The salvaged commit forked an explicit /refine under a new "refine_review" origin so
the memory delete gate would not treat it as unattended. But is_background_review()
is the key for every other review guard — skill_manager_guards (curator-owned-only,
read-before-write), skill_manager_tool (archive instead of rmtree), skill_ledger
actor, write_approval staging, the [auto] tag — so a /refine fork silently escaped
all of them.
Carry attendedness separately: the fork keeps origin "background_review" and sets
_review_attended; turn_context binds it beside the origin ContextVar; the memory
gate keys on the new is_unattended_review(). Also run the gate AFTER
_validate_single_op / the operations list check, as memory_tool's own docstring
requires, so an invalid replace is rejected now rather than staged and failed at
approve time.
Review follow-up on #105944 (#105921):
- explicit /refine forks now run under the refine_review write origin
(explicit flows from the CLI/gateway handlers through
_spawn_background_review_now and spawn_background_review_thread down
to build_cache_parity_fork), so a user-requested review keeps the
full memory operation set; only automatic reviews stay behind the
unattended delete gate.
- the unattended delete gate now stages the denied replace/remove (or
whole batch) into the pending store instead of dropping it: the
fork's own review summary is never published, so a plain denial lost
the consolidation request with no surfacing path. The staged proposal
carries a proposal_staged marker that summarize surfaces as an action
line, and a staging failure still fails closed to a plain denial.
- regression tests: explicit-path origin pass-through, refine_review
keeping replace working, near-limit denial end to end (add rejected
by budget -> replace staged -> proposal surfaces, store unchanged).
The review fork's tool whitelist granted the whole memory toolset
whenever the profile had memory enabled, regardless of which nudge
fired, so a skill-nudge fork held remove/replace on MEMORY.md it was
never asked to use; combined with the memory tool's near-limit
'consolidate now' hint, an unattended fork deleted standing rules with
no user in the loop.
- Pass review_memory from spawn_background_review_thread through
_run_review_in_thread/_run_review_fork into _review_tool_whitelist;
a skill-only review no longer gets the memory tool at all.
- Fail-closed operation gate in memory_tool: a background-review fork
may add, never replace/remove (single or in a batch) — consolidation
decisions reach a human via the review summary instead.
- Keep the deny/prompt wording in sync with the whitelist so a
memory-less review doesn't advertise memory.
agent.tools is always a list (agent_init assigns it from
get_tool_definitions) and every entry is a well-formed function schema,
so the isinstance ladder over parent/entry/function/name guarded shapes
that cannot reach this helper. Use the same two lines agent_init uses;
`or []` keeps the empty-surface contract from the previous commit.
Docstring cut to the WHY (the between-turn refresh note described the
other guard). Tests trimmed to the two invariants: inherited tools
survive the compaction-boundary refresh (deep-copy isolation folded in),
and an empty parent surface is copied and frozen. Literal sentinel
asserts replaced with the constant.
Copy and freeze review_agent._tool_snapshot_generation even when parent.tools is an empty list ([]). Previously, the truthiness check (\
ot parent_tools\) caused an empty parent tool surface to be skipped, allowing newly available late MCP or plugin tools to be retained on the review fork and leaving its snapshot generation unfrozen. This broke the byte-parity contract when no tools were active on the parent.
Returning early only when parent_tools is not an instance of list or tuple guarantees that an empty tool snapshot is faithfully inherited and frozen. Adds dedicated regression test test_unrouted_review_fork_inherits_empty_tool_surface.
Freezes review_agent._tool_snapshot_generation to _FROZEN_TOOL_SNAPSHOT_GENERATION
(2_147_483_647) when inheriting the parent tool surface for same-model cache parity.
When in-place compaction boundaries trigger refresh_agent_mcp_tools(content_aware=True),
the staleness guard in _publish_tool_snapshot refuses the rebuild (snapshot_generation < published_gen),
preventing agent.tools from being reconstructed from the raw registry and preserving
inherited memory-provider and late tools across compaction boundaries (#103579).
Adds unit regression test verifying tool preservation across content_aware refresh.
Co-authored-by: joaomarcos <joaomarcosdias444@gmail.com>
Ensure unrouted background_review forks inherit the parent's full advertised
tools[] surface. Without this, skip_memory=True caused memory-provider tools
(e.g. fact_store/fact_feedback) and dynamically injected plugin/late MCP tools
to be omitted from the fork's tools array, breaking byte-exact prefix-cache parity
and incurring full cold-read costs on providers where tools are part of the cache key.
Inheriting the full parent tools array preserves complete prefix cache parity
while execution dispatch remains strictly bounded by the thread tool whitelist.
Use successful applied result records rather than requested operations, and keep staged writes silent. Include legacy delete/write messages.
Fixes#104506
Co-authored-by: Konstantin Khlopkov <konstantin.khlopkov93@gmail.com>
The skill review fork, the combined memory+skill review, and the curator's
consolidation pass all described references/ as the place for
"session-specific detail", and the curator's demote step said to move a
sibling's file under the umbrella. Followed literally over months that
produced one dev skill with a 100k SKILL.md dense in PR numbers and 443
one-per-session reference files, plus five sibling skills restating the
same rules and the repo's AGENTS.md.
The three prompts now share one shape contract: an entry is an imperative
rule plus one clause of why, stated once; no PR/issue numbers, dates, or
quoted chat as content; references/ is a small topical set extended in
place, never a per-session file; skills do not restate always-loaded
context. Consolidation is defined as distilling, and copying a sibling
verbatim under references/ is named as the failure. skill_manage's schema
carries the one-sentence version.
Two advisory linter rules make the shape visible in the tool result the
moment it starts to drift: incident-log-shape (PR/issue-number density in
prose) and references-sprawl (>60 reference files), the latter also run
on references/ writes. On the real before/after: the old skill trips both,
the consolidated one trips neither.
The Sep 2026 decomposition (PR #102117) makes internal import paths a non-API: names now live in
the focused modules that define them. This commit is the ONLY thing keeping the old paths alive,
so external plugins have time to update. It is deliberately a single, unsquashed commit:
git revert <this sha>
removes every shim, stub and manifest at once on the announced date. Nothing in-tree may depend on
these pointers: scripts/check_compat_pointers.py (wired into lint.yml) fails CI if it does.
What it adds (see COMPAT_MANIFEST.md, compat_manifest.json):
- 332 facade modules get one delimited `PLUGIN-COMPAT` block appended at the end of the file
- 1,172 moved names resolved lazily via a module `__getattr__` (PEP 562) — never a top-level import,
so no import cycles; facades that already had `__getattr__` get a chained one
- 592 third-party/stdlib names the old modules used to expose, with their original import statements
- 266 public definitions that had been deleted as unused, restored byte-for-byte from the pre-decomposition
tree (+40 private helpers and 16 imports pulled in only because a restored definition needs them)
- 3 deleted modules recreated as re-export stubs (gateway/startup_watchdog, hermes_cli/observability/
relay_runtime, tools/environments/modal_utils)
- private names (`_x`) get no pointer: they were never API (3,792 skipped)
Verified: all 335 touched modules import under a fresh HERMES_HOME and every manifest name resolves;
the lint reports zero in-tree uses; ruff clean; targeted suites unchanged.
For each issue anchor present in BASE 63279301bc non-test .py and absent on HEAD, the BASE comment/docstring block was re-attached at the HEAD location of the code it explained (matched by the distinctive code line / enclosing def). Sentences already covered by an existing HEAD comment were deduped; the issue number always survives. Insert-only: no code lines changed.
Profiles can now grant narrowly scoped tools to the background review runtime whitelist while unrelated tools remain denied. Document the configuration and cover it with a real-config regression test.
Agent: codex
The self-improvement review fork advertises the parent's full tool schema
(deliberate — tools[] must stay byte-identical for prompt-cache parity)
but denied everything except memory/skill tools at dispatch. Models
naturally reach for read_file to inspect a SKILL.md before patching, got
denied, then attempted a blind skill_manage patch which the
read-before-write guard correctly refused. One deployment logged ~142
denials + ~204 refusals over 2 days: the self-improvement loop ran
continuously but almost never landed a skill patch.
Fix is dispatch-side ONLY — zero request-body change, cache untouched:
- Whitelist read_file + search_files on the review fork (reads are
side-effect-free). Write tools (write_file/patch/terminal) stay denied:
autonomous maintenance must go through skill_manage's validation.
- read_file now registers full reads with the review fork's
read-before-write guard (same as skill_view), so the natural
read_file -> skill_manage(patch) sequence lands. Partial reads
(offset>1 / truncated) don't count. No-op outside review forks.
- Self-correcting deny message: names skill_view/skill_manage/memory as
substitutes so one denial redirects the model instead of a storm
(the actionable half of #61521's proposal 2).
Rejects #39997's alternative (narrow the advertised schema on local
endpoints): local backends have KV/prefix caches too, and re-prefilling
a large snapshot is most expensive exactly there.
Live A/B (real dispatch path, isolated HERMES_HOME): on main,
read_file DENIED -> patch REFUSED (read-before-write); on this branch,
read_file OK -> patch LANDED. tools[] identical in both.
The initial /btw implementation (#97937) answered from a rendered
plain-text transcript digest — truncated context, cold-written tokens on
every question. Teknium's call: reuse the self-improvement review fork
instead, which keeps the entire prompt cache stable for the fork and
gives it the complete conversation for very cheap.
- agent/background_review.py: extract the review-fork construction into
build_cache_parity_fork() — same runtime/credentials as the parent,
byte-identical system prompt / tools[] / reasoning config on the
same-model path, shared session_id for prefix warmth, full persistence
detachment (no state.db writes, no rotation, no external memory,
in-place-only compaction). The review thread now calls the helper;
behavior unchanged (full review test suite green).
- agent/side_question.py: /btw prefers the fork when a live parent
AIAgent exists — replays the untruncated snapshot as warm cache reads,
denies every tool at dispatch via an empty thread whitelist (tools[]
stays byte-identical for cache parity), attributes usage to the parent,
and trims a mid-turn snapshot tail so role alternation holds. The
one-shot digest remains as fallback (no live agent = cold cache anyway,
and any fork failure degrades gracefully).
- CLI passes self.agent, TUI passes the session agent, gateway looks up
the chat's cached agent (parity with how turns reuse it).
Live-verified: /btw on the worktree runs the fork path (agent.log shows
the side question as a forked conversation turn on the parent session_id
with the full history replayed), answers correctly from context.
The review fork's entire job is to emit `memory` / `skill_manage` tool calls,
and by default it inherits the parent's live runtime. A provider that IS an
autonomous agent reaches Hermes through a client shim; if that shim cannot
carry Hermes tool calls back, the fork is a guaranteed no-op that still pays
for a full agent spawn — a whole CLI process, sometimes a JVM — on every
review cadence.
A client declares `SUPPORTS_HERMES_TOOL_CALLS = False` and the fork is
skipped with a warning naming the `auxiliary.background_review.{provider,model}`
override that routes the review to a normal model instead. Anything that says
nothing is assumed capable, so ordinary providers are untouched.
The check runs before the thread-scoped silence so the warning is not
swallowed, and only resolves the review runtime once the cheap capability
test has already failed, so the normal path does not resolve it twice.
The skill_manage guard (added in #55906) refuses any patch/edit of an
existing SKILL.md, or overwrite/removal of an existing support file,
unless the exact target was loaded via skill_view during the review.
Neither _SKILL_REVIEW_PROMPT nor _COMBINED_REVIEW_PROMPT ever mentioned
this, so models routinely issued the write without the pre-read, got
refused, and burned review iterations (#62397).
Both prompts now carry a Read-before-write section scoped to the
guard's actual contract: existing targets only, exact-path pre-read for
support files, transcript quotes don't count, new skills/new support
files exempt, and a bounded one-view-one-retry recovery instead of a
loop. Direction follows #60331 by @kkwills13 with the scope corrections
requested in review (existing-target-only wording, no delete claim,
bounded retry, contract tests for both prompt variants).
Fixes#62397.
Adversarial-review fixes for the #93057 snapshot-compaction PR:
- Fail-closed detachment: only re-enable compression after
bind_session_state successfully severs the engine's parent binding.
A failed rebind keeps the historical compression_enabled=False
behavior and warns, instead of running compaction against a
compressor still bound to the parent's SessionDB (#38727 re-open).
