A delegated subagent that exhausts its per-child iteration budget
(delegation.max_iterations) still returns a summary, so the result carries
status='completed' even though the child's exit_reason is 'max_iterations' and
its work was cut off mid-task. The parent then reads 'completed', trusts the
partial summary, and only discovers the truncation by parsing the prose (where
the child happens to mention 'hit the iteration limit'). That wastes parent
turns and risks acting on incomplete work.
exit_reason is already computed authoritatively and threaded to every
parent-visible surface; it just wasn't reflected anywhere the parent reads at a
glance. This surfaces it:
- delegate_tool.py: add a parent-visible boolean 'truncated' (= exit_reason ==
'max_iterations') to each task entry, alongside the existing exit_reason.
- process_registry._format_async_delegation: for both the batch and single-task
paths, when truncated -> use a warning icon, append
'TRUNCATED: hit max_iterations — work may be incomplete' to the header/Status
line, and prefix the summary with an unmissable truncation notice. status
semantics are left unchanged (stays 'completed') so existing icon/summary
branch logic and ~10 tests asserting status=='completed' stay valid.
Tests: single-task truncated -> banner; single-task clean -> no banner; batch
marks only the truncated task, not its clean sibling. 23/23 in the async-
delegation suite.
Co-authored-by: Teknium <teknium1@users.noreply.github.com>
Plain type=completion events built in _run_process_watcher carried only
session_key (chat/thread routing) with no spawning-session stamp, so after
/new (or a session switch) a completion notification from the OLD session
was injected into the chat's NEW session. Main already solved this exact
class for async delegations via the _classify_completion_target pre-flight
(_USER_BOUNDARY_END_REASONS drop on user-closed sessions, deliver on
idle-ends, follow the compression-tip chain), but the gate only ran for
type=async_delegation events.
Kernel salvage of #16455:
- Stamp the spawning conversation's session-db id (HERMES_SESSION_ID via
session-scoped env) on the ProcessSession and the pending_watchers entry
at spawn time in tools/terminal_tool.py; persist it through the process
registry checkpoint/restore so recovered watchers keep the stamp.
- Thread the stamp into the completion_evt built by _run_process_watcher
(watcher entry first, ProcessSession fallback for recovered watchers).
- In _deliver_completion_notification, run the SAME pre-flight classifier
for stamped type=completion events: terminal -> drop with a log (output
stays available via process(action='log')), retry -> False so the
watcher re-polls, deliver -> proceed. The policy has exactly one owner
(_classify_completion_target); nothing is forked. Unstamped legacy
events keep today's deliver-always behavior, and the async-delegation
path is untouched.
Based on the session-boundary approach from #16455 by @Tosko4 (original PR
was over-scoped across adapters/slash-commands/cron; this lands the kernel
only).
Tests: completion from a /new-closed session is dropped; completion after
an idle-end still delivers; unstamped legacy event delivers; retry verdict
returns retryable False without adapter injection; async_delegation gate
unchanged; stamp survives checkpoint recovery.
Apply _redact_process_result() to completion and watch_match
notifications before enqueuing them in the completion_queue.
Previously, the explicit process tool path (poll/log/wait) applied
redact_terminal_output() via _redact_process_result(), but the
automatic notification delivery path (notify_on_complete, watch_patterns)
only applied strip_ansi(). This meant API keys, tokens, and other
secrets from background process output were injected into the LLM
conversation unmasked.
The fix ensures both code paths apply the same redaction, matching
the foreground terminal tool behavior.
format_process_notification had no case for watch_overflow_tripped /
watch_overflow_released, so a watch-pattern notification flood surfaced
as '[IMPORTANT: Background process exited (exit code ?)]' — a phantom
exit notification for a process that never existed — while the actual
'watch flood, N notifications suppressed' summary in the event's
message field was silently dropped. The gateway delivery path was
worse: _drain_gateway_watch_events retained only watch_match and
watch_disabled, discarding overflow events entirely before formatting.
Route both event types through the message field in the shared
formatter and the gateway formatter, and retain them in the gateway
drain.
* fix: warn agents off driving interactive console TUIs via pty on Windows
Driving 'gh auth login' (and other survey-style console TUIs) through a
pty background process on Windows silently hangs: these programs read
Win32 console key events via ReadConsoleInput, not the stdin byte
stream, so Enter keypresses submitted over process stdin never register.
The agent-visible symptom is a prompt frozen at 'Press Enter to open
browser...' while the user sees nothing, and a turn interrupt then kills
the process, invalidating any device code the user already entered on
github.com.
