Field report (enterprise, v0.20.0): cron jobs delivering text + PDF/image
attachments to Slack DMs deliver both on scheduled ticks but text-only on
manual `hermes cron run <job-id>`. Same box, same token, same scopes —
the divergence is process context and error visibility, not credentials.
Three defects, one bug class (attachment failures invisible + policy
divergence between the gateway process and standalone processes):
1. Standalone lane swallowed warnings: platform standalone senders
(Slack files_upload_v2, Discord, ...) report per-file upload failures
in result['warnings'] while returning success=True for the delivered
text leg. _deliver_result only read result['error'], so the run was
marked ok and the attachment vanished without a trace. Warnings now
surface into delivery_errors (and the job's last_error).
2. Live-adapter lane swallowed media failures: _send_media_via_adapter
logged failures at WARNING and returned None. It now returns per-file
error strings and _deliver_result records them — text-delivered-but-
attachment-failed is a visible partial failure on BOTH lanes.
3. Media-policy env bridge was gateway-only: gateway.strict /
media_delivery_allow_dirs / trust_recent_files were translated from
config.yaml to the env vars validate_media_delivery_path reads ONLY in
gateway startup. A CLI-process manual run filtered attachment paths
under a different policy — in strict/allowlisted deployments the exact
reported symptom (scheduled delivers, manual drops, silently). The
translation now lives in gateway/media_policy.apply_media_policy_env
(idempotent, env-wins, never raises); gateway startup delegates to it
and _deliver_result applies it before filtering. Attachments dropped
by the policy filter are also reported in the run status instead of
only a stderr WARNING.
On v0.20.0 specifically the failure was double-blind: the pre-9cf2cbd382
isinstance(resp, dict) gates meant upload failures were undetectable in
the sender AND unsurfaced by the scheduler. 9cf2cbd382 (in 2026.8.13)
fixed detection; this fixes visibility and policy parity.
8 new tests (tests/cron/test_media_delivery_parity.py): warnings→errors,
clean-delivery control, media-reaches-sender control, live-adapter
failure/dropped-path reporting, bridge helper semantics, strict+allowlist
end-to-end in a non-gateway process, and the .env-strict/config-allowlist
split that reproduces the field symptom. Mutation check: disabling the
warnings loop and the bridge fails exactly the 2 guarding tests.
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