol.
+          </p>
+        </div>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="flex gap-2">
+        <Button type="submit" disabled={saving}>
+          {saving && <Loader2 className="mr-2 h-4 w-4 animate-spin" />}
+          Create account
+        </Button>
+        <Button type="button" variant="ghost" onClick={close} disabled={saving}>
+          Cancel
+        </Button>
+      </div>
+    </form>
+  );
+};

src/apps/officer-web/Screens/Dashboard/Settings/UserManagement/UsersSection.tsx

@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ import {
   AlertDialogHeader,
   AlertDialogTitle,
 } from '@/components/ui/alert-dialog';
+import { CreateUserForm } from './CreateUserForm';
 
 type ManagedUser = {
   id: number;
@@ -27,7 +28,14 @@ type ManagedUser = {
   isOwner: boolean;
 };
 
-type UsersResponse = { users: ManagedUser[]; roles: string[]; ownerId: number };
+type UsersResponse = {
+  users: ManagedUser[];
+  /** Every role, for displaying the owner's own value. */
+  roles: string[];
+  /** Roles the server will accept in a write. Excludes the owner role — both write paths refuse it. */
+  assignableRoles: string[];
+  ownerId: number;
+};
 
 const USERS_KEY = ['MANAGED_USERS'];
 
@@ -86,9 +94,11 @@ export const UsersSection = () => {
     <div className="space-y-4">
       <p className="text-sm text-muted-foreground">
         Every account on this server. The owner is fixed — the database itself refuses to demote or remove it — so that
-        row cannot be changed from here.
+        row cannot be changed from here, and no other account can be promoted into it.
       </p>
 
+      <CreateUserForm roles={data.assignableRoles} usersKey={USERS_KEY} />
+
       <div className="rounded-lg border divide-y">
         {data.users.map((user) => {
           const busy = pendingId === user.id;
@@ -114,7 +124,9 @@ export const UsersSection = () => {
                   <SelectValue />
                 </SelectTrigger>
                 <SelectContent>
-                  {data.roles.map((role) => (
+                  {/* The owner's row needs its own value present to render at all, and it is disabled
+                      anyway. Every other row offers only what the server will accept. */}
+                  {(user.isOwner ? data.roles : data.assignableRoles).map((role) => (
                     <SelectItem key={role} value={role}>
                       {role}
                     </SelectItem>

src/databases/officer_db/src/index.ts

@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ export {
   getUsers,
   getUserById,
   getUserByEmail,
+  getUserByUsername,
   getOwnerUser,
   getUserCount,
   createUser,

src/databases/officer_db/src/queries/auth.ts

@@ -19,6 +19,14 @@ export async function getUserByEmail(email: string): Promise<UserSelect | undefi
   return user;
 }
 
+// `username` is unique in the schema, so this exists to turn a would-be constraint violation into a
+// sentence. Creating an account is a form someone fills in, and "duplicate key value violates unique
+// constraint users_username_unique" is not an answer to give them.
+export async function getUserByUsername(username: string): Promise<UserSelect | undefined> {
+  const [user] = await db.select().from(users).where(eq(users.username, username));
+  return user;
+}
+
 // The owner: the one account with role 'Super Admin'. Sidecars that need "who is the owner" (e.g. the
 // agent sidecar, which PM2 starts with no email in its env) resolve it here rather than being told by
 // the main server.
@@ -27,8 +35,15 @@ export async function getUserByEmail(email: string): Promise<UserSelect | undefi
 // now makes, asserted a second way, and the two would part company the moment the owner was not user
 // #1. Returns undefined rather than falling back to the lowest id when no row holds the role: the agent
 // sidecar refusing to start beats it silently running as the wrong person.
+//
+// `order by id` is not cosmetic. Without it, two rows holding the role would make "who owns this
+// server" whatever Postgres happened to return first — and that answer feeds the agent sidecar's
+// identity, the vault and origin scoping. The write paths refuse to create a second Super Admin
+// (create-user.ts and updateUserRoleHandler), so this should never have a choice to make; ordering is
+// what makes the outcome deterministic if one ever gets in by another route, and id 1 is the bootstrap
+// account the CHECK constraint already pins.
 export async function getOwnerUser(): Promise<UserSelect | undefined> {
-  const [user] = await db.select().from(users).where(eq(users.role, 'Super Admin')).limit(1);
+  const [user] = await db.select().from(users).where(eq(users.role, 'Super Admin')).orderBy(users.id).limit(1);
   return user;
 }
 