Two guidance fixes, both proven in a live session on Windows 10:
- agent/prompt_builder.py: extend _WINDOWS_BASH_SHELL_HINT to steer
agents toward non-interactive paths (flags, --with-token, config
files, curl-polled OAuth device flow) instead of answering console
prompts programmatically.
- skills/github/github-auth: document the pitfall and add the manual
OAuth device-flow procedure (curl against gh's public client_id,
poll for the token, finish with 'gh auth login --with-token'), which
succeeded first try after two interactive attempts hung.
* fix: send CRLF for Enter on Windows PTY submit; correct root cause in guidance
Review feedback (helix4u) was right on both counts:
1. Root cause correction. gh's 'Press Enter to open browser' prompt is
waitForEnter -> bufio.Scanner reading stdin, not a survey/console-API
prompt. The real bug is ours: submit_stdin appended a bare \n, and
through pywinpty/ConPTY a lone \n is not delivered as a line
terminator, so the child's blocking line read never returns. Verified
empirically against pywinpty 2.0.15 with a readline() child:
\n -> hang, \r -> line delivered, \r\n -> line delivered.
Fix: submit_stdin now appends \r\n for Windows PTY sessions (POSIX
PTYs and Popen pipes keep \n). Windows-only regression tests cover
the PTY and pipe branches.
2. Prompt hint rewritten: instead of claiming Windows console TUIs
cannot be driven, it now says to use process(submit) rather than raw
writes with bare \n, and to prefer non-interactive paths when a CLI
offers one.
3. Skill device flow rewritten as an executable script: parses the
device-code response, polls per the returned interval, handles
authorization_pending / slow_down (+5s per GitHub docs) /
expired_token / access_denied / unexpected responses, pipes the token
straight into gh without echoing it, and drops the undocumented
workflow scope (repo,read:org,gist is the documented minimum for
gh auth login --with-token). The pitfall note is narrowed to the
reproduced condition.
Two falsy-zero coercions in process_registry (salvaged from PR #60004,
credit @isheng-eqi; the EOF half of that PR landed separately in
893792c99):
- wait(timeout=0): schema says minimum=1 but the handler let 0 fall
through '0 or max_timeout' to the DEFAULT wait instead of rejecting.
- read_log(offset=0): conflated with the offset-unset default, silently
returning the TAIL of the log when the caller asked for the head.
Default is now offset=None; explicit 0 paginates from line one.
- Remove dead use_systemd_scope = False assignment (leftover from
the old try/except pattern, immediately overwritten).
- Update stale log label supervisor= -> in_supervised_gateway=
to match the renamed variable.
- Convert autouse _mark_gateway_process fixture to opt-in
_gateway_identity so negative tests start from a clean slate
instead of undoing the fixture's env/PID mocks.
- Parametrize 4 near-duplicate negative tests (2 scenarios x
pipe/PTY) into 2 parametrized tests, reducing ~130 lines to ~80.
76 tests pass, ruff clean, net -32 LOC.
systemd-run --scope does not give the invoked process a new session: the
worker keeps the parent's session and inherits its controlling terminal.
When the parent is an interactive TUI on a pts (INVOCATION_ID present ->
is_gateway_supervisor_process()=True), every background spawn drops the
worker into the same session as the foreground process group; the spawn
then stops the whole session (SIGTTIN/SIGTTOU family), observed as 5 dead
TUIs in state T ("Arrêté") on 2026-08-08.
Fix: popen_start_new_session = True in the systemd-scope branch of
spawn_local. The worker (and the systemd-run wrapper) get a private
session while the scope cgroup isolation is preserved - the scope is
attached to the invoked process, not to the spawning session.
Verified: simulated TUI (INVOCATION_ID) + ProcessRegistry.spawn_local ->
worker in hermes-worker-*.scope with sid != simulator sid, exits cleanly,
simulator stays alive (previously: same sid -> stopped).
When Hermes runs as a systemd gateway with MemoryHigh/MemoryMax limits,
local background terminal commands (terminal(background=true)) inherit the
gateway's cgroup. A memory-heavy executor (Codex, tests, Node) can push
the whole cgroup past MemoryMax and trigger systemd-oomd to kill the
ENTIRE gateway — taking down the messaging control plane and silently
losing the active turn.
Root cause: tools/process_registry.py::spawn_local() uses
start_new_session=True (creates a process session/group, NOT a resource
cgroup). The spawned process tree stays in the gateway's systemd cgroup.
