bug: email phase never assembles — `requires: email` but the connector is enabled/detected as `gmail`

[jordanrburger]

Summary

The email connector phase (phases/connectors/email.md) is silently dropped from every assembled SKILL.md on any vault whose mail connector is enabled under the key gmail (the value detection naturally produces). The phase gate requires the key email, but the enabled-connectors list contains gmail, so the keys never match and select_sections drops the whole phase.

Mechanism — three connector namespaces, two disagree

Namespace	Where	Value for the mail connector
Phase gate	phases/connectors/email.md frontmatter	requires: email
Enabled list	vault scout-config.yaml → connectors.enabled	gmail
Health registry	engine/scout/connectors.yaml	mcp:claude_ai_Gmail

Assembly (engine/scout/scripts/phase_assembly.py:select_sections) keeps a connector section only when requires ∈ enabled_connectors:

"email"  ∈  {calendar, claude_sessions, drive, github, gmail, granola, linear, slack}   →  False

→ all three sections of email.md are excluded from the assembled SKILL.

Reproduction

Assemble SKILL with a standard enabled set (the mail connector keyed as gmail, as detection emits it):

from scout.scripts.bootstrap import BootstrapConfig, _assemble
cfg = BootstrapConfig(..., enabled_connectors={
    "calendar","claude_sessions","drive","github","gmail","granola","linear","slack"})
sk = _assemble(cfg, "SKILL")
assert "gmail_search_messages" in sk   # FAILS — email phase absent
assert "Slack Notification"   in sk    # passes — slack phase present (control)

Observed on a live vault: the deployed SKILL.md has 0 occurrences of every email-phase marker (gmail_search_messages, Cold outreach, Inbound email, Mass email), while the Slack-phase control is present.

Impact

• Scheduled briefing/consolidation runs carry no email/Gmail discipline in their assembled prompt — no cold-outreach skip, no automated-alert triage, no thread-drill rule. (Gmail MCP tools remain available, so Gmail may still be touched opportunistically, but none of the phase's guidance is in-prompt.)
• Anything added to email.md is inert until the keys reconcile — including the rules just landed in feat(email): automated-alert triage + thread-drill rules #157 (automated-alert triage, snippet-vs-thread drill). We've been adding rules to a phase that doesn't assemble.

Why only this connector

Every other connector's requires: key equals the token detection writes into the config — slack→slack, granola→granola, github→github, claude-sessions.md→claude_sessions. The mail connector detects from mcp:claude_ai_Gmail → gmail, but email.md alone chose the provider-neutral logical name email and never reconciled. One-connector naming inconsistency.

Fix options

1. Rename the phase gate email → gmail (requires: + name:, optionally the filename). One line; matches the existing "key = detected token" convention. Cost: couples the phase to one provider.
2. Alias/normalization layer — map gmail (and a future outlook, …) → the logical email key where requires is matched. Keeps phase keys provider-neutral; best for distributability; slightly more code.
3. Change detection + migrate existing configs to write email. Most disruptive (touches existing vaults).

This likely belongs in the connector-catalog work (#152), which is already reworking the connector key model — folding the reconciliation in there may be cleaner than a standalone hotfix. Flagging now so it isn't lost.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[jordanrburger]

Folded into the connector-catalog spec #152 (commit 8b8ffc2) as a precondition of its key model — added a Canonical-key invariant section: a connector must use one key across probe/detection, config enabled, phase requires:, and roster, enforced by scoutctl connectors + CI, with the recommended resolution (standardize on provider-neutral email; gmail alias + idempotent gmail → email config normalization). Tracking the actual fix there rather than as a standalone hotfix.