The path-discovery step succeeds on the first run, but the cleanup
step exits non-zero because `taskkill /PID 5560 /T /F` returns 128
("process not found") when server.py has already exited on the mock
hermes_cli stub. That's the expected steady state for this mock-only
workflow, not a failure.
Two-line fix: reset `$global:LASTEXITCODE = 0` after the taskkill
call, and explicit `exit 0` at the end of the step so any other
external-command exit codes don't bubble up. The try/catch wrapper
didn't help because taskkill writes its diagnostic to stderr without
raising a PowerShell exception — `catch` never fired.
Run 26352805510 on this branch shows the failure shape: "OK: start.ps1
path discovery - all guards passed." in the verify step, then
"ERROR: The process '5560' not found." in the cleanup step. Path
discovery is what this workflow exists to validate; cleanup just has
to not fail the job.
Per @nesquena-hermes review on #2811: hermes-agent isn't published to
PyPI, so `pip install hermes-agent` finds nothing and start.ps1's
hermes_cli guard correctly bails out — leaving the previous workflow
unable to self-validate against release/stage-batch6.
This rework adopts option 1 from the review: drop the pip install,
stub a hermes_cli/ directory with a minimal __init__.py next to the
sibling hermes-agent/ folder, then run start.ps1 for 8 seconds and
assert that none of its own Write-Error guards (no Python, no agent
dir, bad port, missing hermes_cli, missing server.py) appeared in
stderr. /health is no longer probed — the server cannot boot on a
stub, and full-boot regressions stay covered by the Linux jobs and
docker-smoke.yml.
Scope intentionally narrower than the original: this workflow
validates start.ps1's PowerShell syntax + path discovery only. The
exact bug class PR #2805 caught (WOW64 ProgramFiles redirect) would
now light up red here pre-merge, which is the reason this gate exists.
Paths filter trimmed to `start.ps1` + the workflow itself; the broader
list (requirements.txt / bootstrap.py / server.py) was inherited from
the original full-boot scoping and isn't relevant for a path-discovery-
only run.
Verification: workflow runs on this PR via its own pull_request trigger.
The first CI run on this branch IS the verification.
CHANGELOG updated under [Unreleased] with a single bullet sized to the
surrounding density.
