Fix harden get user settings

[paullizer]

• Chats Page User Settings Hardening
  • Fixed a user-specific chats page failure where only one affected user could not load /chats due to malformed per-user settings data.
  • Root Cause: The chats route assumed user_settings["settings"] was always a dictionary. If that field existed but had an invalid type (for example string, null, or list), the page could fail before rendering.
  • Solution: Hardened get_user_settings() to normalize missing/malformed settings to {} and persist the repaired document. Hardened the chats route to use safe dictionary fallbacks when reading nested settings values.
  • Telemetry: Added repair logging ([UserSettings] Malformed settings repaired) to improve diagnostics for future user-specific data-shape issues.
  • Files Modified: functions_settings.py, route_frontend_chats.py, config.py.
  • Files Added: test_chats_user_settings_hardening_fix.py, CHATS_USER_SETTINGS_HARDENING_FIX.md.
  • (Ref: user settings normalization, /chats route resilience, functional_tests/test_chats_user_settings_hardening_fix.py, docs/explanation/fixes/CHATS_USER_SETTINGS_HARDENING_FIX.md)

[Bionic711]

Looks good

[Bionic711]

Approved

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Hardens per-user settings handling to prevent /chats from failing when a user’s Cosmos user-settings document has a malformed settings field, and adds regression coverage + documentation for the fix.

Changes:

• Normalize missing/malformed user_settings["settings"] to {} in get_user_settings() and persist the repaired document with telemetry.
• Make /chats read nested user settings via safe dict fallbacks.
• Bump version and add functional test + fix documentation (and release notes entry).

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated no comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
functional_tests/test_chats_user_settings_hardening_fix.py	Adds a functional regression test covering missing/non-dict settings repair + persistence.
docs/explanation/release_notes.md	Adds a v0.238.025 bug-fix entry describing the hardening and telemetry.
docs/explanation/fixes/CHATS_USER_SETTINGS_HARDENING_FIX.md	Adds fix documentation with root cause, implementation details, and validation references.
application/single_app/route_frontend_chats.py	Uses a safe user_settings_dict when reading activeGroupOid / activePublicWorkspaceOid; moves user_id guard earlier.
application/single_app/functions_settings.py	Repairs malformed/missing settings to {}, logs repair telemetry, and upserts repaired user document.
application/single_app/config.py	Updates VERSION to 0.238.025.