fix: prevent root-owned database files when running with sudo

When start.sh runs via sudo, chown instance/ and data/ back to the
invoking user so the SQLite DB stays accessible without sudo. Also
adds a clear error message in get_connection() when the DB can't be
opened due to permissions.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

start.sh

@@ -78,6 +78,15 @@ done
 export INTERCEPT_HOST="$HOST"
 export INTERCEPT_PORT="$PORT"
 
+# ── Fix ownership of user data dirs when run via sudo ────────────────────────
+if [[ "$(id -u)" -eq 0 && -n "${SUDO_USER:-}" ]]; then
+    for dir in instance data; do
+        if [[ -d "$SCRIPT_DIR/$dir" ]]; then
+            chown -R "$SUDO_USER" "$SCRIPT_DIR/$dir"
+        fi
+    done
+fi
+
 # ── Dependency check (delegate to intercept.py) ─────────────────────────────
 if [[ "$CHECK_DEPS" -eq 1 ]]; then
     exec "$PYTHON" intercept.py --check-deps

utils/database.py

@@ -35,10 +35,18 @@ def get_connection() -> sqlite3.Connection:
     """Get a thread-local database connection."""
     if not hasattr(_local, 'connection') or _local.connection is None:
         db_path = get_db_path()
-        _local.connection = sqlite3.connect(str(db_path), check_same_thread=False)
+        try:
-        _local.connection.row_factory = sqlite3.Row
+            _local.connection = sqlite3.connect(str(db_path), check_same_thread=False)
-        # Enable foreign keys
+            _local.connection.row_factory = sqlite3.Row
-        _local.connection.execute('PRAGMA foreign_keys = ON')
+            # Enable foreign keys
+            _local.connection.execute('PRAGMA foreign_keys = ON')
+        except sqlite3.OperationalError as e:
+            logger.error(
+                f"Cannot open database at {db_path}: {e}. "
+                f"If the file is owned by root, fix with: "
+                f"sudo chown -R $(whoami) {DB_DIR}"
+            )
+            raise
     return _local.connection