"database is locked (another Hermes process held the state.db write lock for
over 60s)" identified the victim only. The open-descriptor scan cannot single
out the writer because every Hermes process (gateway, CLI sessions, worktree
agents, cron) has the DB open, so an operator hit repeatedly by
session_persistence_failed:locked had nothing to act on.
SQLite's unix VFS takes fcntl byte-range locks whose offset encodes the lock
kind (state.db-shm byte 120 = WAL write, 121 = checkpoint; the pending-byte page
on state.db = PENDING/RESERVED), and the kernel exports them with the owning pid
in /proc/locks. hermes_state_lockowners reads that table at the moment the
patience budget runs out and logs one WARNING per write-class holder with
describe_holder_pid()'s argv summary, for both the transcript write path and
open+init lock patience. The holder stays out of the exception text on purpose:
classify_persistence_error() buckets by phrase and a holder argv such as a
worktree named fix-corrupt-db would flip the bucket.
Docs: the Write Contention section still described attempt-counted retries
(_WRITE_MAX_RETRIES = 15); updated to the time budgets in force and the new log line.
