Cypress.io with codeigniter

I am looking to automate testing with cypress.io on a secured part of a website using codeigniter (yuck) and community_auth.

I have setup a before task to run the login form however get an error that cookies cannot be set.

Does anyone have any experience using cypress to test a secured area of a php site.

I know it is considered bad practice however I cannot get around the system being a traditional php MVC framework.