Platform: Error Message When Navigating Between Pages

Incident Overview 

Between 2:20 PM and 3:34 PM EST on February 9, 2026, Platform users experienced red banner errors, “Cannot access ‘t’ before initialization”, when clicking on the Discovery link in the left-hand navigation. These errors occurred due to client-side bundle incompatibility introduced during a recent Platform update. 

• Start of Impact: February 9, 2026, at 19:20 UTC  

• End of Impact: February 9, 2026, at 20:34 UTC  

Resolution 

We resolved the incident by pinning our build tooling back to the previous compatible version of webpack, which restored correct bundle generation and eliminated the errors. Normal service was confirmed to be restored by 3:34 PM EST. 

Root cause  

The incident was caused by a minor Angular framework update that indirectly upgraded the webpack to a newer version - a change that was not explicitly requested or anticipated. This newer version of webpack generated application bundles in a format that was incompatible with our existing module federation setup, which is the mechanism we use to load different sections of the platform as separate, independently deployable units. When the incompatible bundle was loaded, it caused client-side errors that surfaced to users as red banner messages. 

Preventative Actions 

We are taking the following steps to reduce the risk of similar incidents occurring in the future: 

• As a longer-term improvement, we are planning a migration away from our current module federation setup to native federation, which will eliminate the dependency on webpack and reduce the risk of similar issues in the future.