The pane, in-app browser, and reaction tools were gated on HERMES_DESKTOP=1 —
an env var set only on backends Electron spawns itself (local and SSH). A
desktop client connected to a plain URL gateway or Hermes Cloud lost all six:
they were stripped from the schema before the model saw them, on the same
backend whose platform hint was telling it "you are chatting inside the Hermes
desktop app". open_preview, read_preview, read_terminal, close_terminal,
focus_pane, and react_to_message were all silently absent.
The client is not the host. Capability now resolves from the session's own
source, which session.create already carries:
- The six tools move into a `desktop_ui` toolset, off _HERMES_CORE_TOOLS so no
other platform pays their schema.
- _gui_surface_toolsets(platform) folds `desktop_ui` (and the existing
`project` tools) into the GUI gateway's resolution when the session's
platform is the desktop app — the same answer on every topology.
- check_fn drops the env probe. It kept the one thing that is genuinely a
per-process/user fact: react_to_message's display.message_reactions opt-in,
which the desktop mirrors onto whichever gateway it is connected to.
react_to_message was doubly broken: it read that toggle behind the env gate, so
even a local-backend user's Settings toggle could not reach a remote session.
The embedded terminal pane keeps working correctly the other way round: it runs
`hermes --tui` against a desktop-spawned backend, and a tui-sourced session
gets no GUI tools even though HERMES_DESKTOP=1 is set on that process.
The turn finalizer already hands back steer text that queued after the
final tool batch — result["pending_steer"], with the comment "hand it
back to the caller so it can be delivered as the next user turn instead
of being silently lost." Every interactive surface honors that contract
(cli.py, gateway/run.py, tui_gateway/server.py all requeue it). The
delegation layer doesn't: _run_single_child never reads it, so a steer
queued into a delegated child that finishes first vanishes with no trace
in the completion entry. There is also no sanctioned sender: the registry
has interrupt_subagent() but no redirection-side mirror, and session.steer
cannot reach children (lazy watch sessions have agent=None, so it 4010s).
Complete the contract for delegated children — both halves:
- steer_subagent(subagent_id, text): redirection-side mirror of
interrupt_subagent(). Resolves the live child in _active_subagents and
queues text via AIAgent.steer(). True means queued, not delivered.
- missed_steer retention: when the child's result carries pending_steer,
_run_single_child names it on the completion entry (missed_steer field
plus a summary note) so the parent can re-issue the guidance instead of
trusting it landed. This is what makes adding a sender safe: without it
the finish-before-drain race silently loses the text — the exact loss
the finalizer contract exists to prevent.
- subagent.steer gateway RPC beside subagent.interrupt so programmatic
hosts (dashboard, voice layers, ACP bridges) get an in-tree caller;
catalogued in programmatic-integration.md.
- docs: "Steering a Running Subagent" section in delegation.md covering
the queued-vs-delivered semantics.
Tests: registry-level steer coverage (delivery, unknown id, empty text,
dead record, raising agent), the finish-before-drain race retaining
missed_steer, and the RPC contract (4000/4002 validation, queued and
rejected envelopes).
The anydoc path from #79781 passed every covered file straight to
to_markdown with no pre-check. anydoc loads the whole document through
its Rust core and the read_file char budget only applies after
conversion, so one large PDF or deck could pin a tool turn and spike
RAM.
_extract_anydoc now rejects inputs over MAX_ANYDOC_BYTES (50 MB) with
ExtractionError before calling the converter, which routes them to the
existing read_file fallthrough instead of converting. No timeout is
added: the conversion is a synchronous Rust call that cannot be
cancelled from Python, so a thread-based deadline would bound the wait
but leave the RAM burn running in the background.
The first _anydoc() load cached None on any failure (network blip,
missing wheel, pip race), so one bad first try disabled document
extraction for the rest of the process. Long-lived gateway and desktop
workers never recovered.
Failed loads now cool down for ANYDOC_RETRY_SECONDS and retry instead
of sticking, and a lock serializes first use so parallel readers cannot
double-install or race a failure into the cache. Successful loads are
still cached for the process lifetime.
read_file's auto-extraction covered only the stdlib trio (.ipynb/.docx/
.xlsx). firecrawl-anydoc (MIT, Rust core, imports as `anydoc`) converts
Word, PowerPoint, Excel — including legacy .doc/.ppt/.xls — OpenDocument,
RTF, EPUB, and PDF to clean Markdown through one shared document model.