Fix: when running under a service manager (detected via the existing
is_gateway_supervisor_process() helper), wrap the pipe-mode spawn command
in 'systemd-run --user --scope --unit=hermes-worker-<id>' so the worker
gets its own transient cgroup. An OOM in the worker then kills only the
worker, not the gateway.
The systemd-run availability is probed once (a no-op /bin/true in a
transient scope) and cached, because the binary can exist on PATH while
the user D-Bus session is unavailable (system services, containers). If
unavailable, fall back to the current start_new_session=True behavior
with a debug log.
Scope: this covers the common background pipe-mode path. PTY mode
(PtyProcess.spawn) is left as future work — it uses a different spawn
mechanism and is used for interactive CLI tools where cgroup isolation
has additional considerations.
_write_checkpoint persisted s.command verbatim to ~/.hermes/processes.json.
Recovery only uses command for display/logging (the process is already
running; adoption re-validates PID + start time, never re-runs the
command), so masking is lossless.
process(action='wait') hitting its window returned status='timeout'
with a terse note — models read it as an error and re-issued identical
waits (process is the #1 exact-duplicate tool call in production: 511
dupes in a 400k-msg window; wait is 57% of all process actions).
The timeout result now carries:
- process_running: true — machine-readable 'this is a status, not a
failure'
- an explicit note: 'Wait window of Ns elapsed — the process is still
running. This is not an error. Uptime: Ms.' plus the right next step:
when notify_on_complete is set, 'you will be notified on exit — do
more work instead of waiting again'; otherwise a pointer to
notify_on_complete for next time.
- the clamp note (requested > max) now composes with the status note
instead of replacing it.
Exited/interrupted results are unchanged.
kill_started_since duplicated kill_all's collect-under-lock/kill-outside-lock
loop line for line; it is now a thin delegate through new kill_all kwargs
(exclude_ids, source, consume_output). Public signatures unchanged — existing
callers and test monkeypatch seams keep working. kill_process's docstring now
names the deliberate consume_output=True exception for abandoned-turn reaping
so the deviation isn't 'fixed' later.
An agent turn can spawn a long-running background subprocess (e.g.
`next build`) and later be abandoned via inactivity timeout, /stop,
/new, or a client disconnect. Before this fix the gateway interrupted
the agent loop but never touched the subprocess: it kept running
inside the gateway's cgroup, unbounded, until memory pressure starved
the event loop and made every platform/cron look hung (#76115).
The process registry already knew how to kill a process tree — the
missing piece was per-turn ownership: nothing distinguished a process
that predates the turn (must survive), a process the turn started and
finished successfully (must survive), and a process an abandoned turn
left running (must be reaped).
- tools/process_registry.py: snapshot_running_ids() captures a turn's
starting baseline; kill_started_since() reaps only IDs created after
it, scoped to one task_id.
- gateway/turn_context.py: TurnContext carries process_task_id +
process_baseline so the timeout/interrupt paths can reach them.
- gateway/run.py: baseline is snapshotted right before the turn's
executor task starts; the inactivity-timeout path and the explicit
/stop|/new|disconnect interrupt path both reap via the same helper.
A daemon-thread watchdog backs up the asyncio-based timeout poll,
since a starved event loop is exactly the failure mode this bug
causes. The turn's own worker clears its ownership markers the
instant it finishes, closing a race where a /stop landing right
after normal completion could reap a background process the turn
deliberately left running.
Related but insufficient on their own: #37454 (cgroup ExecStopPost
reaper only fires on service restart) and #68915 (orphaned-pipe
grandchild detection, a registry bug not a turn-lifecycle gap).
Neither ties process cleanup to turn abandonment.
Port from openclaw/openclaw#112325: multibyte UTF-8 characters split
across a 4096-byte pipe or PTY read boundary were decoded statelessly
per chunk with errors='replace', corrupting both halves into U+FFFD
mojibake in background process output (poll/log/wait/completion
notifications). The foreground path already used an incremental decoder
(tools/environments/base.py::_wait_for_process); this applies the same
treatment to the background reader loops:
- _reader_loop (select and blocking paths): one
codecs.getincrementaldecoder('utf-8') per reader holds partial
sequences across chunks; the finally block flushes a truncated tail
as a single U+FFFD instead of dropping it.
- _pty_reader_loop: same treatment for ptyprocess byte chunks
(pywinpty str chunks pass through unchanged).
Genuinely invalid bytes keep errors='replace' behavior.
