The process-wide disable-background-timer-throttling /
disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows switches plus a static
backgroundThrottling: false on every chat window pinned each renderer's
document.visibilityState to 'visible' for the life of the window. Every
visibility-gated backstop poll and clock tick in the renderer became an
always-on timer: an idle, minimized Hermes burned ~20% CPU around the
clock, on battery too.
Throttling is now a runtime dial. A small controller (stream-throttle.ts)
rides the merged hermes:active-work reports the quit guard already
receives: while any turn is in flight every chat window gets
setBackgroundThrottling(false) — a live answer keeps painting while
blurred, occluded, or minimized, exactly as before — and once all turns
settle (plus a 5s trailing window so the final flush lands at full
cadence) Chromium's default throttling returns and hidden windows go
quiet.
disable-renderer-backgrounding stays: process priority only, no timer
semantics, and it keeps hidden streaming fast.
Diagnosed from a Windows desktop's logs: the backend TTS was generating
and saving the reply mp3 every turn (provider: openai), so synthesis was
fine — the DESKTOP wasn't playing the first reply. Root cause is Chromium's
autoplay policy: audio (HTMLAudioElement.play() and AudioContext) is
suspended until the frame sees a user gesture. A voice conversation started
by the 'Hey Hermes' wake word has no preceding click, so the first reply's
play() was rejected with NotAllowedError (silently swallowed) and only
turn 2+ spoke. Manual voice-start worked because the button click WAS the
gesture — exactly the 'first message in a new voice session is silent,
manual start is fine' report.
Fix (defense in depth):
- chatWindowWebPreferences sets autoplayPolicy: 'no-user-gesture-required'
on every chat window (primary + secondary), so a deliberately-launched
native app never gates audio on a gesture. Primary fix.
- voice-playback.ts resumes a suspended AudioContext on stream 'start' and
retries HTMLAudioElement.play() once via an unlock context after a
NotAllowedError — covers the dashboard-embedded surface that doesn't get
the Electron policy.
Tests: 16 electron session-window tests (incl. new autoplay assertion),
tsc + eslint clean.
Add createInstanceWindow() — a full-chrome peer of the primary that
renders the complete app (sidebar, routing, its own draft) against the
shared backend, so several GUI windows can run at once. Mirrors the
primary's window options + chatWindowWebPreferences (backgroundThrottling
stays off so a streamed answer never stalls when blurred) but never
overwrites the mainWindow global and doesn't respawn the backend — the
renderer's getConnection() joins the running one. New windows cascade off
their source via the pure, tested instanceWindowBounds().
Exposed via the hermes🪟openInstance IPC and a "New Window" File
menu item. Per-window fullscreen state now targets the window itself, and
titlebar/native-theme repaints reach every open chat window instead of
only the primary.
Retires the now-orphaned compact new-session pop-out (its only caller was
⌘⇧N, repointed in the follow-up commit): drops createNewSessionWindow,
the hermes🪟openNewSession handler, and the newSession/new=1 URL
flag.
Brooklyn Nicholson
Teknium
Andy
ethernet