Wiring follows the footprint ladder: no new tool, no hard dependency.
- tools/read_extract.py gains an ANYDOC_EXTENSIONS set that is active
only when the converter imports; the stdlib extractors remain
authoritative for their three formats so behavior is identical with
or without the package.
- tools/lazy_deps.py adds tool.doc_extract (firecrawl-anydoc==0.1.6),
installed on first read of such a file with prompt=False so read_file
can never block. Lazy-only for now: the package's first release was
2026-08-04, inside uv's 14-day exclude-newer quarantine, so the
mirrored pyproject extra lands after it clears.
- Any anydoc ConvertError maps to ExtractionError, falling back to the
existing path/binary handling instead of erroring the tool.
Tests: real-binding suite skips cleanly when the wheel is absent
(verified: 15 passed/3 skipped without it, 18 passed with it), plus an
absent-dep contract class that pins the fallback regardless of local
install state.
* feat(agent): read_preview — the desktop-gated tool that reads the in-app browser
The agent could open the preview pane (open_preview) and read the embedded
terminal (read_terminal), but the browser it had just opened was a black box —
'what does this page say?' had no answer. read_preview mirrors read_terminal
end to end: HERMES_DESKTOP-gated via check_fn (zero schema footprint outside
the GUI), dispatched through the same agent callback pattern, windowed with
start/count so a long page pages instead of flooding context.
* feat(gateway): preview.read blocking bridge
Same lifecycle as terminal.read: the tool blocks on preview.read.request, the
renderer answers preview.read.respond (allow_expired — a slow page extraction
losing the 45s race must not surface a raw 4009), and a timeout emits
preview.read.expire so late answers resolve quietly.
* feat(desktop): the renderer serializes the active preview tab for the agent
preview-reader.ts is the preview analog of the terminal's buffer registry: the
URL pane registers a page reader (webview executeJavaScript → title + visible
innerText) keyed by tab id; readActivePreview resolves the ACTIVE tab, windows
the text (24k cap per read), and answers file/artifact tabs with identity plus
a note pointing at the tool that reads that content directly. The gateway
event handler answers preview.read.request beside terminal.read.request.
With capture:auto the desktop always preferred client streaming, so a local
desktop with a working backend mic silently switched from PortAudio to
getUserMedia default-device — dropping wake_word.input_device selection
(#74363). A ready backend input now wins under auto; client capture is the
fallback for a preferring surface on a mic-less backend, and capture:client
still forces streaming.
Also removes the dead auto branch (both arms returned local) and lets the
client-feed test skip cleanly when numpy is absent.
Remote headless backends have no PortAudio mic, so "hey hermes" fails even
when openWakeWord is installed. Let the desktop stream 16 kHz int16 PCM via
wake.feed while detection stays server-side.
- wake_word.capture: auto|local|client (+ GUI client_capture prefer)
- WakeWordDetector external_audio queue + feed_audio API
- wake.feed RPC; wake.start/status report capture + frame_length
- Desktop getUserMedia feeder; stop on wake.detected, re-arm after voice
- Docs + unit tests (26 pass in tests/tools/test_wake_word.py)
Top-level delegate_task runs in the background, and the 450s progress-stall
monitor only sees api_call_count / tool / last_activity_ts. Subagents use
non-streaming direct_api_call, which previously touched activity once and then
went silent — so a healthy local GGUF / long-prefill wait looked frozen and
was interrupted around ~450s as "Operation interrupted: waiting for model
response", even when child_timeout_seconds was raised. Refresh activity while
the inline request is open, and treat last_activity_ts advances as sync
heartbeat progress too.
