Surface ready tasks that nobody claims within a threshold (default
30 min) regardless of why. One identity-agnostic signal that catches:
- Operator typo'd the assignee
- Profile was deleted, leaving its tasks stranded
- External worker pool (Codex CLI lane, custom daemon) is down
- Dispatcher misconfigured (wrong board / wrong HERMES_HOME)
Today the dispatcher correctly skips these (no respawn loop, good)
but nothing surfaces the fact that operator-actionable work is
accumulating. The new `stranded_in_ready` rule does that without
requiring a manual lane registry — it reads the most recent ready-
transition event (`created` / `promoted` / `reclaimed` / `unblocked`)
and fires when (now - last_ready_ts) > threshold.
Severity escalates with age: warning at threshold, error at 2x,
critical at 6x. The cli_hint and reassign actions point operators
at the right next step.
Out of scope deliberately:
- Lane registry (#20157 closed) — this signal supersedes it.
- Pushing the diagnostic into messaging gateways — diagnostics
are pull-only via 'hermes kanban diagnostics' for now; gateway
push is a separate UX decision.
Tests: 10 new + 461 existing kanban tests pass. E2E verified end-
to-end via 'hermes kanban diagnostics --json' against a 2h-old
stranded task — surfaces as error severity with correct actions.
Closes the architectural-pin part of #19931. Most of what that issue
asked for is already implemented (logs under kanban root, env-pinned
workspace, dispatcher routing of unknown assignees, lifecycle
ownership, structured handoff conventions). What was missing:
1. A written contract integrators can point at when adding a new
worker lane shape, and
2. The "code-changing workers should not auto-promote success to
done" convention.
This commit ships both as docs+convention layered on existing primitives.
No kernel changes — the kanban_complete / kanban_block / kanban_comment
surfaces already support the review-required pattern; we just hadn't
written it down or made it visible to workers.
Changes:
- `agent/prompt_builder.py::KANBAN_GUIDANCE`: append the review-required
exception to step 5 of the lifecycle. Workers get the cue
auto-injected into their system prompt — drop structured metadata
into a kanban_comment first, then end with
kanban_block(reason="review-required: <summary>") instead of
kanban_complete when the work needs review. Total prompt size went
from ~3000 to ~3275 chars; well under the 4096 budget enforced by
test_kanban_guidance_size.
- `skills/devops/kanban-worker/SKILL.md`: add a worked example to the
existing "Good summary + metadata shapes" section between the
Coding-task and Research-task examples. Same shape as the others
(kanban_comment with structured handoff JSON, then kanban_block with
the human-readable reason). Plus a one-line guide on when to use
kanban_complete vs the review-required pattern.
- `website/docs/user-guide/features/kanban-worker-lanes.md` (new): the
integrator-facing contract. Covers the hierarchy, the three things
every lane must provide (assignee, spawn mechanism, lifecycle
terminator), the env vars the dispatcher injects, the
review-required convention, the failure modes the kernel handles
for free, and an explicit "external CLI worker lane" deferred-
pending-concrete-asker section that links to #19931 and #19924.
- `website/sidebars.ts`: link the new page under user-guide/features.
The "specialist worker lanes for external CLI tools (Codex / Claude
Code / OpenCode)" runner is NOT shipped here. The dispatcher's
spawn_fn parameter already supports plugin-shaped extension; the
per-CLI integration work (auth, sandbox policy, exit-code mapping)
needs a concrete asker. The new docs page tells would-be integrators
the contract any such lane must satisfy.
Refs #19931
