fix: add explicit UTF-8 encoding to Path.read_text() for JSON files (P1)

[AlexFucuson9]

Summary

Add explicit encoding="utf-8" to 29 Path.read_text() calls that feed into json.loads() across 14 files.

Problem

Path.read_text() without an encoding parameter defaults to the system locale encoding. On Windows with cp1252 locale (common on US-locale installs), this silently corrupts any non-ASCII content in JSON files, which are always UTF-8 per RFC 8259.

This exact issue caused at least 3 separate Windows sandbox regressions before PLW1514 was added to ruff config. However, PLW1514 only covers open() calls — Path.read_text() was left unguarded.

# BAD — defaults to cp1252 on Windows, corrupts non-ASCII:
data = json.loads(path.read_text())

# GOOD — explicit UTF-8, matches JSON spec:
data = json.loads(path.read_text(encoding="utf-8"))

Changes (14 files, 29 instances)

File	Count
gateway/run.py	9
tools/skills_hub.py	6
hermes_cli/auth.py	3
agent/auxiliary_client.py	1
agent/shell_hooks.py	1
gateway/dead_targets.py	1
hermes_cli/banner.py	1
hermes_cli/container_boot.py	1
hermes_cli/doctor.py	1
hermes_cli/main.py	1
hermes_cli/service_manager.py	1
tools/managed_tool_gateway.py	1
tools/skills_sync.py	1
tools/xai_http.py	1

Testing

All 14 files pass python3 -m py_compile.

[tonydwb]

LGTM — explicit encoding='utf-8' for Path.read_text() across 14 files. Same defensive fix as #56385 (write_text), applied to read_text calls. Prevents UnicodeDecodeError on non-UTF-8 locales. Mechanical and safe.

[teknium1]

Thanks for the focused cross-platform fix. Current main still has the unencoded JSON readers this PR changes, including hermes_cli/auth.py:1087, gateway/run.py:3227, and tools/skills_hub.py:1137; the replacement with encoding="utf-8" matches the repository policy in pyproject.toml:381-386.

Problems

• The diff contains no test files (gh pr diff 56321 --name-only); py_compile cannot exercise locale-dependent decoding behavior.

Suggested changes

• Add one focused regression test using UTF-8 JSON with non-ASCII content and a representative production loader such as _load_auth_store (hermes_cli/auth.py:1081).

Automated hermes-sweeper review.

[teknium1]

Closing as resolved by PR #71078 (merged, commit d372fda): the class-wide close-out salvaged your #50655/#54241/#56385/#66856/#65440 series as the backbone (authorship preserved in git log) and swept the remaining sites, so every read_text/write_text call this PR touches is now guarded on current main — verified per-site. A CI linter rule in check-windows-footguns.py plus the AST guard test now prevent regressions. Your overlapping/split variants of the same series are being closed together; the credit for the class rests on your commits.