[🚫 Bug] Sporadic StaleElementReferenceError issues

[ronsig]

Describe the bug

I sometimes get StaleElementReferenceError exceptions on my code, where all it does is reference the driver. For example, this suite has an outer describe() that does this:

 before(async function(){
        testWorkspacePath = await generalHelpers.commonTestSuiteSetup(suiteName);
        await VSBrowser.instance.openResources(testWorkspacePath);
        await (await new ActivityBar().getViewControl(generalHelpers.TestConstants.VIEW_CONTAINER_TITLE))?.openView();
        // now to initialize the view
        const view = new SideBarView();
        content = view.getContent();
    });

    and then there's an internal bloc that does this:
     describe('Project View', () => {
        let tree: CustomTreeSection;

        before(async () => {
            //Common.extendProductInfo.setMinimalVersion(24, 4);
            tree = await content.getSection(generalHelpers.TestConstants.STRUCTURE_SECTION_TITLE);
            await generalHelpers.wait(300);
            await tree.expand();

            let driver = POFactory.getDriver(VSBrowser.instance.driver);
            await driver.wait(until.elementLocated(By.css(`div[aria-label="Screens"]`)), 5000, `Timed out on project view`, 100);
        });

I sometimes get this error:

    StaleElementReferenceError: stale element reference: stale element not found
  (Session info: chrome=120.0.6099.291)
    at Object.throwDecodedError (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\error.js:521:15)
    at parseHttpResponse (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\http.js:510:13)
    at Executor.execute (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\http.js:443:28)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async Driver.execute (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\webdriver.js:740:17)

Is there a way to avoid this issue? Force a refresh?

Thanks!

Steps to reproduce

I don't have specific repro steps. It's a sporadic issue in my tests where the context sometimes goes stale for some reason

Logs

StaleElementReferenceError: stale element reference: stale element not found
  (Session info: chrome=120.0.6099.291)
    at Object.throwDecodedError (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\error.js:521:15)
    at parseHttpResponse (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\http.js:510:13)
    at Executor.execute (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\http.js:443:28)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)
    at async Driver.execute (node_modules\selenium-webdriver\lib\webdriver.js:740:17)

Operating System

Windows 10

Visual Studio Code

1.88.0

vscode-extension-tester

8.0.2

NodeJS

18.13

npm

8.19.3