From 35e7ca03d5347c202d9be8be15492f189bf46c93 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Teknium <127238744+teknium1@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:08:40 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] fix(kanban): treat already-gone worker as terminated, not
 survived
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_terminate_reclaimed_worker early-returned on ProcessLookupError with
terminated=False. The new reclaim-defer guard reads that as 'worker
survived the kill' and defers the reclaim forever, so a stale task whose
worker is already dead never lands in result.stale. ProcessLookupError
means the process is gone — that IS a successful termination. Split it
from the generic OSError branch and set terminated=True.
---
 hermes_cli/kanban_db.py | 8 +++++++-
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/hermes_cli/kanban_db.py b/hermes_cli/kanban_db.py
index a63135c603f..c82d762d592 100644
--- a/hermes_cli/kanban_db.py
+++ b/hermes_cli/kanban_db.py
@@ -5131,7 +5131,13 @@ def _terminate_reclaimed_worker(
     info["termination_attempted"] = True
     try:
         kill(int(pid), signal.SIGTERM)
-    except (ProcessLookupError, OSError):
+    except ProcessLookupError:
+        # Process is already gone — that's a successful termination, not a
+        # survival. Leaving terminated=False here would make the reclaim guard
+        # misread a dead worker as still-alive and defer forever.
+        info["terminated"] = True
+        return info
+    except OSError:
         return info
 
     for _ in range(10):