src/servers/api/users/create-user.ts

@@ -0,0 +1,89 @@
+import type { Handler } from 'hono';
+import { createUser, getUserByEmail, getUserByUsername, USER_ROLES } from 'officerdb';
+import type { UserRole } from 'officerdb';
+import argon2 from 'argon2';
+import * as errors from '@@/custom-errors';
+import { provisionUserDirs } from '@@/data-path';
+import { validatePassword } from '../auth/validate-password';
+import { validateUsername } from '../auth/validate-username';
+import { toPublicUser } from './manage-users';
+
+// The owner creating a second account. Until this existed, `createUser` had exactly one call site —
+// `auth/bootstrap.ts`, gated on an empty user table — so every non-owner account on any instance had
+// been inserted into Postgres by hand.
+//
+// ── Why the owner sets the password ──
+//
+// The alternative is an invite: a token emailed to the person, who then sets their own. That is the
+// better shape and it needs a mail path, a token table and an expiry policy. This is the honest
+// intermediate: the owner types a password and tells the person, the same way they would hand over a
+// wifi key. `passwordChangedAt` stays null, so nothing pretends the person chose it.
+//
+// ── Status is 'Active', deliberately ──
+//
+// The column defaults to 'Unverified' and `signin.ts` refuses anything that is not 'Active' with a bare
+// UNAUTHORIZED. So an account created at the default would be indistinguishable from a wrong password,
+// which is precisely the trap the hand-INSERT route fell into. An account the owner created in the admin
+// UI is verified by definition — the owner is the verification.
+
+/** Roles this route may assign. Never 'Super Admin' — see below. */
+const ASSIGNABLE_ROLES = USER_ROLES.filter((r) => r !== 'Super Admin');
+
+export const createUserHandler: Handler = async function (ctx) {
+  const body = (ctx.get('body') ?? {}) as Record<string, unknown>;
+
+  const email = typeof body.email === 'string' ? body.email.trim().toLowerCase() : '';
+  const name = typeof body.name === 'string' ? body.name.trim() : '';
+  const password = typeof body.password === 'string' ? body.password : '';
+  const role = typeof body.role === 'string' ? body.role : 'Member';
+
+  if (!email || !/^[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+\.[^\s@]+$/.test(email)) throw errors.BAD_REQUEST('Invalid email address');
+  if (!name) throw errors.BAD_REQUEST('Name is required');
+
+  // The same validators bootstrap uses. A member's password protects the same surface a member can
+  // reach, so there is no argument for a weaker rule here — and two different rules would mean the
+  // owner could create an account that could not then change its own password to something similar.
+  const username = validateUsername(typeof body.username === 'string' ? body.username : undefined);
+  validatePassword(password);
+
+  // Refused rather than filtered, so the owner is told instead of quietly getting a Member.
+  //
+  // There is exactly one owner. The database only pins user 1's role — a row-level CHECK cannot say
+  // "no OTHER row may hold this" — so a second Super Admin is storable, and `getOwnerUser()` would then
+  // return whichever the query reached first. That answer decides the identity the agent sidecar runs
+  // as, who reaches the vault and which origin is privileged, so it is not a thing to leave to a query
+  // plan. If the owner ever needs to hand the server over, that is a deliberate transfer, not a dropdown.
+  if (!(ASSIGNABLE_ROLES as readonly string[]).includes(role)) {
+    throw errors.BAD_REQUEST(
+      role === 'Super Admin'
+        ? 'There is one server owner and it cannot be created here.'
+        : `Role must be one of: ${ASSIGNABLE_ROLES.join(', ')}`,
+    );
+  }
+
+  // Checked before the insert purely for the message — both columns are unique, so the database is the
+  // real guard and this is a race it can lose harmlessly (the insert then throws).
+  if (await getUserByEmail(email)) throw errors.CONFLICT('An account with that email already exists');
+  if (await getUserByUsername(username)) throw errors.CONFLICT('That username is taken');
+
+  const user = await createUser({
+    email,
+    password: await argon2.hash(password),
+    name,
+    username,
+    status: 'Active',
+    role: role as UserRole,
+  });
+
+  // After the row, and not fatal if it fails. A missing directory is repairable from a shell
+  // (`bun scripts/provision-user-dirs.ts <email>`); an account that half-exists because mkdir failed
+  // is not, and the owner would have to go into Postgres to clean it up — the exact thing this route
+  // is here to stop being necessary.
+  try {
+    provisionUserDirs(email);
+  } catch (ex) {
+    console.warn(`[users] created ${email} but could not provision its data directories`, ex);
+  }
+
+  return ctx.json({ user: toPublicUser(user) }, 201);
+};

src/servers/api/users/manage-users.ts

@@ -21,7 +21,8 @@ type PublicUser = {
   isOwner: boolean;
 };
 