When a background terminal() command backgrounds its own long-lived
child (`node server.js &`, `sleep 300 &`), the grandchild inherits the
write end of the reader thread's stdout pipe. The direct bash child
exits promptly, but the pipe never reaches EOF while the grandchild
lives — so `_reader_loop`'s blocking `read1()` parked the thread
forever, `session.exited` never flipped on its own, and
`notify_on_complete` was silently lost. `_reconcile_local_exit`
(#17327) only runs lazily from poll()/wait(), so nothing autonomous
ever surfaced the exit; each occurrence also leaked a reader thread
and pipe fd for the grandchild's lifetime.
Fix: on POSIX, drain via select() with a short poll interval and stop
shortly after the direct child exits even if the pipe hasn't EOF'd —
the same pattern the foreground path uses in
tools/environments/base.py::_wait_for_process (#8340). Windows pipes
don't support select(), so the blocking path is kept there with the
existing lazy reconcile as the safety net; mocked/iterator stdout
streams (no usable fileno) also keep the historical path.
Fixes#68915
On Windows with Chinese locale (GBK), subprocess.run(text=True) without
explicit encoding causes UnicodeDecodeError crashes. This fix adds
encoding='utf-8', errors='replace' to all subprocess.run() and
subprocess.Popen() calls that use text=True across 76 non-test Python files.
Fixes#53428 (master tracker for Windows GBK locale crash).
Note: credential_pool.py and electron changes excluded per reviewer request —
those will be submitted as separate focused PRs.
Issue #68915: when the agent runs a compound command with trailing & (e.g.
`cd /app && node server.js &`), bash parses it as `(A && B) &` — a subshell
that holds the stdout pipe open forever when B is a long-running server.
The existing _rewrite_compound_background in terminal_tool.py correctly
rewrites this to `A && { B & }` to avoid the subshell fork, but it was only
applied in the foreground execute() path (tools/environments/base.py).
The background spawn_local() path bypasses base.py entirely and passed the
raw command directly to Popen/PTY, leaving the deadlock unmitigated.
Fix: apply _rewrite_compound_background in spawn_local() before the command
is passed to Popen or PTY spawn. Uses a lazy import to avoid circular
dependency (terminal_tool imports process_registry).
- PTY spawn path: now uses safe_command (rewritten)
- Popen spawn path: now uses safe_command (rewritten)
- Session.command still stores the original (unrewritten) command for display
- Simple `cmd &` is left unchanged (no subshell bug)
Tests: 4 regression tests verifying (1) compound is rewritten, (2) simple bg
is preserved, (3) multi-line compounds are rewritten, (4) session.command
stores original.
* feat(delegation): live-viewable subagent transcripts for delegate_task
Each child now streams an append-only, human-readable log to
<hermes_home>/cache/delegation/live/<delegation_id>/task-<n>.log while it
runs, and the dispatch return includes the paths so the caller can tail
them immediately instead of waiting blind for the consolidated summary.
- New tools/delegation_live_log.py: LiveTranscriptWriter (per-event append
+ flush, one-line rendering with truncation, never raises into the agent
loop), wrap_progress_callback (tees the child's existing
tool_progress_callback events into the log, preserves the _flush
contract), dispatch-time creation with pre-headered files so tail -f
attaches immediately, manifest.json (goals/task count/per-task status),
and 7-day retention pruning on new dispatches.
- delegate_task: wraps each child's progress callback with the writer;
sync results and background dispatch responses gain live_transcripts
(+ hint field on dispatch); per-task result entries carry
live_transcript; transcripts finalized with exit-reason markers.
- async_delegation: dispatch_async_delegation_batch accepts an optional
delegation_id so the live/ dir name matches the returned handle; the
completion event carries live_transcripts.
- process_registry: consolidated batch-completion block references each
task's live transcript path.
- Tool schema description documents the live_transcripts return surface;
docs gain a 'Live Transcripts' section with a tail -f example.
Placement under cache/delegation means the logs are mounted read-only
into remote terminal backends for free. Side-channel only: zero changes
to message content, so prompt caching is unaffected. Transcript-OUT only
— no overlap with the subagent control surfaces of PR #66046.
* fix(delegation): label the kickoff transcript line as user — it is the child's one user message
Apply positive-proof routing to every addressed notification in the registry and TUI poller while preserving ownerless legacy behavior and TUI delivery for poll-observed completions.
Remove the unused exact-key drain helper and cover ordinary success and failure, origin, compression-lineage, orphan, and poll-observed paths.
Complements NousResearch/hermes-agent#54785.
