Per @nesquena-hermes review on #2811: hermes-agent isn't published to
PyPI, so `pip install hermes-agent` finds nothing and start.ps1's
hermes_cli guard correctly bails out — leaving the previous workflow
unable to self-validate against release/stage-batch6.
This rework adopts option 1 from the review: drop the pip install,
stub a hermes_cli/ directory with a minimal __init__.py next to the
sibling hermes-agent/ folder, then run start.ps1 for 8 seconds and
assert that none of its own Write-Error guards (no Python, no agent
dir, bad port, missing hermes_cli, missing server.py) appeared in
stderr. /health is no longer probed — the server cannot boot on a
stub, and full-boot regressions stay covered by the Linux jobs and
docker-smoke.yml.
Scope intentionally narrower than the original: this workflow
validates start.ps1's PowerShell syntax + path discovery only. The
exact bug class PR #2805 caught (WOW64 ProgramFiles redirect) would
now light up red here pre-merge, which is the reason this gate exists.
Paths filter trimmed to `start.ps1` + the workflow itself; the broader
list (requirements.txt / bootstrap.py / server.py) was inherited from
the original full-boot scoping and isn't relevant for a path-discovery-
only run.
Verification: workflow runs on this PR via its own pull_request trigger.
The first CI run on this branch IS the verification.
CHANGELOG updated under [Unreleased] with a single bullet sized to the
surrounding density.
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