verify connect flow before returning success & use custom invite deeplink

[yashkhare0]

Summary

This fixes connect_with_person false positives by making the tool verify the final LinkedIn relationship state before returning success.

What changed

• routes connectable and follow-only profiles through LinkedIn's preload/custom-invite deeplink
• prefers the explicit Send without note action when no note is provided
• re-reads the profile and only returns connected when the page verifies Pending
• re-reads the profile after accepting an incoming request and only returns accepted when the page verifies a 1st connection
• adds test coverage for verified success and verification failure paths
• ignores local /.serena workspace artifacts in git

Why

The previous flow inferred the pre-click state from profile text, clicked the UI, and could return success without proving that LinkedIn had actually transitioned to the expected final state. That made the connect tool flaky and could produce false-positive success responses.

Validation

• uv run pytest tests/test_scraping.py -k TestConnectWithPerson
• uv run ruff check linkedin_mcp_server/scraping/extractor.py tests/test_scraping.py
• Live check on drowsy returned pending without sending a new invite
• Live check on stanimirovicuros sent an invite and verified the profile transitioned to Pending

Closes #365.

Synthetic prompt

Replace the optimistic connect_with_person flow with a verified sequence: short-circuit on already-connected or pending states, send invites through LinkedIn's preload/custom-invite deeplink, and only return success after re-reading the profile and confirming Pending (or 1st after accepting an incoming request). Update the tests to enforce verification and ignore the local .serena workspace artifacts.

Generated with Codex (GPT-5)

[stickerdaniel]

Thanks for the PR. The verify-after-action layer is exactly what #365 needs and I'd like to land it.

I'm on board with the deeplink approach. Looking at how LinkedIn actually emits /preload/custom-invite/ as the Connect anchor's href in its own HTML, navigating to it directly drops the whole button-click + modal-index dance that #304, #319, #348 and #368 all orbited, and makes the Connect flow locale-independent by default.

Before we merge:

1. Rebase on main, fix: handle invitation modal in connect_with_person using structural selectors #368 rewrote the block you're editing.
2. Drop _click_send_without_note_button. Use _click_dialog_primary_button() (positional, from fix: handle invitation modal in connect_with_person using structural selectors #368). The regex on "Send without a note" is English-only and LinkedIn localizes the label, which defeats the locale advantage the deeplink gives us.
3. Drop the on-profile click fallback. If the deeplink doesn't render a dialog, return connect_unavailable. One reliable path is easier to reason about than two.
4. Keep Accept as on-profile click for incoming_request. It's not the fragile path, no modal involved.
5. Move .serena to your global gitignore, not the project one.

Happy to re-review after the rebase.

[greptile-apps]

Too many files changed for review. (122 files found, 100 file limit)

[hugobiais]

Hi @yashkhare0 — since this PR has been quiet for ~9 days I went ahead and rebased it onto current main per @stickerdaniel's review, just to keep things moving. Branch: https://github.com/hugobiais/linkedin-mcp-server/tree/feature/366-verified-connect

Applied changes from the review:

1. Rebased on current main (which now includes fix: handle invitation modal in connect_with_person using structural selectors #368).
2. Dropped _click_send_without_note_button — both the note and noteless paths in _send_connection_invite_via_deeplink now go through _click_dialog_primary_button() (positional, locale-independent).
3. Dropped the on-profile click fallback for connectable / follow_only. If the deeplink dialog doesn't open, returns connect_unavailable.
4. Kept incoming_request as on-profile click (no modal).
5. Did not include the .serena .gitignore change.

Verification:

• uv run ruff check . — clean
• uv run ty check linkedin_mcp_server/scraping/extractor.py — clean
• uv run pytest tests/test_scraping.py -k TestConnectWithPerson — 12 passed (incl. test_returns_send_failed_when_pending_verification_fails)

Feel free to git fetch from my fork and pull this into your branch, or just cherry-pick the single commit (46d914d). Happy to open a separate PR instead if that's easier — let me know.