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.
Two test classes lock in the new detection contract:
1. TestTermuxApiAppInstalledProbeLadder — drives _termux_api_app_installed
with a fake subprocess.run dispatcher and walks each rung of the
ladder:
- non-Termux env returns False (no probes run),
- pm-confirms returns True (back-compat),
- pm-clean-miss → cmd-confirms returns True,
- pm-FileNotFoundError → cmd-confirms returns True,
- pm-TimeoutExpired → cmd-confirms returns True,
- pm-nonzero-exit → cmd-confirms returns True,
- both probes inconclusive + binary on PATH returns True (the
core #31015 case),
- both probes inconclusive + no binary returns False,
- both probes clean-miss returns False (the genuine "CLI without
app" case keeps the existing warning),
- case-insensitive package match for ROMs that capitalise differently.
2. TestDetectAudioEnvironmentTermuxFallback — end-to-end through
detect_audio_environment, asserting the misleading "Termux:API
Android app is not installed" warning no longer fires when probes
are inconclusive but the binary is on PATH (the user-reported #31015
symptom), AND that the warning still fires when probes can
conclusively report the app is missing.
Refs: NousResearch/hermes-agent#31015
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