Three-layer companion to the salvaged CLI drain-ownership fix (#64240):
1. restore_undelivered_completions stamps restored=True (in-memory only)
on every durable completion re-enqueued at process start.
2. drain_notifications' legacy unfiltered branch re-queues restored
events instead of consuming them — a fresh process can no longer
adopt a dead session's delegation results (#64484). Same-process
keyless events keep the legacy behavior.
3. delegate_tool's async dispatch now falls back to the parent agent's
durable session_id when the approval-context key resolves empty (the
CLI case), so the CLI's new positive-ownership drain can actually
claim its own completions instead of failing closed on ''.
Extends the salvaged session_key filter with the same fail-closed,
compression-chain-aware ownership gate the poller uses (#55578):
- drain_notifications() accepts an owns_event callback; when provided,
an async-delegation event is consumed ONLY on positive proof of
ownership, and a broken callback re-queues (never leaks). Bare key
equality remains for single-session callers (CLI); no filter remains
legacy behavior.
- The TUI post-turn drain passes _session_owns_notification_event, so
it can't adopt another session's (or an orphan's) delegation payload,
while a post-compression session still claims its own pre-compression
dispatches - the gap bare key equality left open.
The completion event already carries the dispatching session's session_key
(captured at dispatch time in delegate_tool.py:2798), but the delivery
router ignored it — results landed in whatever session was active at
completion time instead of the session that dispatched the subagent.
Changes:
- drain_notifications() in process_registry.py: optional session_key
filter. Non-matching async_delegation events are re-queued instead of
consumed, so they remain available for the correct session's drain.
- cli.py process_loop: passes active session_key to drain_notifications()
- tui_gateway/server.py post-turn drain: passes session_key from the
TUI session dict
- gateway/run.py _build_process_event_source: logs warning when routing
metadata is unresolvable (previously silent drop)
- Regression tests verifying session-scoped drain filtering
Fixes#58684
Ensure Windows desktop and local terminal teardown kill full process trees so Git Bash descendants cannot survive wrapper exits and accumulate across retries.
Make the read-only agent terminal mirrors stream in real time and give
the agent a desktop-only way to dismiss its own tabs.
- Stream background output live: the local reader used a blocking
read(4096) that buffered small periodic output until EOF, so agent
tabs only "filled in" at process exit. Switch to buffer.read1(4096)
(decoded) for incremental chunks.
- Route agent.terminal.output / terminal.close to the window that owns
the process (its gateway session) instead of an empty session id, so
events actually reach the desktop renderer.
- Add close_terminal: a HERMES_DESKTOP-gated tool (sibling of
read_terminal) that drops a process's read-only tab WITHOUT killing it
via process_registry.on_close; output keeps buffering and the user can
reopen from the status stack.
- ⌘W now closes a focused agent tab: mark the agent instance
data-terminal and focus it on activation so isFocusWithin routes there.
- ensureTerminal() no longer spawns an extra user shell when a tab
already exists (e.g. opening a background task from the status stack).
Replace the 5s output_tail poll (which often showed nothing) with a real push
stream. The process registry gains an on_output sink called from its reader
threads with each chunk; the tui_gateway wires it to emit agent.terminal.output
{process_id, chunk} (write_json is _stdout_lock-guarded, so emitting from the
reader thread is safe). The desktop routes chunks by process id straight into
the read-only agent xterm via a small writer registry, with a capped backlog so
a tab opened mid-stream (or reopened) replays what it missed.
Drops the fragile poll/tail path: no session-key matching, no truncation, no
lag — full-fidelity ANSI, env-agnostic (local/docker/ssh).
* fix(security): redact secrets in background process + foreground env-dump output
Terminal-output redaction was incomplete (#43025):
- Gap 1: process(action=poll/log/wait) returned background stdout verbatim —
no redaction at all. A background printenv/server/test emitting a key leaked
raw to the model, session.db, and CLI display. Same for the gateway
background-process watcher's completion/progress notifications.
- Gap 2: the foreground terminal path hardcoded code_file=True, which skips the
ENV-assignment pass, so an opaque token (no vendor prefix) from env/printenv
leaked even there.
Adds agent.redact.redact_terminal_output(output, command) as the single policy
for ALL terminal-output surfaces: env-dump commands (env/printenv/set/export/
declare) get the ENV-assignment pass (code_file=False) to mask opaque tokens;
other commands stay on code_file=True to avoid false positives on source dumps.
Wired into terminal_tool, process_registry (_handle_process boundary), and the
gateway watcher. Respects security.redact_secrets (no force) — opt-out preserved.
