An auth failure on the very first connect returned out of the run loop
instead of parking. That ended the run task, and the task is the only
listener on _reconnect_event — so the server stayed dead for the life of
the process. `hermes mcp login`, a /mcp refresh, and the 300s self-probe
all had nothing left to wake, and the only cure was a full restart.
_classify_mcp_failure already calls 401/403 "permanent" and documents
that run() parks those immediately; the early return above it meant auth
was the one permanent failure that never got there. Park it with the
others and keep the tailored log line, now pointing at `hermes mcp
login <server>`.
Second, deeper pass over tools/gateway/hermes_cli plus first pass over
the trees wave 1 missed (acp, acp_adapter, skills, computer_use, docker,
dashboard, conformance, monitoring, secret_sources, hermes_state,
providers). Same rubric as wave 1 (AGENTS.md test policy); security,
alternation/caching invariants, issue-number regressions, and E2E kept.
Real test-quality fixes found and rooted out along the way:
- tests/tools/test_command_guards.py made real auxiliary-LLM HTTPS calls
(DEFAULT_CONFIG smart-approval leaked in) — pinned approval
mode=manual via autouse fixture: 17.4s → 0.4s.
- test_model_switch_custom_providers.py / test_user_providers_model_switch.py
silently probed live provider catalogs (~2s/test) — stubbed
cached_provider_model_ids/provider_model_ids/fetch_api_models.
- test_telegram_noise_filter.py: 15-platform copy-paste matrix over
shared gateway.run logic → 3 representative platforms (55s → 3.9s).
- test_gateway_shutdown.py: stop()'s 5s interrupt-deadline loop spun on
MagicMock agents — interrupt.side_effect now clears _running_agents
(22s → 1.0s).
- test_gateway_inactivity_timeout.py poll-harness timings shrunk 3-5x
(24s → 1.1s); test_mcp_stability.py backoff/SIGTERM-grace sleeps
patched (15.4s → 2.5s); test_async_delegation.py negative-drain wait
5s → 0.5s.
- test_telegram_init_deadline.py: loop-block margin restored to 1.0s
with rationale comment — the watchdog-dump assertion needs the loop
blocked well past deadline+grace under parallel load (flaked once in
the 40-worker verification run at a 0.2s margin).
Verification: full hermetic suite via scripts/run_tests.sh —
2,438 files, 21,718 tests passed, 0 failed, 293.9s wall.
Suite totals vs original baseline: 46,820 → 19,757 test functions
(−57.8%), wall 583.5s → 293.9s (−50%), subprocess CPU 13,564s → 11,623s.
- Add module-level _unwrap_exception_group (ported from
hermes_cli/mcp_config.py, adapted): handles nested groups, prefers
non-cancellation leaves over the CancelledErrors anyio sprays across
sibling tasks, and re-raises KeyboardInterrupt/SystemExit leaves.
- Add _classify_mcp_failure(exc) -> 'permanent'|'transient'.
Permanent: auth 401/403, NonMcpEndpointError, InvalidMcpUrlError,
FileNotFoundError/ENOENT on the stdio command. Transient: everything
else (network/EOF/ClosedResource/TaskGroup drops). Permanent failures
park immediately without burning the retry ladder — every retry
against a missing binary or a revoked credential hits the same wall.
- Every log site in run() and the keepalive failure log now logs the
unwrapped root cause as 'TypeName: message', so a dead stdio pipe
says 'BrokenPipeError' instead of the opaque
'unhandled errors in a TaskGroup (1 sub-exception)' (and empty
str(exc) dead-pipe errors are no longer blank).
Brooklyn Nicholson
Teknium