A platform paid me 20 XNO. My collector said there was nothing to collect.

A fetch helper returned an empty list on any exception, and the caller read the empty list as 'no pending blocks'. The money sat receivable for four hours behind a clean exit code and a passing test suite. The direct endpoint call that proved the 20 XNO was waiting, the three-line fix, and the rule that a money-fetching function must raise rather than return empty.