On keyring-less headless Linux (VPS, containers, no dbus session),
'gh auth login --with-token' can block indefinitely waiting on a
secret-service keyring -- even with --insecure-storage, with no output.
Hit live on a headless x86_64 VPS (gh 2.97.0): the documented device
flow succeeded up to the token, then --with-token hung twice.
- Add a timeout guard to the device-flow polling loop so the hang is
detected instead of silently stalling the login.
- Document the proven fallback: write ~/.config/gh/hosts.yml directly
(chmod 600) and run 'gh auth setup-git' -- both read the file store
without touching the keyring.
Two Windows agent-loop friction fixes:
1. tools/mcp_tool.py (#56536): shutil.which(cmd, path=env_path) reads
executable extensions from the PARENT process PATHEXT, not the MCP
subprocess env — a stdio MCP config supplying both PATH and PATHEXT
could fail to resolve a command its own env can locate, and startup
then got a bare command name. On Windows, when the first which() call
misses and the config env carries PATHEXT (any key casing), retry the
resolution with the config's PATHEXT temporarily applied.
2. skills/ + optional-skills/ (#50606): 42 SKILL.md files that declare
platforms: [.., windows] used python3 in their command examples.
python3 does not exist on native Windows (the toolchain probe in the
system prompt reports python3=missing), so every copy-pasted example
burned a failed agent turn before self-correction. Replaced the
command word python3 -> python (python3-config / python3.x version
strings untouched). python is the spelling that exists in every
Hermes-managed environment (Windows native, uv-managed venvs on all
three OSes); agents on POSIX hosts additionally see the probed
toolchain line and adapt either way.
* fix: warn agents off driving interactive console TUIs via pty on Windows
Driving 'gh auth login' (and other survey-style console TUIs) through a
pty background process on Windows silently hangs: these programs read
Win32 console key events via ReadConsoleInput, not the stdin byte
stream, so Enter keypresses submitted over process stdin never register.
The agent-visible symptom is a prompt frozen at 'Press Enter to open
browser...' while the user sees nothing, and a turn interrupt then kills
the process, invalidating any device code the user already entered on
github.com.
Two guidance fixes, both proven in a live session on Windows 10:
- agent/prompt_builder.py: extend _WINDOWS_BASH_SHELL_HINT to steer
agents toward non-interactive paths (flags, --with-token, config
files, curl-polled OAuth device flow) instead of answering console
prompts programmatically.
- skills/github/github-auth: document the pitfall and add the manual
OAuth device-flow procedure (curl against gh's public client_id,
poll for the token, finish with 'gh auth login --with-token'), which
succeeded first try after two interactive attempts hung.
* fix: send CRLF for Enter on Windows PTY submit; correct root cause in guidance
Review feedback (helix4u) was right on both counts:
1. Root cause correction. gh's 'Press Enter to open browser' prompt is
waitForEnter -> bufio.Scanner reading stdin, not a survey/console-API
prompt. The real bug is ours: submit_stdin appended a bare \n, and
through pywinpty/ConPTY a lone \n is not delivered as a line
terminator, so the child's blocking line read never returns. Verified
empirically against pywinpty 2.0.15 with a readline() child:
\n -> hang, \r -> line delivered, \r\n -> line delivered.
Fix: submit_stdin now appends \r\n for Windows PTY sessions (POSIX
PTYs and Popen pipes keep \n). Windows-only regression tests cover
the PTY and pipe branches.
2. Prompt hint rewritten: instead of claiming Windows console TUIs
cannot be driven, it now says to use process(submit) rather than raw
writes with bare \n, and to prefer non-interactive paths when a CLI
offers one.
3. Skill device flow rewritten as an executable script: parses the
device-code response, polls per the returned interval, handles
authorization_pending / slow_down (+5s per GitHub docs) /
expired_token / access_denied / unexpected responses, pipes the token
straight into gh without echoing it, and drops the undocumented
workflow scope (repo,read:org,gist is the documented minimum for
gh auth login --with-token). The pitfall note is narrowed to the
reproduced condition.
Rewrote from a sibling-skill routing table into a skill that carries its
own procedure, and folded in generalized rules from maintainer practice:
- full-thread reads (gh issue view --comments; newest comment = live state)
- duplicate-PR sweep (issue number + keyword variants) before any code
- design-intent check via git log -p -S alongside premise reproduction
- fix the class: sweep sibling call sites into the same PR
- sabotage run: prove the regression test fails without the fix
- open the PR immediately (PR dispatches CI; CI latency is the long pole)
- close the loop: comment the issue with the PR link
Also: description 205 -> 59 chars, author credits Ben Barclay first,
modern section order, boilerplate trimmed, tests (10) incl. a
router-pattern guard, scoped docs regen.
