clerk/tanstack-react-start issues incorrect redirects to pages that do not exist

[paperclover]

Preliminary Checks

• I have reviewed the documentation: https://clerk.com/docs

• I have searched for existing issues: https://github.com/clerk/javascript/issues

• I have not already reached out to Clerk support via email or Discord (if you have, no need to open an issue here)

• This issue is not a question, general help request, or anything other than a bug report directly related to Clerk. Please ask questions in our Discord community: https://clerk.com/discord.

Reproduction

https://github.com/paperclover/bug-reproductions/tree/tanstack-start-clerk-redirection

Publishable key

pk_test_Z2xvcmlvdXMtcGVnYXN1cy00LmNsZXJrLmFjY291bnRzLmRldiQ

Description

Steps to reproduce:

• npm i
• npm run dev
• open
• click "Sign In"
• click "go home"

Expected behavior:

clerk should not redirect me when i click a link to /

Actual behavior:

clerk issues a faulty redirect to /login#/?redirect_url=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A3001%2F

at work, we have a patch to prevent this from happening, but this is a really bad bug that affects anyone using the sign in page component. additionally, we are facing issues where clerk will redirect us between our staging domain and our production domain (like https://staging.example.com and https://example.com) which is making it hard to test bug fixes before deploying.

diff --git a/dist/client/useAwaitableNavigate.js b/dist/client/useAwaitableNavigate.js
index 37c57d8d391f2430f19eae648c19b9a124fbedb4..1bb6583c396dabd530382eb6aedb289b9df56666 100644
--- a/dist/client/useAwaitableNavigate.js
+++ b/dist/client/useAwaitableNavigate.js
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
-import { useNavigate, useLocation } from '@tanstack/react-router';
-import React, { useTransition } from 'react';
+import { useLocation, useNavigate } from "@tanstack/react-router";
+import React, { useTransition } from "react";
 
 // src/client/useAwaitableNavigate.ts
 var useAwaitableNavigate = () => {
@@ -15,6 +15,22 @@ var useAwaitableNavigate = () => {
 resolveAll();
 }, [location]);
 return (options) => {
+ // this is a workaround for a bug in clerk where if you attempt to navigate
+ // away from the signin page and the load takes too long, clerk gets
+ // confused and tries to redirect you back. since clover is low on time,
+ // this hack prevents the navigation but not the root cause.
+ //
+ // furthermore, it appears we are going to rebuild the signup page anyways.
+ //
+ // TODO: report this upstream
+ if (
+ !location.pathname.startsWith("/signin") &&
+ !location.pathname.startsWith("/signup") &&
+ !location.pathname.startsWith("/@")
+ ) {
+ return Promise.resolve();
+ }
+
 return new Promise((res) => {
 startTransition(() => {
 resolveFunctionsRef.current.push(res);

Environment

System:
 OS: macOS 26.1
 CPU: (14) arm64 Apple M4 Pro
 Memory: 4.21 GB / 48.00 GB
 Shell: 5.9 - /bin/zsh
 Binaries:
 Node: 24.5.0 - /etc/profiles/per-user/clo/bin/node
 npm: 11.5.1 - /etc/profiles/per-user/clo/bin/npm
 bun: 1.3.0 - /etc/profiles/per-user/clo/bin/bun
 Deno: 2.4.3 - /etc/profiles/per-user/clo/bin/deno
 Browsers:
 Chrome: 142.0.7444.176
 Safari: 26.1
 npmPackages:
 @clerk/tanstack-react-start: ^0.27.6 => 0.27.6
 @tailwindcss/postcss: ^4.1.17 => 4.1.17
 @tanstack/react-router: ^1.139.14 => 1.139.14
 @tanstack/react-router-devtools: ^1.139.14 => 1.139.14
 @tanstack/react-start: ^1.139.14 => 1.139.14
 @types/node: ^24.10.1 => 24.10.1
 @types/react: ^19.2.7 => 19.2.7
 @types/react-dom: ^19.2.3 => 19.2.3
 @vitejs/plugin-react: ^5.1.1 => 5.1.1
 react: ^19.2.1 => 19.2.1
 react-dom: ^19.2.1 => 19.2.1
 typescript: ^5.9.3 => 5.9.3
 vite: ^7.2.6 => 7.2.6
 vite-tsconfig-paths: ^5.1.4 => 5.1.4

[RAGHUKHAJURIA]

can i work on this issue ???

[maviyaali]

Hey I can work on this issue
can you please upload the video of the issue?

[nikosdouvlis]

Hello everyone, we'll be taking a look at this issue within the next few days, starting with reviewing @Ayush2k02 work in #7526

Thank you!

[paperclover]

neither of these prs are the solution because routerPush being called at all is the bug. hit this bug again today on our staging domain where it redirects you from staging to the prod site which is just unusable for the testers, so im deciding to try and trace this.

walking up the stack with a debugger, redirect is happening from <RedirectToSignIn /> which is on the catch-all route of <SignIn/>. (wait what the heck?? it's externally loaded?? how am i supposed to patch this?)

i'm at a wall with debugging this because i can't actually edit anything in the RHC (which appears to be removable with a build flag but not a runtime one. why???), but my guess is that the implementation of a "usePathname" equivalent is wrong. if there is any code in clerk-js or the ui package that observes history and changes for the source of truth, this code will break and there should be a mechanism to use something like the following match select

export function usePathname() {
 return useMatches({ select: (matches) => matches.at(-1)!.pathname });
}

[Ephem]

Sorry for the radio silence here. We have been discussing this issue internally a number of times but things have popped ahead of it in the backlog. Know that we are tracking it and that we will work on a fix.

We've since released a v1 of the Tanstack Start SDK. We have reasons to believe the issue is still present there and it will be easy for us to confirm when we start working on it, but if someone wants to provide an updated reproduction that would provide a helpful head start for us.

[wobsoriano]

Hello, sorry for the late follow-up here.

I let Fable reproduce this using the reproduction you provided. It reproduced immediately on @clerk/tanstack-react-start@0.27.17 (the exact /login#/?redirect_url=... redirect), but not on v1. It ran the same steps 34 times on 1.4.29 with varied click timings, on both a plain /signin route and a /signin/$ catch-all, and the navigation to / stuck every time. Same TanStack and clerk-js versions on both sides, so the difference is the SDK itself.

The fix turned out to be in #7741, which shipped in 1.0.0. It was described as a query-param parsing fix, but it also pinned the base path <SignIn /> derives from useLocation(). Previously, navigating away made the still-mounted SignIn re-render with the new pathname as its base path, hit its internal catch-all, and fire the redirect. That same code path caused the staging/prod redirects you mentioned.

Can you confirm on your end with @clerk/tanstack-react-start@1.x? If it's gone for you too, I'll close this out. Sorry the fix shipped without ever being connected back to this issue.