- write_file: encode content once, share bytes between bytes_written and
the sha256 verification (drops a second full-content encode per write)
- patch_parser: replace the except-TypeError retry around
write_file(pre_content=...) with signature-based feature detection so a
TypeError raised inside a capable implementation propagates instead of
triggering a duplicate write; tests for both duck-typing contracts
- tests: real-ops V4A BOM round-trip + _file_has_bom disk-probe guard
(the teknium1-review regression previously only covered by a fake)
- comment: document dirs_created's long-standing "parent ensured" meaning
Bug 1 (UTF-8 BOM loss on V4A UPDATE):
_file_has_bom() trusted pre_content for BOM detection, but the most
common pre_content provider — read_file_raw() — deliberately strips
BOMs so the agent never sees U+FEFF glyphs. Passing BOM-stripped
content through pre_content caused a false-negative: the method
returned False and write_file() silently removed the marker on rewrite.
Fix: _file_has_bom() now always probes the first 3 bytes on disk
(head -c 3), ignoring pre_content for BOM purposes. pre_content is
still used by two other consumers — line-ending detection and lint/LSP
delta computation — neither of which is affected by BOM stripping.
Bug 2 (backward compatibility):
_apply_update() called write_file(path, content, pre_content=...) as a
keyword argument. Duck-typed file_ops implementations that only
implement the two-argument write_file(path, content) contract would
raise TypeError.
Fix: wrap the call in try/except TypeError, falling back to the
two-argument form when the keyword is not accepted.
Also declare tomli in pyproject.toml (pre-existing conditional import
for pre-3.11 Python, caught by the pre-commit dep scan after staging
file_operations.py).
Tests:
Add TestV4ABomRoundTrip with two cases:
- UPDATE on BOM-bearing file preserves the marker
- UPDATE on plain file does not inject a BOM
Addresses teknium1 review on PR #55661.
write_file currently spawns up to 6 subprocesses per call:
1. mkdir -p (separate call before atomic write)
2. cat (to read pre-content for lint/BOM/line-ending detection)
3. _atomic_write (mktemp + write + mv — the essential one)
4. wc -c (to measure bytes written)
5. _check_lint_delta (post-write lint — also essential)
6. LSP snapshot (also essential)
This PR removes three of them without changing any observable behavior:
1. Fold mkdir -p into _atomic_write shell script (−1 subprocess/write)
The atomic write script already runs a single shell; adding mkdir -p
to it costs zero extra processes.
2. Add optional pre_content parameter to write_file (−1 subprocess/patch)
patch_replace and V4A _apply_update already read the file for fuzzy
matching. Passing that content as pre_content skips the redundant cat
inside write_file. Fully backward-compatible: callers that don't pass
pre_content still read from disk as before.
3. Replace wc -c with len(content.encode('utf-8')) (−1 subprocess/write)
We already have the content in memory; encoding it to get the byte count
is equivalent to wc -c for UTF-8 text.
4. Remove redundant _check_lint loop in apply_v4a_operations (−N subprocesses/V4A)
write_file already runs _check_lint_delta internally. The old code ran a
bare _check_lint(f) loop over all modified files — a re-read + re-lint
without post_content context. Now lint results propagate from write_file
via a four-tuple return, zeroing out the extra subprocesses.
Net effect:
- write_file: 6 → 3 subprocesses per call (new files)
- patch_replace: 6 → 5 subprocesses per call (pre_content skips cat)
- V4A multi-file patches: saves 1 subprocess per modified file
- A typical 4-file V4A patch drops from ~28 to ~16 subprocess calls
build_local_transcribe_kwargs read stt.local.no_speech_prob_threshold /
stt.local.logprob_threshold only for Hermes' post-filter
(_is_hallucinated_segment). faster-whisper's model.transcribe() never
received them, so its internal defaults (no_speech_threshold=0.6,
log_prob_threshold=-1.0) always applied and silently dropped
low-confidence segments before they reached the post-filter — making
those config knobs dead for the first gate.
Non-English speech decodes at a lower avg_logprob, so the English-tuned
defaults discard whole utterances (empty transcript despite correct
capture and language detection). Map the same config values through to
model.transcribe() so both gates stay in sync and the knobs work.
Defaults are unchanged, so behavior is identical unless a user tunes them.
