The design has claimed since migration 0010 that at most one account can hold
a PROVEN email address, with ErrEmailTaken as the 409 a second verifier sees.
Neither half ever shipped: no migration created users_verified_email_unique,
and VerifyEmailOTP had no guard at all — the sentinel was defined but never
returned, so two accounts could both verify one address. The damage is not
cosmetic: the pre-session login resolves accounts BY verified email, so the
duplicate decided which identity a mailed sign-in code belonged to.
- Migration 0020 creates the partial unique index (lower(email) WHERE
email_verified) the comments have been citing — the database-level backstop.
- VerifyEmailOTP now refuses the take-over with ErrEmailTaken BEFORE consuming
the code (the address, not the code, is the problem), charges no attempt,
and maps a lost cross-user race (unique violation) to the same answer.
- The verify handler answers 409 email_taken instead of a generic 500.
Covered by the pgint suite (sequential double-verify refused with the code
still live, a direct duplicate write still loses to the index, the refused
account can still prove its own address) and a hermetic 409 case.