Summary

Chain of correctness and reliability fixes on the Honcho dialectic path. Replaces #9884's lingering gaps and follows up on #10619. Also incorporates @LeonSGP43's #11434 fix for gateway per-user memory scoping.

Closes

• Fixes [Bug]: Honcho memory scoping ignores gateway user_id when peer_name is configured #11199 (gateway user_id ignored when peer_name configured)
• Supersedes fix(honcho): scope gateway sessions by runtime user id #11434 — @LeonSGP43's commit is cherry-picked into this branch preserving authorship

Cadence & defaults

• dialecticCadence wizard default is 2. Setup wizard always writes it; status display and docs show 2. Code keeps a backwards-compat fallback of 1 when the key is unset so existing honcho.json configs that predate the setting keep firing every turn on upgrade.
• Cadence gate uniform at all values. Previous if dialectic_cadence > 1: guard let cadence=1 fire twice on turn 0 (sync first-turn + same-turn queue).

Correctness

• Session-start prewarm now consumed. prefetch_dialectic wrote to HonchoSessionManager._dialectic_cache but pop_dialectic_result had zero call sites. Turn 1 paid for a duplicate sync .chat(). Prewarm now writes directly to HonchoMemoryProvider._prefetch_result under lock; turn 1 consumes without another call.
• Prewarm is dialecticDepth-aware. Single-pass prewarm on a cold peer often returns thin output; multi-pass audit/reconcile runs at init instead.
• Silent failure doesn't advance cadence. _last_dialectic_turn advances only when the result is non-empty.
• Thread pile-up guard. queue_prefetch skips when a prior dialectic thread is still in-flight.
• First-turn sync timeout is recoverable. The background thread writes into _prefetch_result under lock on completion, so the next turn picks it up even when the sync wait timed out.

Liveness + observability

• Stale-thread watchdog. A prefetch thread older than timeout × 2 is treated as dead so a hung Honcho call can't block future fires.
• Stale-result discard. Pending _prefetch_result is tagged with fire-turn; discarded on read if older than dialecticCadence × 2 turns.
• Empty-streak backoff. Consecutive empty returns widen effective cadence (cadence + streak, capped at cadence × 8). Healthy fire resets streak.
• liveness_snapshot() method. In-process diagnostic with 7 runtime fields.
• hermes honcho status surfaces base reasoning level, cap, and heuristic toggle.
• Tool nudge. system_prompt_block tells the model honcho_reasoning accepts reasoning_level minimal/low/medium/high/max per call.

Restored behavior

• Query-length reasoning-level scaling (dropped in 9a0ab34c). Scales dialecticReasoningLevel up on longer queries (+1 at ≥120 chars, +2 at ≥400), clamped at reasoningLevelCap. New config: reasoningHeuristic: bool (default true) and reasoningLevelCap: string (default "high"; previously parsed but never enforced).
• Short-prompt skip (dropped in ef7f3156). ok / y / thanks / slash commands short-circuit both injection and dialectic.

Setup wizard

• Adds reasoning-level step surfacing all five options (minimal, low, medium, high, max). Always writes dialecticReasoningLevel.
• Cadence prompt copy updated; recommended range 1–5.

Multi-peer + observation (@LeonSGP43, cherry-picked #11434)

• Gateway user_id no longer mutates cfg.peer_name. Threaded through HonchoSessionManager as runtime_user_peer_name and preferred when resolving the user peer. Per-user memory scoping works even when a static peerName is configured.

Dead-code purge

• HonchoSessionManager.prefetch_dialectic, _dialectic_cache, set_dialectic_result, pop_dialectic_result — all orphaned after the prewarm refactor.

Config surface additions

{
  "reasoningHeuristic": true,
  "reasoningLevelCap": "high"
}

Both optional; defaults preserve behavior.

Test plan

• pytest tests/honcho_plugin/ tests/agent/test_memory_provider.py tests/agent/test_memory_user_id.py tests/run_agent/test_run_agent.py — 561 passed
• New coverage:
  • TestTrivialPromptHeuristic — short-prompt skip
  • TestDialecticCadenceAdvancesOnSuccess — empty-result retry, thread pile-up
  • TestSessionStartDialecticPrewarm — prewarm consumed, sync fallback
  • TestReasoningHeuristic — length bumps, cap clamp
  • TestDialecticLiveness — stale-thread recovery, stale-result discard, empty-streak backoff, snapshot shape
  • TestDialecticLifecycleSmoke — end-to-end 8-turn session walk
  • TestHonchoUserIdScoping (@LeonSGP43) — runtime user peer scoping

Files

Plugin code, wizard, docs, 20+ new tests. See commits for per-commit diffs.