It's been a while and I don't remember the details.
All I remember is that I was developing the secret 'creator' code using Brave (my default unsecured browser) and at some point I had to switch to Safari (which I normally save for trusted websites only).
It's possible it was a red herring, and I switched browser but the problem was something else I did at the same time.
I'm pretty sure Brave was blocking window.crypto but can't remember if it was on a file or over plain HTTP