Ja.

: but that is likely the gift Librarian
: gave to humanity. Not that they would become a spacefaring species,
: develop Spartans, Mjolnir and Cortana, but that they could.

"Reclaimer, when I indexed mankind for repopulation, I hid seeds from the Didact. Seeds which would lead to an eventuality. Your physical evolution. Your combat skin. Even your ancilla, Cortana. You are the culmination of a thousand lifetimes of planning."

"Lead to an eventuality." Nice turn of phrase. Out of all the possible outcomes of our technological development, we had one little genesong driving us to a certain application.

"Thousand lifetimes of planning" is odd, because I don't think there's been any indication that the Librarian was half that old. I would have guessed 20,000 years, at the most.

: It doesn't lessen their accomplishments or take away their free will,

It does. All this time, humanity has had something in their heads whispering "Would you kindly?"

: as the
: human race could've been wiped out if they had been even a few years late.

Oh, did the Librarian plan the Human-Covenant war too? If so, she's just won the Joan Crawford Award for Worst Mother of the Millenium.

But wait: If it weren't for her genetic tinkering, would humans have shown up on the Luminaries? Wouldn't we be incorporated into the Covenant? Mightn't we have been in a better place to stop the Halo Array from firing?

Either way, that's a lousy post-hoc justification.