fix(inbox): a negated allow word is a refusal, not an approval

[ishita199615]

The problem

Reply "not approved" to an approval request in Slack and OpenWorker approves it — the email goes out.

resolve_from_reply (coworker/inbox_routing.py:137) checks allow before deny and stops at the first hit:

if _ALLOW_WORDS.search(lowered) or "👍" in reply or "✅" in reply:
    resolution = "allow"
elif _DENY_WORDS.search(lowered) or "👎" in reply or "❌" in reply:
    resolution = "deny"

_ALLOW_WORDS is \b(?:approve|approved|allow|allowed|yes)\b. "not approved" matches approved, so the first branch wins and the elif never runs. The not is never read.

#161 added those word boundaries so "disallow" stopped matching allow. Boundaries fix matching inside a word, not the word in front of it.

On main at 01b6f83, against a real InboxStore:

Short answers (no, deny) work. Full-sentence refusals flip.

Why it matters

This is the live path for Slack/Telegram approval replies — manager.py:2830 _resolve_inbox_reply routes inbound messages here for kind="approval" items, which gate sends, shell commands and file writes. The ownership check above it decides who may answer; nothing checked what they meant.

It fails in the wrong direction. A misread approval costs a second click. A misread refusal has already sent the email.

The fix

allowed = _ALLOW_WORDS.search(lowered) or "👍" in reply or "✅" in reply
denied = _DENY_WORDS.search(lowered) or "👎" in reply or "❌" in reply
if _NEGATED_ALLOW.search(lowered) or denied:
    resolution = "deny"
elif allowed:
    resolution = "allow"

Deny is tested first, so a reply with both intents ("denied - do not allow") lands closed. And a new pattern catches the case with no deny word at all:

_NEGATED_ALLOW = re.compile(
    r"\b(?:not|never|no|nope|cannot|can'?t|won'?t|don'?t|doesn'?t|didn'?t|isn'?t|"
    r"shouldn'?t)\b(?:\W+\w+){0,2}?\W+(?:approve|approved|allow|allowed|yes)\b"
)

The {0,2} window is deliberate. ask_user questions reuse this parser, so a broader rule would start swallowing free-text answers. "did not surface anything new, so approve" still resolves as allow — there's a test pinning it.

Emoji reactions, plain approvals and the free-text path are unchanged.

Tests

6 new cases in tests/test_inbox_routing.py, plus 3 pinning what must not change, alongside the ones #161 added.

• Source reverted (git checkout main -- coworker/inbox_routing.py): 6 failed, 15 passed
• With the fix: 21 passed
• Full suite: 1121 passed, 1 skipped