Fixes#74178
Five review findings folded:
- schema cache writes via utils.atomic_json_write (fsync; was bare
tmp+replace), file moved to cache/mcp_schema_cache.json with 0o600
(sibling precedent: registry discovery cache)
- phantom-tool reconciliation: after a lazy server's first-use connect,
cached tools the live server no longer offers are deregistered (were
permanent registry ghosts burning circuit-breaker strikes on every
'Unknown tool' round-trip); stale fingerprint logged
- cache-load path now runs _scan_mcp_description like the eager path
(cache file is user-writable JSON; defense-in-depth)
- write-through skips the disk rewrite when the entry is unchanged
(a flapping stdio server was rewriting byte-identical JSON per
revival)
- _lazy_server_fingerprints no longer write-only dead state (consumed
by the reconciliation logging)
444 mcp tests green (440 pre-fold + 4 new guards); phantom-dereg and
write-skip mutation-checked.
Wires the fingerprint-keyed schema cache (previous commit, @Vansh5632's
design from #56832) into the startup path, re-derived onto main's
current connect machinery:
- register_mcp_servers: servers with mcp_servers.<name>.lazy=true whose
config fingerprint matches a valid cache entry register tools from
cache WITHOUT spawning; miss/stale falls back to eager connect.
- First tool use routes through _ensure_lazy_server_connected, which
composes with the connect cooldown (#50394) and _server_connecting
dedup rather than duplicating the connect path.
- resource/prompt utility handlers (list_resources/get_prompt) also
connect-on-first-use — closes the gap flagged in the original
sweeper review.
- Write-through: a live connect refreshes the cache entry.
Config gate is per-server, default OFF, matching the
idle_timeout_seconds key pattern. 24 lazy/cache tests + 440 mcp-wide
green; mutation-checked (cache-read disabled -> registration test
fails; connect bypassed -> 3 first-use tests fail).
Salvage of #48637 (Fixes#48628). On a NixOS-style install the venv's
site-packages lives in the read-only store, so ensure()'s
uv -> pip -> ensurepip ladder spends ~15s bootstrapping ensurepip only
to fail against a target it can never write. Fail fast with an
actionable message pointing at the system package manager.
Retargeted onto current main (the PR's base predates the durable-target
subsystem by ~8.1K commits) with two corrections to the original:
- Gate on _lazy_install_target() is None. The container deployment sets
HERMES_MANAGED=true AND HERMES_LAZY_INSTALL_TARGET (a writable
volume); the original guard would have blocked installs that path
legitimately satisfies, breaking the NixOS-container mode.
- Reason string starts with 'unsupported ' because
refresh_active_features classifies FeatureUnavailable by that prefix;
the original wording made 'hermes update' report a hard failure
instead of a skip.
Placed after _unsupported_feature_reason so a platform-specific reason
(more actionable) wins, and so ensure() agrees with
refresh_active_features, which pre-checks that same function.
Extracted from #54314 (@flag0x369), re-derived onto current main: macOS
ships bash 3.2 as /bin/bash, which lacks $BASHPID entirely — the
variable expands to empty string, collapsing every concurrent writer's
'unique' temp path onto the same file (torn snapshot writes under
concurrency). mktemp allocates per-writer unique paths portably.
Live-verified: /bin/bash -c 'echo $BASHPID' prints empty on this box.
The workdir allowlist regex was ASCII-only, so perfectly normal
non-ASCII workdirs (Chinese Obsidian vault paths, accented dirnames)
were rejected with 'disallowed character'. Replace the regex with a
per-character check that accepts Unicode letters/digits (str.isalnum)
plus the same safe ASCII punctuation set, while still rejecting shell
metacharacters, control characters (newlines/tabs), and NUL.
Salvaged from PR #54314.
Co-authored-by: kshitij <82637225+kshitijk4poor@users.noreply.github.com>
Recalled session messages can carry raw ANSI escape sequences (e.g.
archived terminal output), which then re-enter the model's context.
Strip them in _shape_message before content is truncated/returned,
reusing tools.ansi_strip.strip_ansi.
Re-applied onto current main (the original hunk predates the
max_content_len truncation in _shape_message; stripping happens on the
raw content before truncation so escape bytes never count against the
budget). Extracted from #40276.
A raw newline in the _CMDPOS start-position class made ANY multi-line
quoted argument look like a command boundary, so hermes send message
bodies, multi-line git commit -m messages, and heredoc text that merely
mentioned dangerous command names tripped the unconditional hardline
blocklist and could not run at all.
