Post-merge regression from combining two individually-correct changes:
main's 2026-07-23 fix makes open_preferred_path bail WITHOUT touching the
port when no device_kind is pinned, while the hw-config branch's skip_path
dedup excludes the preferred path from the auto-detect fallback on the
assumption it was already probed this cycle. Together, on a single-radio
node with no pin (the common fleet state), the only candidate was never
probed at all and the mesh never came up — hit live on archi-dev-box
right after deploying merged main.
Fix: when device_kind is None, skip open_preferred_path entirely and go
straight to auto_detect_and_open with skip_path=None. The pinned path
keeps the existing probe-then-skip fallback.
Verified live on archi-dev-box: radio auto-detected, Reticulum daemon
ready, 5 persisted peers loaded. Mesh tests 116 passed / 0 failed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
7326bb9262