Internal testing (macOS): clicking the ear froze the button for ~30s,
then it went blue but 'hey hermes' never fired even though STT worked.
Two distinct bugs:
1. Frozen-then-timeout button: first-use wake.start lazy-installs the
detection engine (onnxruntime is a large wheel), which blows the
desktop's default 30s WS request timeout — the RPC 'failed' client-
side while the backend kept installing and armed later on its own.
wake.start now gets a 180s budget and the pending state says
'arming — first use may take a minute while the engine installs'
instead of a silent disabled button.
2. Armed but deaf: macOS grants mic permission per PROCESS. The
renderer having mic access (STT working) does not grant the Python
backend anything — CoreAudio hands an unentitled process a 'working'
stream that delivers zeros forever, so the listener looks healthy
and can never hear the phrase. The detector now tracks frame peaks:
10s of consecutive near-zero frames sets audio_silent, logged with
the exact macOS Settings path, cleared automatically when audio
appears. Surfaced everywhere: wake.status (audio_silent + hint),
desktop ear tooltip (kept visible while listening), /wake status on
TUI (⚠ line) and classic CLI, plus a docs troubleshooting section.
Tests: detector silent-flag set/recover cycle (fake silent/loud
streams), desktop tooltip keeps the dead-mic hint while listening.
44 wake Python tests, 22 desktop + 14 TUI vitest green.