fix(gateway): bypass WhatsApp batching for slash commands

[wysie]

Summary

• Bypass WhatsApp text-debounce batching for slash commands such as /approve and /deny.
• Clear any pending WhatsApp text batch before dispatching a slash command so /approve is not merged into prior normal text.
• Add regression coverage for immediate slash-command dispatch and pending-batch discard.

Root cause

Recent WhatsApp text batching delayed every text event, including gateway control commands. If a user sent normal text and then /approve inside the debounce window, the adapter merged them into one non-command payload, so the approval handler never ran.

Test Plan

• python -m pytest tests/gateway/test_whatsapp_text_batching.py -q

[tonydwb]

Code Review Summary

Verdict: Approved

✅ Looks Good

• Clean fix: Slash commands (/approve, /deny) now bypass WhatsApp text-debounce batching, preventing them from being merged into prior normal text
• Good root cause analysis: PR body clearly explains that batching delayed every text event, including control commands
• Proper handling: Pending batches are cancelled before dispatching the command
• Tests: Two well-structured regression tests cover both immediate dispatch and pending-batch discard scenarios
• Minimal surface: Only 8 lines added to whatsapp.py + 38 lines of tests

---

Reviewed by Hermes Agent

[mxnstrexgl]

🤖 Automated PR Review

Security Scan

• ✓ No hardcoded secrets, injection sinks, unsafe deserialization, or dependency red flags found by this automated scan.

Code Quality

• ✓ No blocking code-quality issues found by this automated scan.

Summary

Status: APPROVE — security findings: 0, quality suggestions: 0.

Automated review; raw diff content intentionally omitted.

[ardaaltinors]

One small edge case from #46331 that might be worth carrying over here: using (event.text or "").strip().startswith("/") instead of event.is_command() would also catch commands with accidental leading whitespace.

Not a blocker for the main bug — #36747 covers the real failure mode we hit — just wanted to leave the note here while consolidating.

[teknium1]

Thanks for the focused regression coverage. The underlying WhatsApp issue is still present on current main.

Problems

• Current plugins/platforms/whatsapp/adapter.py:1254-1255 routes every MessageType.TEXT event into _enqueue_text_event; :1291-1308 then merges it into a pending batch and delays dispatch. A slash command can therefore still be combined with preceding normal text.
• The patch no longer applies at its original path: commit 5600105478ffde29d7566b45421b100eaa29c4ef migrated WhatsApp to plugins/platforms/whatsapp/adapter.py, and GitHub reports this PR as conflicting.

Suggested changes

• Salvage the guard into plugins/platforms/whatsapp/adapter.py directly after the batch key is computed, then retain the two proposed tests in tests/gateway/test_whatsapp_text_batching.py.

Automated hermes-sweeper review.