-const toPublicUser = (u: Awaited<ReturnType<typeof getUsers>>[number]): PublicUser => ({
+/** Shared with create-user.ts, so a created account and a listed one are described the same way. */
+export const toPublicUser = (u: Awaited<ReturnType<typeof getUsers>>[number]): PublicUser => ({
   id: u.id,
   email: u.email,
   name: u.name,
@@ -37,7 +38,10 @@ export const listUsersHandler: Handler = async function (ctx) {
   const users = await getUsers();
   return ctx.json({
     users: users.sort((a, b) => a.id - b.id).map(toPublicUser),
+    // Every role, so the owner's own row can display its value. The UI must not offer 'Super Admin' in a
+    // picker — both write paths refuse it — which is what `assignableRoles` is for.
     roles: USER_ROLES,
+    assignableRoles: USER_ROLES.filter((r) => r !== 'Super Admin'),
     ownerId: OWNER_USER_ID,
   });
 };
@@ -58,6 +62,15 @@ export const updateUserRoleHandler: Handler = async function (ctx) {
     throw errors.FORBIDDEN('The server owner cannot be demoted.');
   }
 
+  // And nobody else can be promoted INTO it. The CHECK constraint pins user 1's role but cannot stop a
+  // second row holding it — a row-level check cannot see other rows — and `getOwnerUser()` resolves the
+  // owner by that role, so two holders make "who owns this server" a question the query plan answers.
+  // It decides the agent sidecar's identity, vault access and which origin is privileged. Handing the
+  // server over is a deliberate act, not a dropdown.
+  if (id !== OWNER_USER_ID && role === 'Super Admin') {
+    throw errors.FORBIDDEN('There is one server owner, and this is not how it changes.');
+  }
+
   const existing = await getUserById(id);
   if (!existing) throw errors.NOT_FOUND('User not found');
 

src/servers/api/users/users-router.ts

@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ import { isSuperAdmin } from '@@/super-admin';
 import * as errors from '@@/custom-errors';
 import { updateUserHandler } from './update-user';
 import { listUsersHandler, updateUserRoleHandler, deleteUserHandler } from './manage-users';
+import { createUserHandler } from './create-user';
 import { capabilityAdminRouter } from './capabilities-routes';
 
 export const usersRouter = createRouter();
@@ -24,6 +25,9 @@ const ownerGate: MiddlewareHandler = async (ctx, next) => {
 };
 
 usersRouter.get('/', ownerGate, listUsersHandler);
+// POST, not PUT — and worth noting they sit one line apart. `PUT /` is the selfService exception every
+// account may call on itself; `POST /` creates somebody else and is the owner's alone.
+usersRouter.post('/', ownerGate, createUserHandler);
 usersRouter.patch('/:id/role', ownerGate, updateUserRoleHandler);
 usersRouter.delete('/:id', ownerGate, deleteUserHandler);
 

src/servers/data-path.ts

@@ -42,6 +42,37 @@ export const getHomeDir = (email: string) => join(DATA_PATH, email, 'home');
 // terminals/chats/tasks share config and credentials with the shell they use outside Officer.
 export const getOwnerHomeDir = (email: string): string => process.env.HOME_DIR ?? getHomeDir(email);
 
+// The directory skeleton a new account gets under DATA_PATH.
+//
+// Most of these are also created on demand by whichever feature owns them, so pre-creating them buys
+// legibility more than function — the tree shows what an account has without it having to be used first.
+// `home` is the exception and the reason this exists: nothing else creates it, and it is where a
+// non-owner's sessions would run.
+//
+// Single-sourced here rather than in the script that used to own the list, because there are now two
+// callers — `scripts/provision-user-dirs.ts` and the owner's create-account handler — and a skeleton
+// that differs depending on how the account was made is a bug nobody would think to look for.
+export const USER_DIRS = [
+  'home',
+  'attachments',
+  'cache',
+  'dashboards',
+  'email_accounts',
+  'general_chat_sessions',
+  'logs',
+  'sidecar',
+] as const;
+
+/**
+ * Create an account's root and its skeleton. Idempotent — an existing directory is left exactly as it is.
+ *
+ * Keyed on email because that is what the on-disk layout uses everywhere else (`DATA_PATH/<email>/…`).
+ * Renaming an account's email would orphan its directory; that is pre-existing and not this function's
+ * problem, but it is the reason nothing here derives a path from the id.
+ */
+export const provisionUserDirs = (email: string): void => {
+  for (const dir of USER_DIRS) mkdirSync(join(DATA_PATH, email, dir), { recursive: true });
+};
 
 export const getTmpAttachmentsDir = (email: string) => join(DATA_PATH, email, 'attachments', 'tmp');