Spill files (terminal overflow, hook context, web_extract full text,
subagent summaries) were written with plain open()/write_text into
predictable directories. A pre-planted symlink at any of those paths
redirected the write onto an arbitrary user-owned file, and raw
pre-redaction terminal/hook spills landed world-readable under the
default umask.
New tools/spill_safety.py helpers create files with
O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_NOFOLLOW (a link-shaped path fails the write instead of
following it) and overwrite via lstat-checked unlink + exclusive
re-create, so even the redaction rewrite cannot be diverted. Private
tier (0o700 dir / 0o600 file) covers raw terminal and hook spills;
cache/web and cache/delegation keep umask perms because those dirs are
bind-mounted into remote backends that must read them.
Pattern borrowed from DeepSeek Harness dsh-spill-local (MIT):
private root + exclusive owner-only opens for spill artifacts.
Salvage of #37865 by @verybigdog. Adds delivery_mode (notify / notify+wake / wake)
on kanban notify subscriptions, persists chat_type + user_id_alt so a woken turn
reconstructs the creator's real session key, inherits the return path to child
tasks, and keeps wake out of the model-exposed send_message schema.
Original commits were authored under a local placeholder identity
(hermes-agent@users.noreply.local); re-attributed to the contributor's
public email.
delegate_task gains a control plane: action='list' / 'steer' / 'stop'
let the parent agent see, redirect, and early-stop its own running
subagents mid-flight — the model-facing counterpart of the TUI's
delegation.pause / subagent.interrupt / subagent.steer RPCs.
- action='list': live children of this conversation's spawn tree
(ids, goal, status, running_seconds, accepting_steer, live
transcript path). Ownership is enforced via a _delegate_parent_ref
weakref chain stamped at child build time, so a conversation can
only control its own descendants, never a sibling tree.
- action='steer': queues text into a running child via the existing
steer_subagent() registry path (delivered at the child's next tool
boundary; missed steers surface as missed_steer in the completion).
- action='stop': interrupt_subagent() — child stops at its next
iteration boundary, partial result still re-enters as a completion.
- Spawn dispatch response now includes subagent_ids + control hint.
- Control actions run synchronously (never backgrounded) and bypass
the spawn pause gate and depth limit; they also never consume the
per-turn subagent spawn cap, and remain usable once the cap is hit
(that is when stop matters most).
- Small-model robustness (found live with gpt-5.4-mini on Nous
Portal): tasks=[] alongside goal no longer trips the "Batch mode
requires at least 2 tasks" gate — treated as single-goal.
- CLI display: control calls render as "steer sa-…" / "list" instead
of an empty goal.
Live-tested E2E on Nous Portal (fable-5 + gpt-5.4-mini): full
spawn→list→steer→stop cycle, plus a steer-efficacy run where the
child acked the steer mid-essay and switched topics before finishing.
check_subprocess_stdin.py already had a full-repo-scan pytest wrapper
(test_subprocess_stdin_guard.py), so a plain pytest run catches a
regression there without anyone remembering to run the script by
hand. check-windows-footguns.py had no equivalent (only a narrow
single-rule test existed), which is why the bare os.killpg/
signal.SIGKILL regression in the npx-agent-browser hardening commit
shipped past local testing and was only caught by CI running the
script directly. New test_windows_footguns_full_repo_scan.py mirrors
the stdin guard's exact pattern to close that asymmetry.
Also adds direct coverage for _kill_process_tree's getattr fallback
when os.killpg is missing, and asserts warm_agent_browser_npx_cache's
Popen call passes stdin=subprocess.DEVNULL as a literal argument.
Full rewrite of test_browser_npx_warmup.py for the Popen-based
credential-scrubbing, PATH-propagation, and process-tree-kill rework:
argv shape, env scrubbing, PATH merge for managed-only npx, POSIX
process-group creation, Windows CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP, whole-tree
kill (not just the PID) on timeout with a bounded post-kill drain, and
_kill_process_tree's own POSIX/Windows/failure paths directly.
Also fixes test_windows_subprocess_no_window_flags.py's matching
regression test, which still mocked subprocess.run and a shutil.which
signature that didn't accept the path= kwarg _resolve_npx_bin's
extended-path rung now passes; its creationflags assertion becomes a
bitwise check since Windows now ORs CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP in
alongside the console-hiding flag.
- --ignore-scripts on every real npx agent-browser invocation.
AGENT_BROWSER_NPX_SPEC is a floating ^0.26.0 range, not an exact
pin, and none of these sites passed it (unlike install.sh/
install.ps1's own npm install of the same package). Verified against
the real CLI: `npx --ignore-scripts --prefer-offline -y
"agent-browser@^0.26.0" --version` resolves cleanly on npm
11.19.0/node 26.
- _resolve_npx_bin() now checks the Hermes-managed/extended search
before a bare ambient PATH lookup, validating each candidate with
node_tool_runnable before trusting it — a bare PATH-first lookup let
a broken system npx shadow a healthy managed one with no recovery.
- warm_agent_browser_npx_cache() now runs a credential-scrubbed,
PATH-propagated environment (matching every other agent-browser
subprocess spawn) instead of inheriting the full parent environment
including every provider/gateway credential Hermes holds, and kills
the whole process tree (not just the top-level npx PID) on timeout
via the new _kill_process_tree helper, since a surviving descendant
can otherwise hold a capture pipe open past the nominal deadline.