The GitHub skills' auth-detection fell back to reading GITHUB_TOKEN from a
hardcoded ~/.hermes/.env. In the official Docker layout HERMES_HOME=/opt/data
while tool subprocesses run with HOME=/opt/data/home, so `~/.hermes/.env`
expands to /opt/data/home/.hermes/.env — a path that does not exist — while the
real secrets file is /opt/data/.env. Result: the agent reports GITHUB_TOKEN as
"not set" even though it is present and the dashboard Keys page shows it.
Resolve the file as ${HERMES_HOME:-$HOME/.hermes}/.env (HERMES_HOME is bridged
into tool subprocess env, falling back to ~/.hermes when unset) across all six
auth-detection sites: github-auth (SKILL.md + scripts/gh-env.sh), github-issues,
github-repo-management, github-pr-workflow, github-code-review.
Completes the Windows-gating coverage for the built-in skills/ tree. Every
bundled SKILL.md now carries an explicit platforms: declaration so the
loader (agent.skill_utils.skill_matches_platform) can skip-load skills
that don't fit the current OS.
74 skills declared cross-platform (platforms: [linux, macos, windows]):
Creative (16): ascii-art, ascii-video, architecture-diagram, baoyu-comic,
baoyu-infographic, claude-design, creative-ideation, design-md,
excalidraw, humanizer, manim-video, p5js, pixel-art,
popular-web-designs, pretext, sketch, songwriting-and-ai-music,
touchdesigner-mcp
Autonomous agents: claude-code, codex, hermes-agent, opencode
Data/devops: jupyter-live-kernel, kanban-orchestrator, kanban-worker,
webhook-subscriptions, dogfood, codebase-inspection
GitHub: github-auth, github-code-review, github-issues,
github-pr-workflow, github-repo-management
Media: gif-search, heartmula, songsee, spotify, youtube-content
MCP / email / gaming / notes / smart-home: native-mcp, himalaya,
pokemon-player, obsidian, openhue
mlops (non-broken): weights-and-biases, huggingface-hub, llama-cpp,
outlines, segment-anything-model, dspy, trl-fine-tuning
Productivity: airtable, google-workspace, linear, maps, nano-pdf,
notion, ocr-and-documents, powerpoint
Red-teaming / research: godmode, arxiv, blogwatcher, llm-wiki,
polymarket
Software-dev: debugging-hermes-tui-commands, hermes-agent-skill-authoring,
node-inspect-debugger, plan, requesting-code-review, spike,
subagent-driven-development, systematic-debugging,
test-driven-development, writing-plans
Misc: yuanbao
5 skills gated from Windows (platforms: [linux, macos]):
mlops/inference/vllm (serving-llms-vllm)
vLLM is officially Linux-only; Windows requires WSL.
mlops/training/axolotl
Axolotl's flash-attn + deepspeed + bitsandbytes stack is Linux-first.
mlops/training/unsloth
Requires Triton + xformers + flash-attn — Linux only in practice.
mlops/models/audiocraft (audiocraft-audio-generation)
torchaudio ffmpeg backend + encodec dependencies are Linux-first.
mlops/inference/obliteratus
Research abliteration workflow; relies on Linux-focused pytorch
kernels and MLX — no first-class Windows path.
Same strict-over-lenient policy as the optional-skills sweep: when the
underlying tool's Windows support is rough, missing, or WSL-only, gate the
skill. Easier to un-gate after verified Windows support lands than to leak
partial support that manifests as mid-task failures.
Combined with prior commits in this branch, every bundled SKILL.md
(skills/ + optional-skills/) now has a platforms: declaration.
Target: every skill's description fits in a one-line gateway menu and
leads with trigger keywords an agent would match on. Drops filler like
'Use this skill to', 'A skill for', 'This skill provides'.
Before: max description length was 791 chars (architecture-diagram),
74 of 81 built-in skills were >60 chars.
After: max 60, mean 54, all 81 built-in skills <=60.
Rewritten with double-quoted YAML scalars to preserve Chinese/arrow
glyphs (baoyu-comic, yuanbao, youtube-content).
* fix: show correct env var name in provider API key error (#9506)
The error message for missing provider API keys dynamically built
the env var name as PROVIDER_API_KEY (e.g. ALIBABA_API_KEY), but
some providers use different names (alibaba uses DASHSCOPE_API_KEY).