* docs: add infographic for #43025 terminal-output redaction fix
Follow-up to the cherry-picked #29212 (#29177):
- Promote the 24h stale-process threshold to config.yaml
(session_reset.bg_process_max_age_hours) instead of a hardcoded
constant. 0 disables the cutoff (legacy: any live process blocks reset).
Wired through GatewayConfig.default_reset_policy in gateway/run.py.
- Bug 2: process(action=list) now resolves the gateway session_key from
the contextvar and surfaces session-scoped background processes (a
forgotten preview server under a different task), flagged
session_scoped — so the agent/user can discover and kill the blocker.
Previously the task-scoped list returned [] and the blocker was invisible.
- Tests: config round-trip for the new field, cross-task list visibility.
- Docs: messaging session-reset section.
Background processes (e.g. http.server preview) that Hermes starts and
forgets about previously blocked session idle/daily reset indefinitely.
The reset guard in session.py checked has_active_for_session() with no
max age — a 3-day-old preview server blocked reset the same as a task
started 30 seconds ago.
Changes:
- Add max_active_age parameter to has_active_for_session() in
process_registry.py. Processes older than this threshold are ignored.
- Add MAX_ACTIVE_PROCESS_AGE constant (24h / 86400s).
- Wire max_active_age into the gateway's session store callback in
run.py so stale processes no longer block session lifecycle.
- Add debug logging when reset is skipped due to active processes.
- Add 3 tests covering recent, stale, and legacy (None) max age.
Fixes#29177
* fix(windows): stop terminal-window popups from background spawns
Native-Windows desktop/gateway users saw cmd/conhost windows flash on
gateway restart, image paste, the dashboard Projects tree, voice notes,
and ~5 min after closing the app (detached cron). Two root causes:
- Console-subsystem exes (taskkill, schtasks, wmic, netstat, tasklist,
agent-browser, git, ffmpeg, powershell, git-bash) spawned via raw
subprocess allocate a fresh console when the launching process has
none (pythonw desktop backend / detached gateway) - even with output
captured.
- uv venv pythonw shims re-exec console python.exe, so Python children
get a console regardless of how they're launched.
Fixes:
- Single hidden-spawn primitive (_subprocess_compat.run/.popen) that ORs
CREATE_NO_WINDOW on Windows, no-op on POSIX. Route every Hermes-owned
console-exe spawn through it.
- FreeConsole() catch-all in hermes_bootstrap: any Python child that
exclusively owns an auto-allocated console detaches it at startup
(GetConsoleProcessList()==1 gate leaves shared interactive consoles
untouched).
- Replace PowerShell/wmic gateway PID scans with in-process psutil.
- Skip schtasks queries on non-interactive desktop restarts.
- Prefer native agent-browser .exe over .cmd shims.
- Guard test bans raw subprocess spawns of the Windows-only console
tools repo-wide so the popup class can't regress.
* fix(windows): scope FreeConsole to background entry points; fix merge fallout
Console detach review (per #53810 feedback): GetConsoleProcessList()==1 can't
tell a uv pythonw->python phantom console apart from a user opening the
interactive CLI/TUI in its own fresh console (double-click, shortcut, ConPTY) —
both report a single attached process with a tty. Running FreeConsole() in the
import-time bootstrap therefore risked detaching a legitimately-interactive
terminal.
- Extract FreeConsole into explicit hermes_bootstrap.detach_orphan_console();
remove it from apply_windows_utf8_bootstrap() (import side effect).
- Call it only from known background mains: gateway run, dashboard backend
(start_server, what the desktop spawns), cron standalone, tui_gateway entry,
slash worker. Interactive CLI/TUI never calls it.
- Behavior-contract tests: frees only when solo owner, leaves shared console,
no-op without console / on POSIX, and asserts it's not an import side effect.
Merge fallout from origin/main (#53791):
- local.py: 3-way merge left a dangling **_popen_kwargs (NameError crashing
every terminal init). _subprocess_compat.popen already hides the window, so
drop it.
- discord adapter: merge stacked an undefined windows_hide_flags() onto the
primitive call; drop the redundant arg.
- test_gateway: scan now goes psutil-first (zero spawn); rewrite the
case-variant test to drive that production path.
* test(claw): mock _subprocess_compat.run seam for Windows process scan
claw.py's Windows tasklist/powershell scan routes through the hidden-spawn
primitive; the tests still patched claw_mod.subprocess, so on win32 the mock
was never hit and real spawns returned nothing. Patch the actual seam.
preexec_fn=os.setsid runs Python code in the forked child before exec,
which is unsafe in multi-threaded processes (CPython docs). When the
Desktop gateway loads native libraries (onnxruntime, BLAS, provider SDKs)
with active thread pools, the fork can SIGSEGV before the child execs.