_browser_available()'s npx rung was missing the bare-npx-on-Termux
guard its sibling probes (dep_ensure, nous_subscription) already
apply, so it could report the browser probe available on Termux when
local mode would actually reject the bare npx fallback and fail on
first use.
Also adds argv-level coverage for the two real npx launch sites
(_run_browser_command, _run_chrome_fallback_command) and an
end-to-end test proving _find_agent_browser's lazy-install fallback
and ensure_dependency("browser")'s npx check terminate without
recursion.
Git-clone installs resolving agent-browser via bare npx floated latest
with no integrity check, while install.sh/install.ps1 installs stayed
pinned to ^0.26.0. Pin the npx spec to match. Also extract the
"npx agent-browser" sentinel comparison (6 call sites across two
packages) into a named constant/predicate, fix a PATH-priority
inversion where a broken system npx could shadow a healthy
Hermes-managed one at the two real npx launch sites, and stop
`hermes doctor --fix` from counting a bonus npx cache warm as a fixed
issue on an otherwise-healthy run.
_find_agent_browser's extended-PATH branch now calls
shutil.which(name, path=extended_path), which broke two
post_setup_gating tests mocking shutil.which with name-only lambdas.
Update those mocks and two similarly-shaped chromium test mocks that
were latent landmines, and add coverage for cascade branches (local
node_modules/.bin, validate=False paths, and
_agent_browser_candidate_present) that had none.
`hermes update` was pruning root-level Node dependencies (agent-browser)
because npm ci always wipes and reifies node_modules according to its
active filter -- no root-first/workspace-first ordering or flag
combination (--workspaces=false, --include-workspace-root, etc.) can
reliably keep a root-only package.json dependency from being pruned by
a subsequent workspace-scoped npm ci. Confirmed empirically and via
npm/cli source (isArboristCmd hardcodes includeWorkspaceRoot=false for
ci/install), so no amount of install-order juggling fixes this for good.
Instead of chasing install order, remove the root-only dependencies
that made the npm step fragile in the first place:
- agent-browser is no longer a root package.json dependency. It
resolves lazily via `npx agent-browser` (tools/browser_tool.py
already had this as a fallback; it's now the primary path).
warm_agent_browser_npx_cache() is called fire-and-forget from both
`hermes update` and `hermes doctor --fix` to keep npx's cache warm,
preserving the "available before any session starts" property
agent-browser had as an eager dependency without re-entangling it
with the npm workspace graph.
- @streamdown/math moves to apps/desktop/package.json, where it's
actually imported (markdown-text.tsx, katex-memo.ts) -- it was
never used anywhere else and was subject to the same pruning risk.
- _update_node_dependencies() collapses to a single
`npm ci --workspace ui-tui --workspace web` call now that root has
no dependencies of its own to protect, and keeps its original spot
ahead of `_build_web_ui()` at both call sites in update_cmd.py --
with no root-only dependencies left to protect, there's no reason
for the Node refresh and the web build to run in any particular
order relative to each other.
- hermes_cli/tools_config.py's post-setup Chromium-install path and
hermes_cli/doctor.py's agent-browser check both now resolve through
the same PATH -> Homebrew/Hermes-managed-node -> npx cascade
(_find_agent_browser / _resolve_npx_bin) instead of hand-rolling
their own node_modules/.bin lookups, so they can't diverge from what
browser tools actually invoke at runtime.
- tests-js/package-json-lazy-deps.test.ts gets a lockfile-level check
mirroring the existing camofox one, so a future regression that
reintroduces agent-browser into package-lock.json fails this test
directly instead of relying on manual review to catch it.
Fixes#43564.
The clarify schema now tells the model to order choices best-first, and
mark_recommended tags element 0 with "(Recommended)" at the tool layer --
the one platform-agnostic entry point -- so CLI, TUI, desktop, and every
messaging adapter inherit the label without a copy each. Each surface
already defaults its cursor to index 0, so the recommendation is the
pre-highlighted row too.
The label is presentation only: strip_recommended takes it back off
user_response, and choices_offered reports the bare list, so the agent
never reasons about (or echoes back) a string it did not write. Typed
replies on messaging platforms match with or without the suffix.
New desktop_ui tool: the agent proposes an MCP server (install/enable/
authorize + a one-line reason) and blocks on mcp.setup.request until the
renderer's consent card answers mcp.setup.respond with the outcome
(installed/enabled/authorized/declined/unanswered/error). Same lifecycle
as clarify: 10-min timeout, allow_expired late answers, tool lifecycle
events forced on so the card mounts even with tool progress off. Desktop
prompt hint steers the model to the tool instead of hand-editing config;
every other surface keeps the schema out and is pointed at hermes mcp
install.
Adds delegation.worktree_isolation (default: false). When enabled, each
delegate_task child gets its own git worktree branched from the repo's
current HEAD under <repo>/.worktrees/subagent-<id>, its terminal session
starts there, and its goal message carries the isolation contract
(work + commit in the worktree; parent reviews/merges the branch).
- tools/subagent_worktree.py: clean-room implementation from Muse Code's
documented --subagent-worktree-isolation behavior (create per-child
worktree, finalize/inspect after run, auto-prune clean no-commit
worktrees, keep anything holding work).
