I never heard of a system where locating files for execution was performed by a kernel. Also true for MS/PC-DOS... which also holds the distinction of having s

I never heard of a system where locating files for execution was performed by a kernel. Also true for MS/PC-DOS... which also holds the distinction of having some rare "truly monolithic" API-compatible variants that put the kernel, drivers, and shell in a single binary, so that may satisfy your criteria.