Replace all preexec_fn usage with start_new_session=True, which provides
the same setsid/process-group semantics without running Python in the
fork. This is already the pattern used throughout hermes_cli/gateway.py
and hermes_cli/_subprocess_compat.py.
Fixes#46789
The gateway-side BEHAVIOUR layer that consumes the relay scale-to-zero
primitives (gateway-gateway Phase 5): the gateway decides it is idle and
drives the relay transport dormant so the platform (Fly autostop:"suspend")
can suspend the now-traffic-idle machine, which wakes on the connector's
wakeUrl poke (decisions.md Q3=C', D1-D13).
- gateway/scale_to_zero.py: pure helpers — scale_to_zero_enabled (the NAS
Labs HERMES_SCALE_TO_ZERO stamp, D11/Q8=A), parse_idle_timeout_seconds
(config.yaml gateway.scale_to_zero.idle_timeout_minutes, D2),
messaging_is_relay_only_or_absent (F6/D1), should_arm (D1/D11/§3.4(1)),
is_idle (D2/D3/F7).
- gateway/run.py: _last_inbound_at clock stamped on user inbound in
_handle_message (F13); the arm-gate + idle predicate + the
_scale_to_zero_watcher dormant sequence (mark draining -> adapter
go_dormant() -> cooldown), started only when armed. Deliberately NOT the
stop path and NOT mark_resume_pending (F12/D13).
- tools/process_registry.py: has_any_active() for the bg-work guard (D3/F7).
- hermes_cli/config.py: gateway.scale_to_zero.idle_timeout_minutes default 5.
Tests: 38 pure-logic + 6 watcher (incl. bg-work regression guard proven RED).
Full relay + scale-to-zero suites: 184 passed. The 20 unrelated failures in
the broader run are PRE-EXISTING on origin/main (custom-provider/tools tests),
confirmed via a pristine baseline worktree.
* feat(goals): add /goal wait <pid> barrier to park the loop on a background process
The /goal loop re-pokes the agent every turn via the post-turn judge. When a
goal is gated on a long-running background process (CI poller, build, test
matrix, deploy) that produces nothing to judge yet, this spins the agent into
'is it done?' busy-work and burns the turn budget.
/goal wait <pid> [reason] parks the loop: while the PID is alive, the judge is
skipped, no turn is consumed, no continuation fires, and /goal status shows a
parked indicator. The barrier auto-clears the moment the process exits (the
agent's notify_on_complete watcher is the natural wake signal), then the next
turn resumes normal judging. /goal unwait clears it manually; pause/resume/clear
drop it; a dead/stale PID can never wedge the loop.
Wired across CLI, gateway, and the mid-run command guard for parity. Barrier
persists in SessionDB.state_meta (survives /resume); GoalState gains
backward-compatible waiting_on_pid/waiting_reason/waiting_since fields. 12 new
tests; docs updated.
* fix(goals): use gateway.status._pid_exists for liveness, not os.kill(pid,0)
The Windows-footguns CI guard flagged os.kill(pid, 0) in _pid_alive — on
Windows that's not a no-op, it routes to CTRL_C_EVENT and hard-kills the
target's console process group (bpo-14484). Delegate to the canonical
footgun-safe gateway.status._pid_exists (psutil + ctypes/POSIX fallback)
instead, with a direct-psutil last resort.
* feat(goals): judge-driven auto-wait — the loop parks itself, no manual /goal wait
Makes the wait barrier automatic. Every turn the judge is shown the agent's
live background processes (pid, command, uptime, output tail from the
process_registry) alongside the goal + response, and can return a new 'wait'
verdict instead of continue:
{"verdict":"wait","wait_on_pid":N} → park until that process exits
{"verdict":"wait","wait_for_seconds":N} → park until the deadline passes
evaluate_after_turn acts on the directive (sets the barrier, parks the loop)
so the agent isn't re-poked into busy-work while CI/builds/deploys run. Adds a
time-based waiting_until barrier alongside the pid barrier; both auto-clear and
can never wedge the loop. Drivers (CLI, gateway, tui_gateway) feed the live
registry in via gather_background_processes(). Manual /goal wait stays as an
override. Judge verdict contract widened to (verdict, reason, parse_failed,
wait_directive); legacy {"done":bool} shape still accepted.