- tools/delegate_tool.py: config gate + per-child setup in
_run_single_child; result entries gain a "worktree" field (path,
branch, commits, dirty, pruned) only when isolation engaged — the
default-off wire shape is byte-identical.
- Git-only + local-terminal-backend-only; non-git dirs, remote backends,
or any worktree failure degrade silently to shared-workspace behavior.
- Tests: tests/tools/test_subagent_worktree.py (15 tests, real git
repos) + E2E through _run_single_child with a real repo verified
parent-checkout isolation, branch reviewability, prune, and
default-off shape pinning.
- Docs: delegation feature page section + configuration.md key.
Port from cline/cline#12983 (the 'invalidate tokens when OAuth client
changes' invariant): tokens are minted for a specific client_id, so after
a user edits oauth.client_id / oauth.client_secret in config.yaml the old
tokens can only fail with invalid_client. Pre-registered clients are
deliberately exempt from the invalid_client auto-poison path, so the stale
tokens wedged every request until ~/.hermes/mcp-tokens/<server>.* was
wiped by hand.
_maybe_preregister_client() now compares the on-disk client.json identity
against the incoming config identity before overwriting it and discards
tokens.json + meta.json on a mismatch (with a log line pointing at
hermes mcp login). Unchanged identity is a strict no-op.
Proven live on main with an isolated-HERMES_HOME E2E probe; regression
tests sabotage-verified (fail without the wiring line).
Approval marks were emitted under a synthetic 'default' relay session:
the hook payload carried only turn_id/tool_call_id, so the observability
plugin's _session_id() fell back to 'default', parenting approval marks
to a session scope that never closes — and close-time exporters never
shipped them. The audit board's approval tables stayed empty while
approvals were demonstrably firing (staging 2026-08-10).
Bind session_id in set_current_observability_context at both dispatch
sites (model_tools tool dispatch, plugins pre-tool-call approval gate)
and forward it on every approval hook. Explicit session_id in a hook
payload still wins; unbound contexts omit it (legacy behavior).
Adds a pre_transcription transform hook (prompt/language/model mutable,
file_path read-only, last-writer-wins per the transform_* convention)
fired before any STT backend, threads prompt to faster-whisper
(initial_prompt) and OpenAI/Groq/Mistral/DeepInfra (prompt), adds an
optional stt.prompt config key on the same plumbing, and keeps the
no-hook dispatch path byte-identical. Fixes#64168.
Documents the new surface for users: a "Transcription prompt
(vocabulary hints)" subsection in the configuration guide (composition
order, per-provider support matrix, length contract, privacy warning),
a pre_transcription entry in the hooks reference, and the mirrored row
in the plugins hook table.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01AG6LyYMvHC2o6HbVUozmVR
Route plugin target parsing, validation, and host-driven delivery through PlatformEntry across CLI and cron while preserving the host-only send_message policy.
The write_file / patch file tools hard-denied ~/.ssh/config as a
"protected system/credential file", while the terminal tool only
*asked* for approval on ~/.ssh writes. That inconsistency meant a write
to ~/.ssh/config was refused via write_file but succeeded via terminal
after an approval prompt -- the same operation flip-flopping between
denied and OK depending on which tool ran it.
The SSH client config carries no private-key material, and editing it
(host aliases, ProxyJump, VS Code Remote-SSH targets) is a routine,
user-initiated task. It CAN carry ProxyCommand / Match exec directives
that run commands, so a free write is still inappropriate -- approval,
not a flat refusal, is the right policy, matching what the terminal tool
already does.
Changes:
- agent/file_safety.py: remove ~/.ssh/config from the flat credential
deny; add build_write_approval_paths() + is_write_approval_required(),
and short-circuit it out of the ~/.ssh/ prefix deny so the file is
allowed at the classifier layer. Private keys, authorized_keys, and
everything else under ~/.ssh/ stay hard-denied.
- tools/file_tools.py: _check_approval_required_write() routes ssh config
writes through the shared _run_approval_gate (once/session/always,
honors --yolo, fail-closed with no human), wired into write_file_tool
and patch_tool right after the protected-instruction gate.
- Non-interactive consumers fail closed: the ACP file bridge
(copilot_acp_client) rejects approval-required paths outright, and the
TTS output-path picker refuses them as before.
- Docs + tests updated (security.md exception note;
TestSshConfigApprovalGate covers config approval-gated, keys still
hard-denied).
/simplify-code findings on the full PR diff:
- _is_usable_python had the same sticky-failure bug the previous commit
fixed in _python_environment_prefix: lru_cache pinned a transient
probe failure (fork pressure, timeout) as False forever, silently
locking project mode to sys.executable. Both probes now share a
success-only bounded dict cache via _cache_probe_result() with FIFO
eviction at _PROBE_CACHE_MAX (the old < cap guard stopped caching new
entries instead of evicting, re-probing entry 33+ on every call).
- The hermes-root-omitted logger.info fired on every external-env call
in project mode; now deduped once per interpreter path per process
(matching the tirith/mcp warn-once convention).
- Regression test: _is_usable_python probe failures are retried, not
cached (mutation-verified).
