Skip to content

Kanban tools not visible to orchestrator profiles with kanban toolset enabled #18968

@pdonizete

Description

@pdonizete

Problem

The _check_kanban_mode() gating function in tools/kanban_tools.py only returns True when HERMES_KANBAN_TASK is set in the environment. This environment variable is only set by the kanban dispatcher when spawning a worker process.

This means orchestrator profiles (like a techlead that routes work via Kanban) never see the kanban tools, even when they have kanban explicitly listed in their toolsets config.

Impact

  • Orchestrator profiles cannot create, link, or manage Kanban tasks via tool calls
  • The orchestrator hallucinates task creation because the SOUL.md instructs it to use kanban tools that do not exist in its schema
  • Workers spawned by the dispatcher work fine (they get HERMES_KANBAN_TASK set)

Reproduction

  1. Create a profile (e.g., techlead) with toolsets: [kanban, ...] in config.yaml
  2. Start the gateway for that profile
  3. Send a message asking it to create a Kanban task
  4. The agent reports that kanban tools are not available

Fix

Modified _check_kanban_mode() to also return True when the current profile has kanban in its toolsets config.yaml, in addition to the existing HERMES_KANBAN_TASK check.

This allows orchestrator profiles to use kanban_create, kanban_link, etc. to route work, while workers continue to use the full kanban toolset via the dispatcher env var.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    P2Medium — degraded but workaround existscomp/toolsTool registry, model_tools, toolsetstype/bugSomething isn't working

    Type

    No type
    No fields configured for issues without a type.

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions