- Add explanatory comments to all 5 bare except Exception blocks clarifying that UI components must not crash the app
- Refactor sync_ui_cookie() to load UserProfile once instead of up to 3 times in normal path
- Store profile reference and reuse it in tier downgrade protection block
- Replace importlib.reload() pattern in tests with unittest.mock.patch for _DEMO_MODE
- Improves test isolation and eliminates module state contamination across test runs
- All 5 tests pass (100%)