Follow-up to the salvaged #81201 commits:
- Short-circuit _uses_hermes_python_environment when the child IS the
running interpreter (path or realpath match). The default strict-mode
path no longer spawns a probe subprocess at all, and a flaky probe of
sys.executable can never drop the hermes root from PYTHONPATH
(protects the test_repo_root_modules_are_importable invariant). The
realpath leg also covers uv-style venvs whose bin/python resolves to
the same binary.
- Stop caching failed probes: _python_environment_prefix now uses a
success-only dict cache instead of lru_cache, so one transient
timeout under load no longer sticks for the process lifetime.
- Deduplicate the subprocess probe scaffolding shared with
_is_usable_python into _probe_python().
- Log once when the hermes root is omitted so import-behavior changes
are diagnosable from user reports.
- Tests: fail the composition tests loudly if execute_code never
reaches Popen (was vacuously passing on exceptions); assert the
staging dir is literally first in PYTHONPATH (was truthiness only);
add guards for probe-failure retry and the no-probe short-circuit.
Whole-bug-class sibling of the execute_code fix: terminal(code=...) —
the reverse confusion — fell through to command=None and failed with
'Invalid command: expected string, got NoneType', naming neither the
stray 'code' argument nor execute_code as the right tool. Mirror the
guard in _handle_terminal (verified live: the opaque NoneType error
reproduces on main). Mutation-checked: removing the guard fails the
new regression test.
Review follow-up on the salvaged handler: a non-string 'code' (int,
dict, list) reached code.strip() and surfaced as a generic
'Tool execution failed: AttributeError' — the same unrecoverable shape
the salvage exists to eliminate. Add an isinstance guard beside the
'command' check that names the received type and shows the correct
call form; narrow the docstring to what the handler actually does.
Regression test drives int/dict/list through registry.dispatch and
asserts no AttributeError leaks (mutation-checked: removing the guard
fails 3 subtests).
* fix(windows): SSH ControlMaster gating + stop hijacking the user's python
Two Windows environment-integrity fixes:
1. tools/environments/ssh.py (#73927): Windows OpenSSH has no
Unix-domain-socket ControlMaster support, so unconditionally passing
ControlPath/ControlMaster/ControlPersist failed EVERY tool call on a
Windows-hosted ssh terminal backend with 'getsockname failed: Not a
socket'. Gate the three multiplexing options behind a module-level
_SSH_MULTIPLEX = (os.name != 'nt'); the scp upload path is gated the
same way. On Windows the backend now works without connection pooling
(each command a fresh connection); POSIX behavior is unchanged. The
teardown 'ssh -O exit' is naturally inert because the socket never
exists on Windows.
2. scripts/install.ps1 (#83797): the installer put the whole
venv\Scripts directory on the user PATH, which contains python.exe /
pythonw.exe / pip.exe and so silently hijacked the 'python' command in
every terminal on the machine — unrelated projects started resolving
python to Hermes' runtime interpreter. Now copy only the launchers
(hermes.exe, hermes-acp.exe) into a dedicated $InstallDir\bin and put
THAT on PATH. Existing installs are migrated: the legacy venv\Scripts
entry is stripped from the user PATH on the next install/update. The
new bin dir is under $InstallDir (…\hermes-agent), which the uninstall
PATH sweep already matches via its \hermes-agent marker.
Updated the stale hermes_cli/update_cmd.py docstring that described the
old venv\Scripts-on-PATH layout.
Tests: SSH ControlMaster gating pinned both directions (multiplex on →
flags present; off → absent but BatchMode/StrictHostKeyChecking retained).
install.ps1 parses clean via the PowerShell AST parser.
* docs: update windows-native install docs for the bin\ launcher layout
CI (test_windows_native_docs) pins the docs and installer to the same
PATH layout. The #83797 fix moved the PATH entry from venv\Scripts to a
dedicated $InstallDir\bin holding only the hermes launchers, so update
the Windows-native guide to match: PATH-after-install section, the
install-steps list, the directory-layout table, the Get-Command
verification line, and the 'command not found' pitfall. Test now asserts
the bin\ layout and guards against a regression back to venv\Scripts on
PATH.
* fix: keep install.ps1 pure ASCII (PowerShell 5.1 codepage safety)
The two comments I added in the #83797 PATH-hijack fix used em-dashes,
tripping tests/test_install_ps1_ascii_only.py — Windows PowerShell 5.1
reads a BOM-less .ps1 in the system ANSI codepage (not UTF-8), so a
non-ASCII byte can misdecode into a stray quote and desync the parser
(issues #66994/#67000). Replace the em-dashes with ASCII '--'.
The apply phase already skips a hunk whose -/+ lines are identical
(patch_parser.py '(search_lines == replace_lines): continue'), but the
validation phase lacked the guard: such a hunk reached
fuzzy_find_and_replace, whose identical-strings error names
old_string/new_string — parameters that don't exist in patch mode — and
failed the whole atomic patch that apply would have accepted. Mirror
the apply-phase skip in validation; regression test drives a mixed
degenerate+live patch end-to-end (short text dodges the
is_already_applied >=8-char rescue).
The 3-sentence identical-edit message was snapshot-asserted verbatim in
two tests. House style avoids exact-string change-detector assertions;
both tests now import the constant from tools/fuzzy_match so rewording
the message can't silently break them.
