[douglasjarquin]

Native HC startup could strand an agent before its opening message was inspectable, and recovery could mistake presentation changes for lost authority or replay input after a delayed creation reply. This repairs F1–F10 in one branch while preserving exact process, attempt, core and receipt checks.

Refs #335. Keep the issue open for the operator acceptance below.

Changes

• Split terminal creation from opening delivery using versioned empty-body templates. Persist the endpoint and known-unsent opening before readiness; serialize automatic and explicit delivery so a late reply cannot duplicate it.
• Add ordinary-shell inspection and exact-attempt reconciliation/recovery for workers, coordinators and reviewers. Require corroborated original processes or conclusive exit/PID/survivor proof; preserve ambiguous attempts and failed history.
• Preserve authority through unchanged Keep promotion while refusing replacement shells. Use the selected HC route consistently, retain subprocess failures, handle stale sockets without listeners, and report protocol mismatches precisely.
• Detect unsupported state before setup effects, preserve historical records, expose an independent fresh-start path, separate actual helper provenance from selected source, and keep projects rooted at the stable installation.
• Compare relevant normalized input/permission settings for running agents, including Codex profiles/trust. Fence activation and rollback on the actual target helper's template-schema capability.

The F1–F10 ledger records implementation, proof and limits. Grok Bot files and shared factory contracts are unchanged.

Validation and review

• Canonical verifier passed on clean cbe61963e7b87488b984b00942b91121d9784ee8 (20261102T042136Z-80434e3e): 249 mapped scenarios passed, 47 remain explicitly unrun, no required evidence is missing. The runner requires independent policy review because verification-related files changed; that source review found no weakening.
• mise run lint and the documentation audit passed. Canonical verification includes the full Go suite, top-level Python discovery, Astro checks/unit tests/build and route emission.
• Full independent source review of ad08b7d used nine local lenses plus an attributable Claude/Anthropic adversarial pass. Ten findings were repaired; bounded review of 6ef2974 and the final cbe6196 resume correction found no remaining blockers and no verification-policy weakening. Review did not independently run tests.
• Public-command regressions cover exact lost-reply reconciliation for all three roles, conflicting candidates, original-process replacement, interrupted startup, pre-init exit recovery, absent/blocked readiness, dirty/untracked build inputs and safe stop evidence.
• Delayed worker/reviewer opening regression fails against ad08b7d and passes after repair. The full aggregate exposed a prior-attempt endpoint being mistaken for same-attempt recovery; four existing E2E resume tests passed after restricting that guard to the launching attempt. Existing required transcript comparisons pass at both merge base and candidate; those comparisons establish preserved behavior, not a new defect fix.

The committed cbe6196 candidate also passed the real HC application canary with 21-second readiness delays, saved pre-readiness inspection and confirmed owned core stop. Its TUI is scripted and GitHub is a strict local fixture.

Acceptance still open

Published HC 0.1.14 smoke/incarnation and scripted application composition are separate from actual agent acceptance. The isolated installed Grok probe reached blocked/auth without receiving input. Authenticated Grok first/follow-up turns, a real two-worker/reviewer workflow, actual Herdr Desktop placement/promotion/reopen, and an authorized live HC-to-HC update/rollback remain unrun.

The integrated browser host is unavailable and agent-browser is absent, so rendered /sum/update/ browser verification is skipped; static site checks remain in canonical verification. No software, account or permission setting was changed to bypass those limits. No installation update or merge is included.