We had trouble connecting to Gatsby Cloud to create a login

Error message

We had trouble connecting to Gatsby Cloud to create a login session.
Please try again later, and if it continues to have trouble connecting file an issue.

What it means

Thrown by `createTicket` in the Gatsby Cloud login flow when the `POST https://auth.gatsbyjs.com/auth/tickets/create` request fails (network error, non-2xx response, or JSON parse failure). The login flow needs a ticket id to start the browser-based session, so without it the CLI aborts via `reporter.panic`.

Source

Thrown at packages/gatsby-cli/src/login.ts:24

interface ITicket {
  verified: boolean
  token?: string | null
  expiration?: string | null
}

const createTicket = async (): Promise<string> => {
  let ticketId
  try {
    const ticketResponse = await fetch(
      `https://auth.gatsbyjs.com/auth/tickets/create`,
      {
        method: `post`,
      }
    )
    const ticketJson = await ticketResponse.json()
    ticketId = ticketJson.ticketId
  } catch (e) {
    reporter.panic(
      `We had trouble connecting to Gatsby Cloud to create a login session.
Please try again later, and if it continues to have trouble connecting file an issue.`
    )
  }

  return ticketId
}

const getTicket = async (ticketId: string): Promise<ITicket> => {
  let ticket: ITicket = {
    verified: false,
  }
  try {
    const ticketResponse = await fetch(
      `https://auth.gatsbyjs.com/auth/tickets/${ticketId}`
    )
    const ticketJson = await ticketResponse.json()
    ticket = ticketJson

View on GitHub (pinned to 8b06340921)

Solutions

Check connectivity to `https://auth.gatsbyjs.com` (curl/browser).
Configure/whitelist the proxy: set `HTTPS_PROXY` and ensure the host is allowed.
Retry later if the auth service is experiencing an outage.
If the issue persists, file the issue referenced in the message.

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Validate before calling

async function canReachAuth(): Promise<boolean> {
  try { const r = await fetch('https://auth.gatsbyjs.com', { method: 'HEAD' }); return r.ok || r.status < 500 } catch { return false }
}

Try / catch

let ticketId
for (let attempt = 1; attempt <= 3; attempt++) {
  try { ticketId = await createTicket(); break } catch (e) { if (attempt === 3) throw e; await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, 1000 * attempt)) }
}

Prevention

Ensure outbound network access to `auth.gatsbyjs.com`.
Configure `HTTPS_PROXY` correctly in restricted networks.
Retry during transient outages before filing an issue.

When it happens

Trigger: `gatsby login` invokes `createTicket`, which `fetch`-es the auth endpoint. If DNS/routing fails, the request times out, a proxy blocks it, the auth service is down, or the response body is not valid JSON containing `ticketId`, the catch block panics.

Common situations: No internet or restricted corporate proxy/firewall blocking `auth.gatsbyjs.com`; auth service outage; misconfigured `HTTPS_PROXY`/`HTTP_PROXY`; running in an environment without outbound network (CI sandbox).

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of gatsbyjs/gatsby@8b06340921 (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/15594c68f21d16f5. Report an issue: GitHub.