Fixes#69472. On a Windows host every destructive native command passed
approval silently — DANGEROUS_PATTERNS were POSIX-shaped, and the
normalizer strips backslashes as shell escapes so no Windows path could
ever match a path rule. Probed live before the fix: 15 of 15 destructive
Windows commands (Remove-Item -Recurse -Force, del /s /q, iwr | iex,
taskkill /F, Format-Volume, diskpart, icacls /grant Everyone, vssadmin
delete shadows, bcdedit /set, reg delete, cipher /w, ...) sailed through
undetected.
Two changes:
1. Windows destructive tier in DANGEROUS_PATTERNS: PowerShell deletes
(bare Remove-Item -Recurse/-Force), cmd builtins with /s|/q switches,
iwr|iex remote execution (pipe and subexpression forms), taskkill /F /
Stop-Process -Force, volume/disk destruction (Format-Volume,
Clear-Disk, diskpart, format.com, cipher /w), icacls Everyone-grant /
/reset, backup destruction (vssadmin delete shadows, wbadmin delete,
bcdedit /set), reg delete / Remove-ItemProperty -Force, and service
stop/delete (Stop-Service -Force, sc stop|delete). Each pattern
requires the destructive flag so graceful/read-only usage (taskkill
/IM without /F, reg query, icacls inspect, sc query, plain del file)
does not prompt. Patterns live in the main list, not a win32-gated
tier: a Linux-hosted Hermes can drive a Windows box over SSH.
2. Windows-path detection variant in _command_detection_variants: when
the raw command contains a drive-letter/UNC backslash path, also
yield a variant with backslashes flattened to forward slashes BEFORE
normalization strips them, plus Windows spellings of the credential
path rules (Users/<u>/.ssh, AppData/{Local,Roaming}/hermes .env).
Gated on a real path shape so POSIX escape semantics are untouched.
Tests: tests/tools/test_approval_windows.py — 48 cases (27 destructive
flagged, 13 benign not flagged, 5 credential paths in both separator
spellings, 4 POSIX-escape non-regressions). The 8 pre-existing failures
under '-k approval' on this Windows host are identical on unmodified
main (ordering artifacts + known symlink cases) and unrelated.
Two follow-ups from live Windows sessions:
1. agent/prompt_builder.py: extend the Windows shell hint with the
native-binary path rule. Hermes disables MSYS path conversion for its
bash, so agents passing /c/Users/... or /tmp/... to NATIVE programs
(git -C, node, python, rg) hit 'cannot change to' / 'not found' while
the same path works in bash builtins — observed repeatedly in a live
session (git -C failures, git apply /tmp/x.patch failures). The hint
now says: forward-slash native form (C:/Users/x) for native tools,
$LOCALAPPDATA/Temp over /tmp for scratch files native tools read.
(/tmp is pure model habit from Linux training data — nothing
instructs it — so the hint is the right layer.)
2. tests: pin LF/CRLF preservation through write_file and patch_replace.
A live session saw a repo-LF file come back full-CRLF after an edit
(4699-line diff churn); not reproducible through current tool APIs,
so pin the correct behavior — LF files stay LF, CRLF files stay CRLF,
no mixed endings — to catch any regression on the Windows write path.
Sweep of open Windows issues affecting day-to-day agent operation
(explicitly excluding install/setup and locale classes):
- hermes_cli/_subprocess_compat.py: new split_command_line() — Windows-
safe command-line tokenizer (posix=False + quote stripping) so
backslash paths survive. POSIX behavior unchanged (plain shlex.split).
- hermes_cli/console_engine.py (#83934): console commands like
'sessions export C:\Users\me\out.jsonl' no longer silently mangle the
path into a relative filename in the cwd.
- agent/shell_hooks.py (#78293): hook commands with backslash paths now
spawn, resolve their script path, and pass hooks doctor instead of
reporting 'not executable'. All three shlex sites routed through the
shared splitter.
- agent/prompt_builder.py (#51755): system prompt now reports
Windows (11) on Windows 11 — platform.release() returns 10 for both;
distinguish via sys.getwindowsversion().build >= 22000.
- hermes_cli/commands.py (#42016): @ autocomplete no longer crashes the
prompt_toolkit event loop when rg emits a path on a different mount
(device paths \.\nul, other drive letters) — relpath ValueError is
skipped per-entry.
- tools/browser_use_cli.py (#83884): screenshot-path detection now
matches Windows drive-letter paths (C:\... and C:/...) in addition to
POSIX; Browser Use screenshots attach on Windows.
- tools/skills_hub.py + tools/skills_guard.py (#62310): the two 'MUST
stay symmetric' skill content hashes actually agree on Windows now.
Bundle keys are normalized to POSIX separators before hashing, and the
disk digest sorts by rel-posix STRING (case-sensitive) instead of Path
objects (case-insensitive on Windows). Fixes permanent false-positive
update_available for every installed skill.
Tests: tests/tools/test_windows_agent_loop_papercuts.py — 16 cases
covering each fix, including a disk-vs-bundle hash symmetry check built
with native Windows separators and a mixed-case filename.
The previous commit's regex-based stripper removed EVERY heredoc body,
which review flagged as bypassable: a fake '<<EOF' marker inside a
comment or quoted string enters the unterminated path and swallows a
later REAL background operator, and unquoted ('cat <<EOF' — expansion
runs) or shell-consumed ('bash <<'EOF'' — body IS shell) bodies are
executable content that must stay visible to the guard.
