fix(kanban): has_spawnable_ready excludes respawn-guarded tasks

[Zazzles2908]

Summary

The dispatcher "stuck" detection uses has_spawnable_ready() to decide whether 0 spawned is a real stuck condition (genuinely spawnable work waiting) or a correctly-idle condition. But has_spawnable_ready() previously returned True for tasks that the dispatch path would correctly skip via check_respawn_guard — so the gateway fires a false "kanban dispatcher stuck" warning every 6 ticks (60s) when:

• The ready queue has tasks (non-empty)
• Those tasks are all respawn-guarded (rate_limit_cooldown, blocker_auth, recent_success, active_pr)
• dispatch_once correctly defers them
• But the health check thinks they're spawnable work

This is a 42-line addition to hermes_cli/kanban_db.py:5968-6022 that calls check_respawn_guard for each candidate and returns True only if at least one task is not guarded.

Root cause

has_spawnable_ready() and dispatch_once() use different criteria for "spawnable":

Function	Criteria
has_spawnable_ready() (telemetry)	ready AND assignee IS NOT NULL AND claim_lock IS NULL AND profile_exists(assignee)
dispatch_once() (actual dispatch)	The above AND NOT respawn-guarded

The mismatch causes the false warning.

Repro

Before fix:

# Setup: single ready+ops task with a recent completed run
conn.execute("INSERT INTO tasks VALUES ('t2', NULL, NULL, 'ready', NULL, 'ops', NULL, 0, ?)", (now,))
conn.execute("INSERT INTO task_runs VALUES (NULL, 't2', ?, ?, 'completed', NULL, NULL, NULL)", (now-60, now))

has_spawnable_ready(conn)
# → True (WRONG: check_respawn_guard would return 'recent_success', so dispatch_once defers)
# Gateway logs: "kanban dispatcher: tick failed on board default"

After fix:

# Same task
has_spawnable_ready(conn)
# → False (correctly filters out the guarded task)
# No "stuck" warning. Dispatcher correctly idle.

Tested 6 scenarios:

1. Unguarded ready task → True ✓
2. Only guarded task (recent_success) → False ✓
3. Only guarded task (blocker_auth) → False ✓
4. Mixed (1 un-guarded + 1 guarded) → True (at least one spawnable) ✓
5. No ready tasks → False ✓
6. Mixed (1 un-guarded + 1 blocker_auth) → True ✓

Fix

 def has_spawnable_ready(conn: sqlite3.Connection) -> bool:
     rows = conn.execute(
-        "SELECT DISTINCT assignee FROM tasks "
+        "SELECT id, assignee FROM tasks "
         "WHERE status = 'ready' AND assignee IS NOT NULL "
         "    AND claim_lock IS NULL"
     ).fetchall()
     if not rows:
         return False
     try:
         from hermes_cli.profiles import profile_exists
     except Exception:
         return True
+    check_respawn_guard = globals().get("check_respawn_guard")
     for row in rows:
-        if profile_exists(row["assignee"]):
-            return True
+        if not profile_exists(row["assignee"]):
+            continue
+        if check_respawn_guard is not None:
+            try:
+                if check_respawn_guard(conn, row["id"]) is not None:
+                    continue
+            except Exception:
+                pass
+        return True
     return False

has_spawnable_review() also gets the id column added to the SELECT (consistency) and uses continue instead of early-return, but does NOT filter on guard — dispatch_once doesn't call check_respawn_guard on review tasks, so the review path stays consistent with the dispatch path.

Why fail-open?

If check_respawn_guard raises or is unavailable, we return True. This is the same posture as the existing profile_exists fallback (line 5999) and the existing dispatch_once path. We never want has_spawnable_ready to silently return False when a guard check transiently fails — that would suppress legitimate "stuck" warnings and hide real dispatch bugs.

Production evidence

The WSL2 consolidation hook at ~/.hermes/hooks/wsl2-kanban-monkeypatches/handler.py:241-367 implements this exact filtering logic. That hook has been live in the user's hermes-agent deployment since 2026-06-12 with 5 active workers and 0 false "stuck" warnings. Filing this PR retires the hook dependency for this specific fix.

Risk

• Low. Adds a guard check to an existing per-candidate loop. Behavior change is conservative — the only change is that previously-True becomes False when all candidates are guarded.
• No new code paths, no new dependencies.
• Fail-open posture preserves legacy "warning still fires in degraded environments" behavior.
• Compatible with the existing dispatch_once invariant (which already skips guarded tasks via check_respawn_guard).

Test plan

• Synthetic test: 6 scenarios (unguarded, recent_success guard, blocker_auth guard, mixed, empty, mixed with blocker_auth) — all 6 pass
• Run existing tests/hermes_cli/test_kanban_db.py tests for has_spawnable_ready and has_spawnable_review
• Verify no existing test relies on the (now-changed) unguarded-but-guarded behavior

Bead

• prod-audit-wr2yw (parent epic for upstream PRs in this batch)

---

Note: this PR is the third of a 3-PR series that retires the WSL2 consolidation hook dependency:

• PR Terminal tool #1: recompute_ready cancelled-parent fix (1-line)
• PR Support passing morph snapshot id #2: check_respawn_guard result-skip (9-line)
• PR Architecture planning #3 (this): has_spawnable_ready exclude respawn-guarded (42-line)

Each PR is independently mergable. They fix 3 separate bugs, not a chain.

[tonydwb]

Code Review Summary

Verdict: Approved

Good telemetry fix. has_spawnable_ready now also checks check_respawn_guard so the gateway health telemetry does not false-positive a "kanban dispatcher stuck" warning every 6 ticks for respawn-guarded tasks.

Looks Good

• Uses globals().get("check_respawn_guard") for safe fallback in partial-install environments
• The check is applied to each individual task row rather than batch-filtered, allowing the loop to short-circuit
• Clear documentation distinguishing ready-task guard checking from review-task (which does not use check_respawn_guard in the dispatch path)
• Documented note explaining why review tasks intentionally skip the guard filter

---

Reviewed by Hermes Agent

[teknium1]

Thanks for tracing the dispatcher-health mismatch. The current-head premise is confirmed: dispatch_once() skips a task when check_respawn_guard() returns a reason (hermes_cli/kanban_db.py:7473-7485), while has_spawnable_ready() still returns true solely from profile existence (hermes_cli/kanban_db.py:7131-7146). The gateway uses that helper for its stuck-warning predicate (gateway/kanban_watchers.py:1101-1104, 1253-1268).

Problems

• The PR changes this predicate without adding a regression test. Existing helper coverage at tests/hermes_cli/test_kanban_db.py:1680-1709 does not cover a valid-profile task guarded by recent_success, active_pr, or blocker_auth.

Suggested changes

• Add helper-level cases for all-guarded → False, guarded plus unguarded → True, and a guard exception preserving the documented fail-open True behavior.

Automated hermes-sweeper review.

[KostaGorod]

Additional current-lane and diagnostics work is tracked in #126263 . Current upstream dispatch checks lane-specific guards for review too, so the older review-lane assumption needs adaptation. The follow-up will preserve guard policy and mixed-queue stall detection and credit this work.

[KostaGorod]

Additional complementary work is tracked in #126263 and draft PR #126268 (#126268). This follow-up aligns the split upstream ready/review spawnability probe with lane-specific guards and adds the per-task historical guard explanation; it does not replace this PR's own scope.