Mask newlines inside single/double quotes (detection-only, mirroring the
quote tracking in _iter_shell_command_starts) before building detection
variants. Real threats keep blocking: unquoted newlines stay command
separators, command substitutions inside quotes still anchor, and
_mark_command_starts still re-inserts newlines at genuine quote-aware
command starts. Masking runs on the RAW command before normalization,
which strips escapes and would otherwise corrupt quote state.
Regression tests cover both directions: multi-line quoted data passes
(hermes send, git commit -m, heredocs); bare/chained/substituted
shutdown-class and rm-floor commands still block.
The top-level delegate_task description repeated content the model already
receives through parameter descriptions: the concurrency limit (tasks param),
the full nesting clause (role param), context-passing guidance (goal/context
params), and background semantics (background param). Every API call paid for
the duplication (~4,000 chars).
The description now carries only what exists nowhere else in the schema:
use/don't-use routing (execute_code, cronjob), the no-poll rule, the
non-durability warning, the self-report verification contract with concrete
verbs, the language-passing example, the leaf blocked-tool list, and model
inheritance. 3,963 -> 1,704 chars (~570 tokens saved per API call), and the
top-level text is now static (dynamic limits flow only through the two param
descriptions, which are already rebuilt per get_definitions() call).
A/B benchmark across 4 models (gpt-4o, gpt-4o-mini, claude-haiku-4.5,
llama-3.3-70b) showed the naive compaction in PR #72813 regressed weaker
models on exactly the passages it cut (side-effect verification 8/8->0/8 on
gpt-4o-mini; language passing 3/3->0/3 on haiku-4.5). This version keeps
those benchmark-sensitive hooks verbatim.
Tests pin the contracts at keyword level (not prose-literal) plus a size
ceiling, and verify dynamic limits still reach the model via the tasks/role
param descriptions.
Refs #72737, supersedes the delegate_task half of PR #72813.
The universal sync fallback in stream_tts_to_speaker ran strictly serially
per sentence — synthesize, play, and only then start synthesizing the next
sentence — so every sentence boundary added a full synthesis-time of dead
air. Chunked streamers (elevenlabs/openai/gemini/xai) already avoid this;
every other provider (edge, piper, plugin providers) paid it on each reply
in voice mode and the wake-word loop.
_SyncSentencePipeline overlaps the two: one single-threaded synthesis
worker (sentences stay FIFO; providers never see concurrent calls from
this loop — same effective concurrency as before) feeds one playback
worker through a small bounded queue, so sentence n+1 synthesizes while
sentence n plays. Lookahead is bounded (backpressure + at most a couple of
temp files), stop_event short-circuits both stages, synthesis failures are
isolated per sentence, temp files are always unlinked, and the finally
block flushes the pipeline BEFORE tts_done_event fires so continuous voice
mode never reopens the mic over its own voice. synthesize/play are
resolved late so existing monkeypatch-based tests work unchanged.
Measured with a real local model provider (OmniVoice plugin, Apple
Silicon), same 3-sentence reply, playback simulated at the produced clips'
true durations, best-of-2 interleaved runs under identical load:
serial pipelined
time to first word 10.8s 4.4s
mid-reply dead air 11.2s 1.8s (second gap: 0.03s)
full reply wall 33.2s 17.0s
Tests: 4 new (timestamp-proven overlap, order + per-sentence failure
isolation, stop skips queued playback, temp-file hygiene); the existing
sync-fallback and display-callback tests pass unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
When an approval prompt expired without a response, every CLI-side path
collapsed the timeout into the same 'deny' choice as an explicit user
refusal, so the agent was told the user denied the action when the user
simply never answered. The gateway wait already distinguished the two
('timed out without user response... Silence is not consent.'); this
brings the CLI/TUI/ACP surfaces to parity.
- prompt_dangerous_approval(): input()-path expiry now returns a distinct
'timeout' choice (still fail-closed).
- cli.py _approval_callback + hermes_cli/callbacks.py approval_callback:
deadline expiry returns 'timeout' instead of 'deny'.
- check_all_command_guards / _run_approval_gate CLI tails: 'timeout' maps
to outcome='timeout' with a 'timed out without user response... Silence
is not consent.' BLOCKED message (matching the gateway wording);
explicit deny keeps outcome='denied' and gains user_consent=False for
shape parity.