* test(goals): update kanban _fake_judge to the 4-tuple judge contract
CI test(3) caught it: test_kanban_goal_mode's _fake_judge still returned the
3-tuple (verdict, reason, parse_failed), but the kanban loop now unpacks the
4-tuple (+ wait_directive). Update the fake to return None for the directive
and accept the background_processes kwarg.
* feat(goals): trigger-based wait — park on a process's own signal, not just exit
Addresses two gaps in the judge-driven wait: (1) the judge could only express
'wait until PID exits' or 'wait N seconds', so a long-lived watcher/server that
fires a trigger MID-RUN (and may never exit) couldn't be waited on; (2) the
process's own watch_patterns/notify_on_complete trigger was invisible to the judge.
Adds a session-based barrier (waiting_on_session) that releases on the process's
OWN trigger via process_registry.is_session_waiting(): the session exits, OR (if
started with watch_patterns) its pattern matches — even while the process keeps
running. list_sessions() now surfaces session_id + watch_patterns/watch_hit/
notify_on_complete so the judge sees the trigger and is told to prefer
wait_on_session for trigger processes. Judge verdict gains a {wait_on_session}
directive (preferred over pid). Backward-compatible GoalState field; pid + time
barriers unchanged.
Tests: TestSessionTriggerBarrier (release on mid-run pattern match while alive,
release on exit, unknown-session, full park→trigger→resume, parse, validation,
backcompat load). 105 goal-surface + 85 process_registry tests green.
Live testing against a real SIGTERM-ignoring process TREE (parent + children,
the agent-browser daemon + renderer shape) revealed psutil.wait_procs's
gone/alive partition mis-handles a parent/child tree: it reaps via
Process.wait() and could mark targets gone/alive inconsistently across the
tree, leaving survivors un-killed (flaky — sometimes the parent lived,
sometimes a child). Replace it with: sleep out the grace window, then
directly re-probe every captured target (_proc_alive, treating zombies as
dead) and SIGKILL any that's still running. Add a multi-child-tree regression
test. 6/6 escalation tests green across repeated runs; the real-tree E2E now
kills the full tree 6/6 runs.
A daemon that ignores or stalls in its SIGTERM handler currently survives the
process-registry reap and leaks until reboot (observed as agent-browser
daemons accumulating to EMFILE on long-running gateways). _terminate_host_pid
now snapshots the tree, SIGTERMs it, waits a bounded grace window
(terminal.daemon_term_grace_seconds, default 2.0s, 0 disables), then SIGKILLs
any survivor. The recycled-PID identity guard still gates the whole path, so
escalation never reaches a stranger; Windows is unchanged (taskkill /F is
already a hard kill).
Config lives in config.yaml (terminal.daemon_term_grace_seconds), NOT an env
var, per the .env-secrets-only policy.
Implements the SIGKILL-escalation idea from @tkwong's #15008, reworked onto the
current _terminate_host_pid tree-kill path (the original predated it) and
config-gated instead of env-var-gated.
Co-authored-by: Benjamin Wong <tkwong@inspiresynergy.com>
The background-process registry signalled host PIDs (recovery adoption,
detached-session kill, tree-kill) using a number captured at spawn, guarded
only by a bare liveness check. Once a session's process exits and is reaped the
kernel recycles that PID onto an unrelated process, so an alive-but-different
PID passed the check and got tree-killed.
Observed in the wild: a recycled background-session PID landed on Firefox's
session leader; a later kill/refresh walked its process tree and SIGTERMed
every tab — Firefox "closing" at irregular intervals with no crash/coredump.
This is the same PID/PGID-recycling class fixed for the MCP orphan reaper in
7bd1f8a2d, but the process_registry subsystem was never guarded — so the bug
persisted.
Fix: record each host process's kernel start time (/proc/<pid>/stat field 22)
at spawn, persist it in the checkpoint, and re-validate it before every signal
via `_host_pid_is_ours`. A PID whose start time no longer matches — or that is
gone — is never signalled:
- recover_from_checkpoint: a recycled PID is not adopted as a session.
- _refresh_detached_session: a recycled detached PID is marked exited.
- kill_process / _terminate_host_pid: refuse to tree-kill a stranger.
Legacy checkpoints and platforms without /proc (no baseline) degrade to the
prior best-effort liveness behaviour, so nothing else changes.
Adds TestPidReuseGuard: real-process tests proving a mismatched start time
refuses termination while a matching one still kills, plus recovery/refresh
recycling paths. 74 registry + 22 MCP-stability tests green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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