Users following the error message set the wrong variable.
Fix: look up the actual env var from PROVIDER_REGISTRY before
building the error. Falls back to the dynamic name if the registry
lookup fails.
Closes#9506
* fix: five HERMES_HOME profile-isolation leaks (#5947)
Bug A: Thread session_title from session_db to memory provider init kwargs
so honcho can derive chat-scoped session keys instead of falling back to
cwd-based naming that merges all gateway users into one session.
Bug B: Replace 14 hardcoded ~/.hermes/skills/ paths across 10 skill files
with HERMES_HOME-aware alternatives (${HERMES_HOME:-$HOME/.hermes} in
shell, os.environ.get('HERMES_HOME', ...) in Python).
Bug C: install.sh now respects HERMES_HOME env var and adds --hermes-home
flag. Previously --dir only set INSTALL_DIR while HERMES_HOME was always
hardcoded to $HOME/.hermes.
Bug D: Remove hardcoded ~/.hermes/honcho.json fallback in resolve_config_path().
Non-default profiles no longer silently inherit the default profile's honcho
config. Falls through to ~/.honcho/config.json (global) instead.
Bug E: Guard _edit_skill, _patch_skill, _delete_skill, _write_file, and
_remove_file against writing to skills found in external_dirs. Skills
outside the local SKILLS_DIR are now read-only from the agent's perspective.
Closes#5947
* fix(github-auth): check ~/.hermes/.env before ~/.git-credentials for token extraction
Users who configured their token via `hermes setup` have it stored in
~/.hermes/.env (GITHUB_TOKEN=...), not in ~/.git-credentials. On macOS
with osxkeychain as the default git credential helper, ~/.git-credentials
may not exist at all, causing silent 401 failures in all GitHub skills.
Add ~/.hermes/.env as the first fallback in the auth detection block and
the inline "Extracting the Token from Git Credentials" example.
Priority order: env var → ~/.hermes/.env → ~/.git-credentials → none
Part of fix for NousResearch/hermes-agent#3464
* fix(github-auth): check ~/.hermes/.env before ~/.git-credentials
Fixes#3464
* fix(github-auth): check ~/.hermes/.env before ~/.git-credentials
Fixes#3464
* fix(github-auth): check ~/.hermes/.env before ~/.git-credentials
Fixes#3464
* fix(github-auth): check ~/.hermes/.env before ~/.git-credentials
Fixes#3464
* fix(github-auth): check ~/.hermes/.env before ~/.git-credentials
Fixes#3464
* fix(github-auth): check ~/.hermes/.env before ~/.git-credentials
Fixes#3464
When a skill declares required_environment_variables in its YAML
frontmatter, missing env vars trigger a secure TUI prompt (identical
to the sudo password widget) when the skill is loaded. Secrets flow
directly to ~/.hermes/.env, never entering LLM context.
Key changes:
- New required_environment_variables frontmatter field for skills
- Secure TUI widget (masked input, 120s timeout)
- Gateway safety: messaging platforms show local setup guidance
- Legacy prerequisites.env_vars normalized into new format
- Remote backend handling: conservative setup_needed=True
- Env var name validation, file permissions hardened to 0o600
- Redact patterns extended for secret-related JSON fields
- 12 existing skills updated with prerequisites declarations
- ~48 new tests covering skip, timeout, gateway, remote backends
- Dynamic panel widget sizing (fixes hardcoded width from original PR)
Cherry-picked from PR #723 by kshitijk4poor, rebased onto current main
with conflict resolution.
Fixes#688
Co-authored-by: kshitijk4poor <kshitijk4poor@users.noreply.github.com>
Skills can now declare runtime prerequisites (env vars, CLI binaries) via
YAML frontmatter. Skills with unmet prerequisites are excluded from the
system prompt so the agent never claims capabilities it can't deliver, and
skill_view() warns the agent about what's missing.
Three layers of defense:
- build_skills_system_prompt() filters out unavailable skills
- _find_all_skills() flags unmet prerequisites in metadata
- skill_view() returns prerequisites_warning with actionable details
Tagged 12 bundled skills that have hard runtime dependencies:
gif-search (TENOR_API_KEY), notion (NOTION_API_KEY), himalaya, imessage,
apple-notes, apple-reminders, openhue, duckduckgo-search, codebase-inspection,
blogwatcher, songsee, mcporter.
Closes#658Fixes#630
Teknium
Ben Barclay
xxxigm
Teknium
Mibay
kshitijk4poor
kshitij