gate:ask reports why the form cap forced a wait

[m4ttheweric]

A caller whose question exceeds the in-pane form's 4-option cap used to get a bare "wait" back with no reason; that silence is why navigation-verb folding survived across the wrapper skills (three live specimens today: 5- and 6-option questions degrading gates to the wait queue).

When the pane and session would have supported a form and one or more questions exceed the cap, the gate:ask response now carries formCapExceeded ([{question, options}]) and formCapAdvisory naming the structural remedy, through both surfaces: the CLI prints the fields on stdout and one advisory line on stderr (mirroring contextOmitted), and the gate_ask MCP tool returns the same fields with the cap taught in its description. A pane-less ask waits for its own reason and carries no advisory. Never a refusal: an over-cap wait gate is legitimate (remote cards render any option count).

Verified: handler + CLI + MCP suites and the gate-ask e2e file green; rt-client dist rebuilt.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Gate questions with more than four options now include form-cap diagnostics, including the affected question and option count.
  • Oversized selections continue to open the gate while presenting a wait status with guidance for handling the choices.
  • Operators receive a warning detailing affected questions, available options, and recommended alternatives.

• Documentation

  • Updated gate_ask guidance to describe the four-option in-pane limit and recommended question formats.

[coderabbitai]

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ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: defaults

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Advanced

Run ID: e456e72c-aa01-49a1-b420-fc43f05b53e8

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 67fd19d and dd62b96.

📒 Files selected for processing (5)

• commands/gate.ts
• lib/daemon/__tests__/gate-ask-handler.test.ts
• lib/daemon/handlers/gate.ts
• lib/mcp/tools.ts
• packages/rt-client/src/commands.ts

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The gate:ask flow now detects questions with more than four options in pane-backed sessions. It returns optional form-cap diagnostics, keeps the gate open, emits an operator warning, and documents the resulting wait presentation.

Changes

Gate Form-Cap Advisories

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Response contract packages/rt-client/src/commands.ts, lib/daemon/handlers/gate.ts	The gate:ask response now supports optional formCapExceeded and formCapAdvisory fields.
Cap detection and validation lib/daemon/handlers/gate.ts, lib/daemon/__tests__/gate-ask-handler.test.ts	The daemon detects over-cap questions only when pane and session data exist. Tests cover over-cap, pane-less, and within-cap requests.
Operator output and tool guidance commands/gate.ts, lib/mcp/tools.ts	The CLI prints affected questions and the advisory to stderr. The MCP description documents the four-option limit and wait outcome.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~12 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant MCPClient
  participant GateHandler
  participant GateCLI
  MCPClient->>GateHandler: send gate:ask questions
  GateHandler->>GateHandler: detect options above four
  GateHandler-->>MCPClient: return formCapExceeded and formCapAdvisory
  GateHandler-->>GateCLI: return gate response
  GateCLI->>GateCLI: print affected questions and advisory

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Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to dd62b

The form-cap diagnostics are consistently represented across the handler, client contract, CLI, MCP guidance, and targeted tests. No merge-blocking issue remains.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 25.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 4 functions across 5 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely describes the main change: gate:ask reports why the form-cap condition causes a wait.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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