handoff_gate + teammate_completion_gate should learn teachback_pending/awaiting_approval state

[michael-wojcik]

Context

PR #477 (issue #401) cycle-10 introduced blocking teachback semantics: teammates MUST halt after submitting their teachback and wait for the lead's teachback_approved metadata write before beginning any implementation work.

Problem

During the correctly-halted state (task in_progress, produced list empty, teammate waiting for approval), the following hooks fire and nag:

• handoff_gate.py — complains about missing handoff content
• teammate_completion_gate.py — complains about incomplete completion

Both hooks are correct under the pre-cycle-10 model (empty produced = something went wrong). Under cycle-10 semantics, empty produced while awaiting_approval is the correct halted state, not a failure.

Observed

During PR #477 cycle-10 dogfooding (2026-04-20), cycle9-fixer correctly halted after submitting teachback and waiting for lead metadata approval. Both hooks fired repeatedly. Teammate correctly honored SACROSANCT Completion Integrity (refused to fabricate completion) and preserved the honest halted state. But the hook noise was significant during the approval wait.

Proposal

Both hooks should short-circuit (no nagging) when the task is in a teachback-awaiting-approval state. Detection signals:

1. Task has metadata.teachback_submit written by the teammate
2. Task does NOT have metadata.teachback_approved from the lead yet
3. Task in_progress, produced may be empty

When all three hold, the teammate is correctly halted per cycle-10's work-start-gate semantics. Hooks should recognize this as a valid wait-state and emit no reminder.

Non-goals

• Do NOT suppress nagging after teachback_approved is written — after approval, normal hook semantics resume.
• Do NOT suppress nagging on teammates without teachback_submit metadata — those are just slow or confused teammates, still need nagging.

Background

• PR feat(#401): variety-tiered teachback gate with generation-shaped content validation #477: teachback gate + blocking semantics (cycles 9, 9b, 10)
• Related pinned context: "Claude Code has 26 hook events" — TeammateIdle might be the right hook to carry the state-aware suppression, since it's the one that currently nags idle teammates.

Priority: LOW. Can wait until after Phase 2 flip (issue #481). But without it, cycle-10's blocking semantics and the existing hook nag interact noisily.

[michael-wojcik]

Update: #486 is obsoleted by redesign #491. Under the new model (teammates never self-complete, lead is completion authority), there is no awaiting_approval state — task status transitions ARE the authority signal. Hook state-awareness for a nonexistent state is moot. Recommend closing once #491 ships. Flagging here rather than closing preemptively to preserve the discussion thread.