The pane, in-app browser, and reaction tools were gated on HERMES_DESKTOP=1 —
an env var set only on backends Electron spawns itself (local and SSH). A
desktop client connected to a plain URL gateway or Hermes Cloud lost all six:
they were stripped from the schema before the model saw them, on the same
backend whose platform hint was telling it "you are chatting inside the Hermes
desktop app". open_preview, read_preview, read_terminal, close_terminal,
focus_pane, and react_to_message were all silently absent.
The client is not the host. Capability now resolves from the session's own
source, which session.create already carries:
- The six tools move into a `desktop_ui` toolset, off _HERMES_CORE_TOOLS so no
other platform pays their schema.
- _gui_surface_toolsets(platform) folds `desktop_ui` (and the existing
`project` tools) into the GUI gateway's resolution when the session's
platform is the desktop app — the same answer on every topology.
- check_fn drops the env probe. It kept the one thing that is genuinely a
per-process/user fact: react_to_message's display.message_reactions opt-in,
which the desktop mirrors onto whichever gateway it is connected to.
react_to_message was doubly broken: it read that toggle behind the env gate, so
even a local-backend user's Settings toggle could not reach a remote session.
The embedded terminal pane keeps working correctly the other way round: it runs
`hermes --tui` against a desktop-spawned backend, and a tui-sourced session
gets no GUI tools even though HERMES_DESKTOP=1 is set on that process.
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.
Extract the open_preview emitter into a shared tools/desktop_ui bridge
(one gateway-injected sink, routed by HERMES_UI_SESSION_ID) and add a
second desktop-gated tool on top of it:
- focus_pane(chat|files|terminal|review|sessions) -> pane.reveal event.
The desktop runs each pane's own reveal path (revealDesktopPane table)
and only acts on the active window -- a background turn never moves the
user's focus (desktop AGENTS.md: offer, don't hijack).
open_preview now emits through the same bridge. Both tools are check_fn
on HERMES_DESKTOP (zero footprint elsewhere), sitting beside
read_terminal/close_terminal in _HERMES_CORE_TOOLS.
Deliberately not adding run_slash: letting the agent fire slash commands
mid-turn (/model, /new, /clear) fights prompt-cache + conversation
invariants.
Add a desktop-gated open_preview tool so 'open cnn.com in the preview
pane' works. The tool (check_fn on HERMES_DESKTOP, zero footprint
elsewhere) emits a preview.open event through a gateway-injected emitter,
mirroring the close_terminal -> terminal.close bridge. The desktop
handles it in usePreviewRouting, normalizing the target and opening the
pane for the active session only -- a background turn never hijacks it.
Bare domains and localhost are coaxed into fetchable URLs (www.cnn.com ->
https://, localhost:3000 -> http://); file paths and schemes pass through
to the renderer's normalizer.
Brooklyn Nicholson
Teknium