To an extent, we can be your mentors. I'm happy to do whatever I can to further your development. It's always better to have a flesh and blood, in person mentor but my experiences here have taught me that there are parts of the world where that simply isn't a realistic option for many folks.
I'm hesitant to reopen such a lengthy thread but I see that I was personally summoned in several spots on this one to speak to shear friction issues. And I don't like to leave a man behind on the field of battle as it were. A brief summary of the pertinent issues.
1) I believe that there is indeed such a thing as a purely vertical shear failure through monolithic concrete. It has a name and that name is direct shear. It also has a published value in the US of about 10 x SQRT(f'c). It makes an appearance in CRSI's guide on pile cap design as well as a few other places. It's a rare thing and, as referenced by TME above, I believe that the only proof supplied to demonstrate it's rarity was supplied by me, previously, here at Eng-Tips.
2) We're generally encouraged to use tension side reinforcing for shear friction because, in the typical case with moments present, the force in the tension side reinforcing is counterbalanced by compression on the compression side. And it's that compression side clamping that really makes shear friction a viable thing. Anyone would be forgiven for misunderstanding this for several reasons. Firstly, we ignore this all the time in common practice. Designers will shear friction connect shear walls above and below slabs assuming that all of the bars contribute equally. Secondly, to my knowledge, the very testing upon which shear friction relies was done in such a way as to preclude the presence of moments altogether. I consider that a bit unfortunate given that most real world situations involve moment.
3) I do personally believe that compression block rebar reduces the effectiveness of shear friction. I think that this is partially born out in the provisions that only allow inclined bars to be used in shear friction applications when the bars would naturally be in tension. Compression bars are a no go. In my mind, any compression bar reduces the compression in the concrete and therefore reduces the all important shear friction clamping force. Some shear may well end up in the compression bars as, essentially, dowel force. But that's a whole different animal replete with app D style breakout concerns etc.
4) I think that OP is fundamentally on to something with his concern for direct shear in these joints. Consider that we take it for granted that a common flexural crack still remains an essentially monolithic direct shear joint. Clearly, there must be
some limit on the width of flexural crack that is acceptable before shear across it becomes a concern? And, if we're not "designing" the top bars for any meaningful criteria, how can we know that crack width is appropriately limited?
5) I fully acknowledge that shear failures of this sort do not appear to have caused problems in the past. That said, in the past, most of us were putting meaningful top steel in these joints. I'm not feeling so good about a future where the profession is dominated by know nothing "operators".
6) If your connection is suitably detailed and you're willing to tolerate large cracks in the top of the supported beam, I believe that you can theoretically get by with no top steel at all following the hanger steel strut and tie model suggested by the sketch below. I don't love it for the reasons discussed above however. Additionally, and fundamentally, a good STM model should reflect expected elastic stress distributions. In the absence of meaningful top steel, I would submit that the hanger STM fails that litmus test.
I like to debate structural engineering theory -- a lot. If I challenge you on something, know that I'm doing so because I respect your opinion enough to either change it or adopt it.