Replace it with tools/shell_heredoc.strip_inert_heredoc_bodies(), a
conservative shell-state scanner: a body is masked ONLY when every
delimiter on the opener is quoted (no expansion), every heredoc is
terminated by an exact delimiter line, the opener composes a single
command (no list/pipeline operators, no nested $()/backtick/process-
substitution scope), and the consumer is an allowlisted non-shell
interpreter (python/osascript/cat). Anything ambiguous is returned
unchanged — a false positive on exotic syntax is acceptable; hiding a
real background operator is not. Masked bodies become newlines so line
structure is preserved for MULTILINE regexes.
The helper is a standalone stdlib-only module (precedent:
tools/ansi_strip.py) because the same heredoc-as-data false-positive
class exists in the blocked-command regex checks (#83104) and the
gateway lifecycle guard (#81721/#79835, cron/lifecycle_guard.py) —
which must not import the terminal-tool module graph.
Adapted from Wolfram Ravenwolf's security-hardened rework of #63788
(69c7663c6de6b6cb05bf99203fa39673efe01ccf); test scenarios for the
bypass cases derive from his suite.
Co-authored-by: Wolfram Ravenwolf <github.com@wolfram.ravenwolf.de>
_strip_quotes documented that it stripped heredoc bodies but only handled
single/double/backtick quotes. As a result _foreground_background_guidance
scanned heredoc body text for a backgrounding '&' and wrongly rejected valid
foreground commands whose heredoc body contained a spaced ampersand — e.g.
AppleScript string concat (osascript <<'EOF' ... "a" & b ... EOF), Python
bitwise-and, or literal UI text like 'FaceTime & Privacy'.
Add a _strip_heredocs pass (runs before quote-stripping, since a heredoc
delimiter may itself be quoted) covering <<EOF, <<-EOF, <<'EOF', <<"EOF".
The same-line tail after the opener (redirects/args) is preserved and the
opener token is blanked so a real backgrounding '&' after the heredoc is
still detected.
Adds tests/tools/test_terminal_heredoc_background_guard.py.
* fix: Windows path handling in search_files rg calls and patch escape drift
Two related Windows failures from a live session (Windows 10, git-bash
terminal backend, winget-installed native ripgrep):
1. search_files was unusable on drive-letter paths. _escape_shell_arg
rewrites C:\... to the MSYS form /c/... so bash builtins resolve it,
but rg is a native Windows binary and Hermes disables MSYS argument
conversion for its bash subprocesses (MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 /
MSYS2_ARG_CONV_EXCL=*, see _apply_windows_msys_bash_env_defaults) —
so nothing ever translated /c/... back and every search failed with
'The system cannot find the path specified. (os error 3)'.
Fix: new _escape_native_tool_arg emits the forward-slash NATIVE form
(C:/Users/...), which native binaries accept, bash passes through
untouched, and MSYS builds also handle. Applied to the six rg call
sites (content search, --files search x2, zero-match probe x3); the
grep fallback keeps the MSYS form since MSYS grep wants it.
2. The patch tool silently doubled backslash runs when tool-call args
arrived JSON-escaped one extra time (file had \ where old_string
had \\). Similarity strategies (context_aware) matched the region
anyway and wrote new_string verbatim, corrupting every backslash run
(reproduced: 6 backslashes on the line became 12). _detect_escape_drift
now also blocks when every backslash run in old_string is exactly twice
its counterpart in the matched region and new_string repeats the
doubling — with guardrails so exact matches, intentional backslash
edits, model-corrected new_strings, and single weak-signal runs all
still apply. Blocking returns the standard escape-drift guidance so
the model re-reads and retries with correct counts.
Tests: TestEscapeNativeToolArg (5 cases, including an end-to-end
_search_with_rg command capture) and TestBackslashDoublingDrift (6
cases). The 8 pre-existing failures in tests/tools/test_file_operations.py
on a Windows host (umask/symlink POSIX assumptions) are identical on
unmodified main and unrelated.
* fix: shell linters get native Windows paths too (node C:\c\... double-prefix)
Same class as the rg fix: LINTERS commands (python -m py_compile,
node --check, npx tsc, go vet, rustfmt) invoke native Windows binaries,
but _check_lint interpolated the MSYS /c/... form. node resolves that
as C:\c\Users\... (double-prefixed), so on Windows hosts every .js
write reported a phantom ENOENT lint failure that could mask real
syntax errors (issue #84303). Route the {file} arg through
_escape_native_tool_arg like the rg call sites.
Regression test asserts node --check receives 'C:/...' and never
'/c/...'.
* 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.
The Browser Use CLI became the default browser backend, but nothing
provisioned it: users without uv/uvx (field report from DongyangHe on
macOS) silently fell back to the built-in browser tools with no notice.
