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.
_check_unavailable_skill is meant to turn a typed "/foo" command that
doesn't resolve into a specific hint — "disabled, enable with hermes
skills config" or "available but not installed, install with hermes
skills install …" — instead of the generic "unknown command" reply.
It was doing the match with `skill_md.parent.name.lower().replace("_", "-")`,
comparing that to the typed command. For every skill whose directory name
drifted from its declared frontmatter `name:`, that comparison failed and
the user got the unhelpful generic path. On a standard install today 19
skills have this drift, e.g.:
dir: mlops/stable-diffusion
frontmatter: name: Stable Diffusion Image Generation
registered slug (what the user types): /stable-diffusion-image-generation
dir: mlops/qdrant
frontmatter: name: Qdrant Vector Search
registered slug: /qdrant-vector-search
dir: mlops/flash-attention
frontmatter: name: Optimizing Attention Flash
registered slug: /optimizing-attention-flash
In every case, _check_unavailable_skill would fall through because
"stable-diffusion" != "stable-diffusion-image-generation", even with the
skill sitting right there on disk.
Fix: extract a small `_skill_slug_from_frontmatter` helper that reads the
SKILL.md frontmatter and normalizes exactly like scan_skill_commands
(lower, spaces/underscores → hyphens, strip non-[a-z0-9-], collapse
runs of hyphens, strip edges). Use it in both the
disabled-skills branch and the optional-skills branch. The disabled-set
membership check now uses the declared frontmatter name (which is what
`hermes skills config` writes into skills.disabled / platform_disabled),
not the slug.
Tests: five cases in tests/gateway/test_unavailable_skill_hint.py —
the drift case for the disabled branch, unknown-command negative,
matched-but-not-disabled negative, non-alnum stripping, and the drift
case for the optional-skills branch. All five fail against main and
pass with the fix.