- computer_use: 'timeout' verdict threads through the CLI adapter and
yields a 'prompt timed out — the user did not respond' error instead of
'denied by user'.
- ACP permissions bridge: FutureTimeout returns 'timeout' (other failures
still 'deny'); elicitation maps 'timeout' to 'cancel' like the gateway's
unresolved outcome; codex wire mapping documents deny/timeout→decline.
- write_approval already treats unknown choices as 'stage, not drop', so
a timeout now stages the memory write instead of silently refusing it.
Every timeout path remains fail-closed — the action never runs; only the
classification reported to the agent changes.
Every tool schema ships on every API call. The terminal schema was
5,641 chars (~1,410 tokens) and execute_code 2,842 (~710) — the two
largest core tools, padded with repeated war stories and triple-stated
rules. Schema token audit across 88 tools: ~33k tokens total.
This trims prose while preserving every hard rule (each still stated
exactly once):
- terminal description 2,324 -> 1,233 chars: tool-redirect lines
collapsed to one sentence; background/notify guidance deduplicated
(was stated in desc + 2 params); PTY/pager rules merged.
- background/notify_on_complete/watch_patterns params 692/508/1,114 ->
~330/250/490 chars: kept the mutual-exclusion contracts, the
rate-limit consequence, and the bounded-vs-long-lived distinction;
dropped narrative repetition.
- execute_code description tightened (helper docs inlined to one line
each; when-to-use kept).
Net: terminal schema 5,641 -> 3,386 chars, execute_code 2,842 -> 2,522
— ~700 tokens saved on EVERY request with the terminal+code toolsets.
One test updated (pinned a removed phrase; now pins the rule's new
phrasing).
Truncated terminal output was information LOSS: the middle was gone
and the only recovery was re-running the command (data: 1,394
truncation markers in a 250k-call window, with re-runs and grep
retries chained behind the big ones).
Truncation is now deferred retrieval (opencode/goose/qwen-code
pattern, codex's original_token_count idea):
- tools/environments/base.py: _BoundedOutputCollector gains an
optional spill tee — when foreground output overflows the capture
window, the FULL stream is teed to
~/.hermes/cache/terminal-output/out-*.log (lazy file creation with
backlog backfill, 5MB hard cap, 7-day opportunistic cleanup,
disk errors never break execution). All three _wait_for_process
returns attach {output_total_chars, full_output_path} via a shared
finalizer.
- tools/terminal_tool.py: redacts the spill with the same
redact_terminal_output pass as the visible output (no secret
persists unmasked), then surfaces output_total_chars,
full_output_path, and a truncation_note pointing at
search_files/read_file instead of a re-run.
Non-truncated results are byte-identical; internal unbounded
consumers (file-ops cat reads, RPC reads) are untouched (spill only
arms with bounded_capture=true).
'Found N matches for old_string' (190+ occurrences in a 250k-window)
previously reported only the count, forcing a re-read of the file to
find the occurrences before retrying. The error now appends up to 5
'L<line>: <snippet>' rows (80-char cap per snippet, overflow noted),
so the model can disambiguate in ONE follow-up — add neighboring
context or choose replace_all — without the intermediate read.
Applies to both patch modes (replace + V4A) since they share
fuzzy_find_and_replace.
#77128 fixed the orphaned zero-match probe but shipped no tests, so the
same class of break can recur: an early return anywhere in the rg branch
silently makes the whole steering tier unreachable.
Asserts hint wiring per search engine with the probe stubbed to a
sentinel (the probe itself needs rg, so a real-text parity assertion
fails on the grep leg for an unrelated reason), plus the negative case
and the rg newline-warning skip that the early return originally
existed to preserve.
Sabotage-verified against 794d6c434e: restoring the early return turns
4 red; a naive fix that also drops the rg newline guard turns 1 red;
attaching the hint when matches exist turns 2 red.
The top execute_code failure shapes in production (state.db mining)
are sandbox-contract confusions, not logic bugs: importing tools that
aren't in the sandbox from hermes_tools (23x in one window, incl.
importing the built-in helpers json_parse/shell_quote/retry), importing
third-party packages absent from the sandbox interpreter (matplotlib
6x), and indexing tool-result dicts as strings. The stderr traceback
alone sends models into re-diagnosis loops.
