Run a duplicate of CI on the new ARC (Actions Runner Controller) runners in
GKE, beside the existing CI. The duplicate does not change production CI.
Every workflow in .github/workflows/ that does not start with newci- is
byte-identical to main. Watch the shadow runs for a few days, then migrate.
The shadow set is 16 files: newci-ci.yml plus the 15 reusable workflows that
ci.yml calls on a pull request. Only pull-request workflows are copied.
js-autofix, deploy-site, and skills-index run on push or on a schedule. A
copy of those would push branches and deploy the site a second time.
Safety properties of the shadow:
- Concurrency groups are newci-prefixed. This is the important one. The
production groups use cancel-in-progress, so a shared group would let a
shadow run cancel the production run.
- Cache keys are newci-prefixed. The shadow cannot poison or evict a
production cache entry.
- Reusable-workflow calls point only at other newci-* files. No shadow job
calls a production workflow.
- The PR review comment runs with --dry-run. It prints the comment body to
the job log. Two pollers cannot fight over the hermes-ci-review-bot
comment.
- The gate job is renamed to "[newci] All checks pass (informational)". The
production check "All required checks pass" stays the only merge gate.
- The shadow runs on pull_request only. The push trigger is removed.
- docker publish and merge jobs are unreachable. Their conditions require a
push to main or a release.
Runner infrastructure, in the shadow copies only:
- Jobs go to three scale sets: arc-runner-small for short gate jobs,
arc-runner-set for general work, arc-runner-docker and arc-runner-arm64
for image builds. dind is only on the docker sets, so the other jobs stop
paying for a privileged sidecar.
- The runner image supplies node 26, npm 12, uv, Python, and ripgrep. The
setup-node, setup-uv, and per-job install steps are gone.
- Checkout uses a node-local git mirror, seeded from the runner pod env.
- buildx layer cache moved to Artifact Registry in us-central1, the same
region as the runners. Reads are keyless through GKE Workload Identity.
Writes use GitHub OIDC and happen only on main pushes and releases, so
pull-request code cannot write a layer that the publish job reads.
Merge-base work, in the shadow copies only:
- A new composite action, .github/actions/merge-base, deepens a shallow
clone until the two histories connect. fetch-depth: 0 fetches all ~1400
refs and measured 76-81s, against 3-6s for a shallow checkout.
- The action fails by default when no merge base exists. A three-dot diff
over a missing merge base scans nothing and reports clean, so the
supply-chain audit must stop. history-check sets fail-on-missing to false,
because absence is the result it measures.
- lint diffs against the base commit directly. The job checks out the PR
merge ref, so base.sha is already the correct comparison point.
- contributor-check uses origin/main..HEAD. The result equals the merge-base
form, and the extra git call also expanded a SHA without quotes.
Other changes:
- .github/actionlint.yaml declares the four ARC labels. actionlint knows
only GitHub-hosted labels, so every runs-on in the repo was reported as an
unknown label: 40 warnings that hid real findings.
- scripts/ci/resource_profile.py records CPU and memory for a job step. The
timing report shows the data per step.
- run_tests_parallel.py can list test files from the git index. The slice
generator then needs no blobs.
- Docker test files are split so boot-heavy tests run in parallel.
- Container-environment parity fixes in doctor, gateway, and skill_utils,
with tests.
To retire the shadow: delete .github/workflows/newci-*.yml.
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.
The docker-exec privilege-drop shim tests started a sleep container and
released the fixture as soon as `docker exec <c> true` returned 0. On
s6-overlay that succeeds almost immediately — ~0.05s in measurement —
long before the `01-hermes-setup` cont-init hook (docker/stage2-hook.sh)
has finished seeding + `chown hermes:hermes` config.yaml and running the
Python config migration (cont-init only fully settles at ~9.8s under
arm64 QEMU emulation).
