Summary
The hermes kanban edit command currently only supports --result and --summary. For the most common recovery operations — clearing invalid skills, resetting consecutive_failures, and clearing stale claim locks — operators must resort to direct SQLite manipulation:
DB=~/.hermes/kanban/boards/<board-slug>/kanban.db
# Clear bogus skills that cause "Unknown skill(s)" crashes
sqlite3 "$DB" "UPDATE tasks SET skills = "[]" WHERE id = "t_xxx";"
# Reset failure counter and claim to make task eligible for dispatch again
sqlite3 "$DB" "UPDATE tasks SET consecutive_failures = 0, status = "ready",
claim_lock = NULL, claim_expires = NULL, worker_pid = NULL,
last_failure_error = NULL, current_run_id = NULL
WHERE id = "t_xxx";"
This is fragile (schema could change), error-prone (easy to typo a column name), and not documented in the CLI help.
Proposed CLI Extensions
# Clear invalid skills
hermes kanban edit t_xxx --skills []
hermes kanban edit t_xxx --clear-skills
# Reset failure counter and claim lock (full reset to re-dispatchable)
hermes kanban edit t_xxx --reset-failures
hermes kanban edit t_xxx --clear-claim
# Combined convenience
hermes kanban reset t_xxx # equivalent to --reset-failures + --clear-claim + status=ready
Suggested Fix
Extend hermes kanban edit with flags for the most common recovery operations, backed by the same SQL but with validation and schema-awareness. Add a hermes kanban reset convenience command for the full recovery path.
Environment
- Hermes Agent v2.x
- The kanban-orchestrator skill references document (
references/kanban-db-recovery.md) contains the full schema and recovery SQL
Summary
The
hermes kanban editcommand currently only supports--resultand--summary. For the most common recovery operations — clearing invalid skills, resettingconsecutive_failures, and clearing stale claim locks — operators must resort to direct SQLite manipulation:This is fragile (schema could change), error-prone (easy to typo a column name), and not documented in the CLI help.
Proposed CLI Extensions
Suggested Fix
Extend
hermes kanban editwith flags for the most common recovery operations, backed by the same SQL but with validation and schema-awareness. Add ahermes kanban resetconvenience command for the full recovery path.Environment
references/kanban-db-recovery.md) contains the full schema and recovery SQL