Failed scripts (exit != 0) now carry one actionable 'hint' field:
- unavailable hermes_tools import -> lists the tools that ARE
importable in this session + points to normal tool calls otherwise;
- built-in helper import -> 'no import needed, call it directly';
- ModuleNotFoundError -> 'sandbox has stdlib only; use terminal() with
the project venv for third-party packages';
- string-indexing errors -> 'tool functions return dicts, do not
json.loads them'.
Bounded 4KB stderr scan, first match wins, never raises; successful
scripts and unknown failures are untouched.
A regex \n (or a raw newline) in a search_files content pattern cannot
match in rg's default line-oriented mode. It previously either
hard-errored ('the literal "\n" is not allowed in a regex' — 17
occurrences in the production window) or, after the newline-warning
patch, returned 0 matches with an explanation — either way the model's
cross-line search intent required a manual workaround.
The rg engine now detects the pattern shape (_pattern_has_regex_newline,
already used by the warning path: odd-backslash \n escape or raw
newline; escaped \\n literals excluded) and enables -U/--multiline up
front, noting the mode switch in the result warning. Plain patterns are
untouched; the old line-oriented explanation is retained for the grep
fallback engine, which has no multiline mode.
skill_view re-sent full skill content on every call: ~286k tokens of
verbatim repeat views in a 400k-msg production window (one session
loaded the same skill 9 times), and a single repeat view of a large
skill costs ~25k tokens.
Mirrors read_file's proven unchanged-stub pattern: a per-task cache
keyed on (resolved name, file_path) with an mtime+size fingerprint of
the served file. On a repeat view of an UNCHANGED file, return a short
stub pointing at the earlier result. This does NOT violate the
skills-are-loaded-fully rule — the stub only ever replaces content
that is already fully present earlier in the same conversation, and:
- any on-disk change (patch, external edit) invalidates the entry;
- context compression clears the cache (wired next to
reset_file_dedup in conversation_compression.py) so post-compression
re-views return full content;
- setup-needed views are never deduped (readiness can change without
the file changing);
- no task_id -> no dedup; caches are task-isolated; 200-entry cap.
Live E2E: repeat view of hermes-agent-dev 99,739 chars -> 374-char
stub.
write_file confirmed only SIZE (wc -c) after writing — never content.
Models compensated by re-reading files immediately after writing them
(154 verify-reads in a 400k-msg production window), and a corrupted
write (truncated pipe, backend FS oddity) could silently pass.
The write path now compares the on-disk sha256 against the intended
content (one shell call). Three outcomes:
- match -> result carries verified: true; the schema tells the model
an explicit contract: do NOT re-read to check the write landed.
- mismatch -> hard error ('The write did not persist correctly'),
mirroring patch_replace's existing post-write verification.
- backend can't hash (no sha256sum) -> flag omitted, write unaffected.
Hashes the shim-adjusted content (after CRLF/BOM preservation) so
Windows-line-ending and BOM round-trips verify correctly; surrogatepass
encoding matches the rest of the codebase's hashing of model text.
When old_string survives all 9 fuzzy strategies without a match but
the closest candidate line matches after stripping whitespace, the
failure is whitespace-shaped (tabs vs spaces, indent depth). The
did-you-mean hint now appends a two-line diagnosis with leading
whitespace made visible:
Whitespace difference detected (→ = tab, · = space):
file has: →def start(self):
you sent: ····def start(self):
Use the exact whitespace shown in 'file has'.
Pattern ported from crush's diagnoseMismatch (agent-codebase survey) —
it converts the residual dead-end error into a one-turn fix. Only the
leading run is visualized (interior spacing stays readable); content-
shaped misses and raw-exact candidates are unchanged.
Follow-up to the recovery-recipe commit on this branch, per review:
instead of only TELLING the model to re-author the payload via
write_file (2 turns), materialize the blocked command to
~/.hermes/cache/blocked-scripts/blocked-*.sh and point the recovery
at it directly: 'saved to <path> - review it, then run
terminal(command="bash <path>")' (1 turn).
Safety posture is unchanged or better:
- Nothing is executed here; the file is only written.
