Digital identities and what they mean for the web have become a hot topic in recent years. They have sparked controversies around age verification laws, Wikipedia’s potential UK user checks, and the reliance on iOS and Android for digital identity wallets. Swiss AGOV, deployed in 2024, now supports 1.6 million accounts and is the sole gateway for unemployment insurance, mandatory tax filing, and, in Zurich MPs, citizenship applications.

I needed an AGOV account, but registering was a fracas. The verification‑code form splits the 6 digits into individual boxes that never auto‑advance; instead,adering each digit stays in the current box and turns red, flagging an error. Even when I typed one digit per box, the page kept showing a “field required” error. No console logs or DOM clues surfaced.

I tried six browser/OS combos—Firefox, Chromium, Chrome on Linux; Firefox, Safari, Chrome on macOS—and all failed the same way. The support portal itself requires a verification code, creating a chicken‑and‑egg loop. Friends and colleagues found no problem on their machines, but my work laptop accepted the code, hinting at a local‑environment issue.

I dug into the page’s JavaScript: a 2.4 MB minified file with over 100 K lines. The AGOV source code is slated for release by end‑2026 under Article 9, but the system is already mandatory for key services. Without public code, troubleshooting remains opaque.