[matthewkmartin]

Summary

band account register and band account send-code exit 0 when the API accepts the request, which doesn't guarantee that an email or verification code was actually sent. Their success output said both unconditionally, so a mistyped --email/--phone, an expired registration, or an existing account left users waiting on something that never arrives.

• register: the success output now says a registration link is on its way if the email can be used to create an account. It also points existing customers at band auth login or a password reset, and step 2 of the next steps is conditional ("If this is a new account, check your email…").
• send-code: now says a code is on its way if a pending registration matches, with a short "No code?" hint (check --email/--phone, or re-run register).
• verify: when the API rejects the request with a 400, prints a hint to check that --email and --phone match what was registered, since a mistyped value is reported the same way as a wrong code. No hint for other failures, and none on success.
• Docs: README.md and AGENTS.md say that success output doesn't confirm delivery. AGENTS.md tells agents to report a code or email as requested, never as sent, and what to try if the user says nothing arrived (including not looping on send-code).
• Test helpers: testutil.FakeClient.PostErr and testutil.CaptureStderr so the failure path and the stderr messages can be tested.

No API contract or flag changes, and JSON/stdout output is untouched.

Testing

• New cmd/account/messages_test.go covers the conditional wording for register and send-code, and the verify hint for a 400 (shown) versus a 500, a network error and success (not shown).
• go test ./..., go vet ./... and gofmt are clean. golangci-lint reports the same 4 typecheck issues in internal/testutil/golden.go on an untouched main locally (it looks like the installed linter predates the module's Go version), so I'm relying on CI's lint for this PR.

AI assistance

This PR was substantially written with Claude Code. It stays a draft until a human has reviewed it.

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