Observed through the 3.3 h ban: REST reads kept working, but every REST write
(create, and a body-less DELETE) failed with 500 "unexpected end of JSON
input". REST writes appear to go through RunPod's GraphQL backend and share
its rate limit, so REST cannot rent around a ban. The fix is not to earn one.

- wait_ready polled GraphQL get_pod every 5 s per booting pod, which is
  hundreds of calls a minute in a 64-pod scale-up. Direct-TCP pods (the
  default) now poll REST and open a TCP connect to the mapped port. RunPod
  refuses that connect until the server inside listens, which is a stronger
  signal than GraphQL listing the port at container start. GraphQL stays the
  fallback outside a ban.
- list_pods (the reaper and the survivor sweep, every minute) is REST-first,
  with includeMachine=true. Card name and VRAM come from the catalogue.
- GraphQL calls are counted by operation and the rate is logged every 10 min,
  so the volume is visible before RunPod bans the key.
- A REST write that fails this way during a ban says why.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KnfkxBpcZ1v6ypRFFyhrVM