- The bash <path> follow-up goes through the normal execution
pipeline, including the referenced-script content guard, which
inspects script files named in commands - the payload is MORE
visible to policy than it was inline.
- Genuine hardline blocks (destructive ops) never save anything
(test-asserted).
- Save failures fall back to the previous manual write_file recipe.
- 7-day opportunistic cleanup of saved payloads.
Two block classes from production mining (250k-call window) that
models answered with blind rephrase-retries:
1. Parser-limit / malformed-payload hardline blocks (198x): these fire
on oversized inline payloads (heredocs, giant one-liners), not on a
forbidden operation - but the message read like a permanent ban.
The block now appends: 'RECOVERY: ... write the script to a file
with write_file, then run bash /path/script.sh - do not retry
inline.' Genuine hardline blocks (destructive filesystem
operations) are unchanged.
2. Backgrounding-wrapper blocks (200x): the guidance now spells out
the exact corrected call shape - 're-send WITHOUT the wrapper as
terminal(command="<cmd>", background=true,
notify_on_complete=true)' - instead of describing the feature
abstractly.
process(action='wait') hitting its window returned status='timeout'
with a terse note — models read it as an error and re-issued identical
waits (process is the #1 exact-duplicate tool call in production: 511
dupes in a 400k-msg window; wait is 57% of all process actions).
The timeout result now carries:
- process_running: true — machine-readable 'this is a status, not a
failure'
- an explicit note: 'Wait window of Ns elapsed — the process is still
running. This is not an error. Uptime: Ms.' plus the right next step:
when notify_on_complete is set, 'you will be notified on exit — do
more work instead of waiting again'; otherwise a pointer to
notify_on_complete for next time.
- the clamp note (requested > max) now composes with the status note
instead of replacing it.
Exited/interrupted results are unchanged.
Third zero-match steering tier: when a content search finds nothing in
visible files, probe once with rg --hidden --no-ignore --count-matches.
If the pattern exists only in dotdirs or gitignored files, the result
says so and tells the model to search the hidden path explicitly.
Found live by the benchmark battery: a task with a match inside
.hidden/ returned a bare 0 and the model missed the file entirely in
2/3 baseline runs.
Two dead-turn classes from production mining (state.db, recent window):
1. 13.9% of 19.6k content searches return 0 matches with no steering.
Now a 0-match content search runs one cheap rg -i --count-matches
probe (plus an rg -F probe when the pattern has regex metachars) and
attaches what it found: '0 exact matches, but N case-insensitive
matches — casing may be wrong' / 'N literal matches — metacharacters
need escaping'. True zero-match results stay clean (no noise).
2. 122 'Path not found' failures came from models passing several paths
in ONE path string ('dir1 dir2 dir3', comma lists). Instead of
failing wholesale, split the string, search every path that exists,
merge results, and report skipped parts in a warning. Single-path
misses keep the existing Similar-paths hint; all-missing multi-path
strings still error.
Both probes are bounded (count-only rg, 30s timeout, max 2 invocations)
and wrapped so a probe failure can never break the search result.
Production mining (state.db, 400k-msg window): 60.2% of 104k terminal
calls carry a defensive 'cd X && ' prefix (~925k tokens of pure prefix)
and 2,462 failed calls led with cd — the model cannot see cwd state, so
it re-asserts it on every call and runs pwd/ls diagnostics after
directory changes.
The result dict now includes a 'cwd' field whenever the session cwd
after the command differs from the cwd it started in (cd, pushd,
chained cd). Stable-cwd commands are unchanged (no field, no noise).
Per-command workdir overrides stay transient by contract and never
echo. Schema note added so models learn to trust session cwd instead
of prefixing. Pattern borrowed from crush's <cwd> injection.
realpath comparison avoids false echoes through symlinks; the echo is
wrapped defensively so a backend without .cwd can never break the
result path.
Brooklyn Nicholson
SmokeDev
Adolanium
Teknium
kshitij
Kevin Yin
Jeffrey Quesnelle
Andrew
xxxigm
Alex Fournier
kshitijk4poor
阿泥豆
EndeavorYen
Carbon
Jakub Wolniewicz
PRATHAMESH75
liuhao1024
f1aggo_macair
Xue-1997
Mahdi Hedhli