`test_shim_opt_out_keeps_root` wipes config.yaml, writes it as root with
HERMES_DOCKER_EXEC_AS_ROOT=1, and asserts root:root ownership. When the
fixture released the test inside that ~10s window, stage2-hook's
boot-time `chown hermes:hermes config.yaml` raced the root-written file
and reset it to hermes:hermes — failing the assertion. The window is
invisible on native amd64 (stage2-hook completes in a blink) but wide
open under the arm64 build's QEMU emulation, which is why only build-arm64
flaked while build-amd64 stayed green.
Replace the responsiveness poll with a wait on the canonical
'cont-init finished' signal: $HERMES_HOME/logs/container-boot.log gaining
a `profile=default` line, written by 02-reconcile-profiles which s6 runs
strictly after 01-hermes-setup. Mirrors the readiness pattern already
used in test_container_restart.py. Also bumps the readiness timeout 20s->60s
to cover slow emulation.
No production code change — test-only hardening of a timing race.
When operators ran `docker exec <c> hermes login` (or anything else
that wrote under $HERMES_HOME) they defaulted to root, leaving
/opt/data/auth.json root:root mode 0600. The supervised gateway
(UID 10000) then couldn't read its own credentials and returned
"Provider authentication failed: Hermes is not logged into Nous
Portal" on every Telegram/Discord/etc. message — even though
`docker exec <c> hermes chat -q ping` (also root) succeeded because
root could read its own root-owned file. _load_auth_store swallowed
PermissionError as a parse failure and copied the file aside as
auth.json.corrupt, making the diagnostic more misleading.
Fix: install a privilege-drop shim at /opt/hermes/bin/hermes,
prepended ahead of the venv on PATH. When invoked as root the shim
exec's the real venv binary via `s6-setuidgid hermes` — so any file
the docker-exec session writes is uid-aligned with the supervised
processes. Non-root callers (the supervised processes themselves,
`docker exec --user hermes`, kanban subagents, anything inside the
container that's not coming through docker-exec) hit a single exec
to the absolute venv path with no privilege change.
Recursion is impossible: the shim exec's the venv binary by
absolute path (/opt/hermes/.venv/bin/hermes), so the second hop
cannot re-enter the shim regardless of PATH state. No sentinel env
var needed (unlike #33583's gateway-run redirect which DOES need
HERMES_S6_SUPERVISED_CHILD because there's no absolute-path
equivalent for the s6 dispatch).
Opt-out: `docker exec -e HERMES_DOCKER_EXEC_AS_ROOT=1 …` for
diagnostic sessions where the operator deliberately wants root.
Strict truthiness (1/true/yes case-insensitive); typos like `=0`
do not silently opt out, mirroring HERMES_GATEWAY_NO_SUPERVISE in
#33583.
If `s6-setuidgid` is missing (someone stripped s6-overlay in a
downstream fork), the shim exits 126 with a remediation message
pointing at `--user hermes` and the opt-out — never silently runs
as root.
Test plan:
- tests/docker/test_docker_exec_privilege_drop.py — 11 tests
- shim drops root to hermes uid (file ownership check)
- shim short-circuits for non-root docker exec
- HERMES_DOCKER_EXEC_AS_ROOT=1 keeps root
- strict-truthiness parametrization (5 falsy values reject)
- main CMD path unaffected (recursion guard)
- E2E: every file written by docker-exec is readable by uid 10000
- Full tests/docker/ harness: 32/32 pass against fresh image build
- shellcheck --severity=error: clean
- hadolint: clean
- Manual: reproduced the original symptom (root-owned auth.json)
by bypassing the shim; confirmed default docker-exec produces
hermes-owned files; confirmed opt-out env keeps root semantics.
Known follow-up: this prevents NEW instances of the bug. Volumes
that already have root:root /opt/data/auth.json from a pre-shim
image need a one-time `chown hermes:hermes` before rebooting onto
the new image. A stage2-hook chown sweep can self-heal that, but
is deferred per scope decision.
ethernet
Teknium
Ben Barclay