- install_cli() in tools/browser_use_cli.py: uv tool install browser-use
via the managed uv (bootstrapped on demand), linked into
$HERMES_HOME/bin (UV_TOOL_BIN_DIR)
- _find_cli() now also probes $HERMES_HOME/bin for browser-use/uvx —
Hermes' managed uv is not on the user's PATH
- hermes tools post_setup actually installs (Camofox standard) instead
of printing instructions
- install.sh / install.ps1 provision the CLI at install time
(best-effort, non-fatal, honors --skip-browser)
- CLI startup shows a one-line notice (24h rate-limited) when the
default backend downgraded to the built-in tools
* fix(gateway): stop frozen-preview finals and dropped idle-session delegation callbacks
Two relay-plane delivery losses from the 2026-08-09 staging incident:
1. stream_consumer: the skip-redundant-finalize branch recorded _accumulated
as the delivered turn-final payload even when the last ACKED edit was an
earlier throttled preview snapshot, so delivered_final_matches reconciled
True and the gateway suppressed the corrective final send — the user was
left with a cut-off message ending in the streaming cursor. Extracted
_mark_skip_redundant_finalize(): records the last acked wire payload
(cursor-stripped), so a preview/final mismatch now returns False and the
normal final send fires.
2. run.py: _classify_completion_target classified every ended parent session
terminal unless it ended by compression. Idle/timeout session ends are the
norm on scale-to-zero relay deployments and the chat route remains valid;
completed async delegation results were terminally dropped. Ended parents
now classify deliver unless the end was an explicit user boundary
(session_reset / user_exit / session_switch).
* fix(relay): drain in-flight outbound frames before transport teardown
disconnect() failed every pending outbound future immediately with
'relay transport closed', so a trailing finalize edit racing turn
teardown was lost even though the connector socket could still serve
it. Bounded drain grace (5s) lets in-flight requests resolve; silent
connectors still tear down promptly. asyncio.wait (not gather+wait_for)
so a timeout doesn't cancel futures owned by the fail-remaining loop.
* fix(gateway): route completion injection through the alias-aware transport resolver
Third relay-plane delivery loss from the 2026-08-09 staging incidents: a
delegation batch completed while the gateway was up, the watcher drained
the event, and delivery vanished with no log line. _inject_watch_notification
resolved its adapter with a literal p.value == platform_name scan of
self.adapters — a relay-fronted gateway registers ONE adapter under
Platform.RELAY fronting N logical platforms, so 'slack' never matched and
the injection returned None ('no gateway route'), silently dropping the
completion. The handoff path already documents this exact trap and uses
resolve_delivery_transport; the injection path now does the same (native
wins; relay eligible only when it fronts the logical platform), with the
literal scan kept as fallback for stub runners and exotic platforms.
* fix(relay): clamp disconnect drain grace to the runner's adapter-disconnect budget
Review finding (JoaoMarcos44, #82592): a fixed 5.0s drain in front of the
three 1.0s sequential teardown awaits gives an 8.0s worst case inside the
runner's 5.0s asyncio.wait_for(adapter.disconnect()) — tripping it cancels
teardown mid-drain, skips the fail-pending loop, and leaves outbound
callers blocked until _OUTBOUND_TIMEOUT_S (30s). The effective grace is
now budget - 3*TEARDOWN - margin (env-aware via the same
HERMES_GATEWAY_ADAPTER_DISCONNECT_TIMEOUT the runner reads), so the drain
can never push teardown past its caller's budget; a budget too small for
any drain disables it cleanly.
* test(gateway): pin the final-send suppression contract across a behaviour matrix
The gateway skips its own final send when the stream consumer claims the turn
final already reached the user. Every incident in that family — #71643 (stale
finalize snapshot), #78541 (payload-less multi-message split), #82656 (frozen
preview left with a visible cursor) — is the same failure: the consumer claimed
delivery for text the platform never rendered, so the corrective send was
suppressed and the answer was lost with no retry.
Each was fixed with a scenario test pinned to one branch of
GatewayStreamConsumer.run(). The got_done handler now has five sibling branches
that each set the suppression flags and record a turn-final payload, and nothing
checks them as a group: a new branch, or a new early `return True` in
_send_or_edit, can reintroduce the class without failing a test.
Pin the invariant instead of the branch — if the consumer offers the gateway any
signal it would trust, the complete final text must have reached the wire — and
assert it across {edit always / dies / never / lies} x {send always / never} x
{fresh-final on / off} x {clean / interrupted stream}.
The adapter records only frames that actually rendered, so an ACK the platform
drops does not count as delivery. 24 honest-transport scenarios hold the
invariant as a hard assertion. The 16 lying-transport scenarios are checked too;
the single combination that still violates it is reported as an expected
failure documenting the open exposure rather than asserting it away.
Refs #82656
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
* fix(gateway,relay): prime relay egress routing for synthetic injections + cap stale completion replay
Defect #4 from the 2026-08-09 staging incidents (upgrade-robustness):
after every gateway restart the durable async-delegation replay injected
completions correctly (post-741663cf1) but their replies bounced at the
connector — 'slack egress declined: target not routed to an onboarded
tenant'. The relay adapter re-attaches tenant discriminators
(metadata.scope_id / metadata.user_id) from per-chat caches warmed ONLY by
inbound traffic; synthetic turns race those cold caches on every deploy,
scale-to-zero wake, and crash recovery.
- relay adapter: prime_routing_cache() — feeds a synthetic event's
session-store origin through the same _capture_scope used for real
inbound (never raises).
- run.py injection path: prime the resolved adapter before handle_message
(duck-typed; native adapters unaffected).
- async_delegation: 48h staleness cap in restore_undelivered_completions —
a pending completion older than the cap is terminally dropped (payload
stays queryable) instead of re-run as a fresh full-context turn; the
post-restart replay of a July session burned a 102K-token context.
Also carried: JoaoMarcos44's suppression behaviour-matrix harness
(cherry-picked from #82676, authorship preserved) — 39 passed + 1 xfail
(the documented ACK-then-drop transport-honesty residue).
* test: use recent timestamps in restored-ownership fixtures
test_restore_stamps_restored_flag persisted its completion with epoch-era
toy timestamps (dispatched_at=1.0), which the new 48h replay staleness cap
correctly classifies as stale — the fixture then exercised the cap instead
of the restored-flag contract (CI slice 4 failure). Timestamps are now
now-relative; the staleness behavior itself is pinned separately in
test_relay_injection_egress_priming.py.
* fix(gateway,relay): close four review findings on the relay delivery fixes
Review follow-ups on this branch (NousResearch#82592):
1. HIGH — classifier/resolver mismatch (falsely-acknowledged loss).
_classify_completion_target now returns "deliver" for idle-ended
parents, but _resolve_async_delegation_session still dropped every
non-compression-ended pin: the durable row was acked at adapter
acceptance, then the injection died inside the pipeline with no
retry — strictly worse than the honest terminal drop on main, and
the delivery leg defect #2's fix depends on did not exist. The
resolver now retargets non-user-boundary ends (idle/timeout/
lifecycle) to the chat's current session — session_entry already IS
the routing key's current session for the same chat — while user
boundaries (session_reset / new_session / user_exit /
session_switch) stay fail-closed. Both sides share one module-level
_USER_BOUNDARY_END_REASONS so the verdict and the routing decision
cannot drift again; a coherence test asserts deliver-verdicts
resolve non-None across representative end reasons.
2. HIGH — drain clamp missed adapter-level spend. The effective drain
grace budgeted drain + 3x teardown, but RelayAdapter.disconnect
spends revocation-monitor teardown + go_idle time BEFORE the
transport drain inside the same runner wait_for; worst case still
blew the budget and cancelled teardown mid-drain (skipping the
fail-pending loop). The adapter now measures its own elapsed time
and threads the REMAINING budget into
transport.disconnect(budget_s=...); legacy/stub transports without
the keyword fall back to the no-arg signature.
3. P1 — _request_response racing disconnect() could register a future
after the fail-pending loop already ran, stranding the caller for
the full _OUTBOUND_TIMEOUT_S (30s). Fail fast with the same
"relay transport closed" error once _closing is set.
4. P1 — _build_process_event_source's last-resort reconstruction
dropped scope_id, so a scoped relay completion whose session-store
origin was unavailable primed no tenant discriminator and could
still bounce off the connector's fail-closed egress guard.
scope_id now threads through the reconstructed SessionSource, with
a warning when a scoped chat reconstructs without one.
All four: RED reproduced with the fix reverted, GREEN after; relay/
delegation delivery families pass (43 + 71 + 179 across the touched
suites); full tests/gateway run shows only failures already failing
identically on merge base 2446c8bb6 (env/dep issues).
* fix(gateway,relay): make pending-frame failure cancellation-safe; persist completion routing origin
Two remaining review findings on this branch (NousResearch#82592):
1. Cancellation could strand outbound waiters past the fail-pending
loop. transport.disconnect() failed pending futures only at the END
of the drain + three teardown awaits; a cancellation landing
mid-drain (the runner's wait_for budget, an outer cleanup deadline)
skipped the loop entirely and left registered futures unresolved —
their callers blocked until _OUTBOUND_TIMEOUT_S (30s). The budget
threading added earlier shrinks the window but is not a hard
guarantee. The fail-pending loop (and the going_idle ack failure)
now run in a `finally`, so no exit path — normal, error, or
cancelled — can leave a registered future unresolved. Idempotent:
done futures are skipped, a second disconnect() pass is a no-op.
2. Durable completions did not persist their routing origin, so the
scope_id threading in the fallback SessionSource reconstruction had
nothing to carry on the exact path it exists for (restart replay
with session store + source cache gone): the async-delegation event
producers never populated scope_id and the durable rows never
stored it. Dispatch now snapshots the originating turn's
scope_id/user_id/user_name from the session context
(_capture_routing_origin — a new HERMES_SESSION_SCOPE_ID contextvar
bound by the gateway at session-bind time alongside the existing
vars), stores them in the existing task_json payload (no schema
migration), and re-attaches them to all three completion-event
shapes (live single, live batch, crash-recovery rebuild). The
gateway's fallback reconstruction then primes both discriminators
after a restart.
Tests: cancellation mid-drain -> every pending future resolves with
"relay transport closed" (mutation: moving the loop out of the finally
goes RED); second-pass disconnect idempotence; end-to-end
dispatch -> owner-death recovery -> event carries scope_id -> fallback
SessionSource primes it (mutations: dropping the dispatch capture or
the task_json persistence both go RED); live completion event carries
the origin. 94 passed + 1 xfailed across the delivery/delegation
suites; tests/tools delegation family 73 passed (2 collection errors
pre-existing on merge base 2446c8bb6).
---------
Co-authored-by: joaomarcos <joaomarcosdias444@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Ben Barclay <ben@nousresearch.com>
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