- Warm-cache parity: defer both compression gates (turn-prologue
preflight + pre-API pressure check) until the fork's first provider
response, so the first request replays the full snapshot as the
intended cached read and compaction applies from the second request
on — matching the documented budget mental model.
- Tests: regression for the rebind-failure fail-closed path (red on
pre-fix code) and the existing threshold-crossing test reworked to a
two-request review asserting the warm first request + compacted
second request. 116 tests green across all touched suites; ruff
clean.
Detach the review fork's compressor from the parent SessionDB/session_id
and re-enable in-memory-only compaction for oversized snapshots, instead
of the historical compression_enabled=False guard that left the fork's
replayed transcript unbounded (350k-384k input tokens per request, 1.49M
total across one 8-request review). Add an aggregate input-token budget
(auxiliary.background_review.max_input_tokens, default 600k) so repeated
tool calls cannot recreate an unbounded transcript; the tool loop stops
before the provider call that would cross it.
Closes#93057
Replaces direct review_agent.interrupt() call with the existing
agent.interrupt_compat.request_hard_interrupt() helper, which handles
both the new hard_interrupt ABI and the legacy interrupt fallback.
Change fail-closed behavior to proceed-with-warning when a background
review does not acknowledge cancellation within the bounded deadline.
The review is non-critical self-improvement work and must never block
a user-facing turn (#84423). Keep the off-thread interrupt to ensure
a broken abort path cannot stall the bounded wait.
Follow-up to #87400: drop the max_iterations and prompt_file knobs from
auxiliary.background_review. The aux model routing (provider/model/
base_url/...) predates #87400 and stays; the enabled switch and the
usage telemetry stay. The fork's iteration budget returns to the
historical hardcoded 16.
Persist fork token usage under session_model_usage task=background_review,
emit a per-fork completion log line, and expose enabled/max_iterations/
prompt_file so operators can see and bound the automatic review cost.
Address review feedback: load auxiliary.background_review once per spawn,
classify completion logs by summarize action prefixes, treat explicit
api_call_count=None as the documented default of 1, and WARNING on the
fail-open enabled-gate path.
Simplify registration/unregistration to match delegate_tool.py's
hasattr+getattr pattern instead of over-defensive try/except Exception
blocks. Delete inspect.getsource() change-detector test (breaks on
rename, proves nothing the behavioral test doesn't cover).
Net: -73 lines, +35 lines = -38 lines.
A background memory/skill review (agent/background_review.py) forks a
second, complete AIAgent in a daemon thread that deliberately shares the
live agent's own session_id for prompt-cache warmth. Nothing previously
stopped a user's next live turn from starting while that fork was still
mid-conversation, letting both stream against the same session_id and
credentials concurrently. That produced two observable failures:
- Doubled prompt-token accounting on the live turn's own calls (the two
concurrent request/response streams under one session_id confuse the
token-usage bookkeeping), triggering premature context compression.
- A lockup that a normal interrupt could not clear: the review fork is a
fully independent AIAgent with its own _interrupt_requested flag, and
was never added to the parent's _active_children list -- the only list
AIAgent.interrupt() actually walks for cross-agent cancellation -- so a
live-turn Ctrl+C had no propagation path to it at all.
Fix, three files:
1. agent/agent_init.py -- add _background_review_agent /
_background_review_lock tracking state to every AIAgent, mirroring the
existing _active_children pattern.
2. agent/background_review.py -- the review fork now registers itself on
the parent's _active_children right after construction (reusing the
same list/lock interrupt() already fans out to for real subagent
delegation), and unregisters on every exit path (success, the
tool-whitelist finally, and the outer exception safety-net). All
registration is defensive (getattr/try-except) so an AIAgent built
without going through agent_init.py's setup degrades to "no
cross-turn cancellation" instead of aborting the whole review.
3. agent/conversation_loop.py -- at the very start of every
run_conversation() turn, if a prior background review is still
in-flight, it is now proactively cancelled via interrupt() before the
live turn proceeds -- fire-and-forget, non-blocking, adds no latency.
Adds 3 regression tests to tests/run_agent/test_background_review.py,
confirmed to fail against the pre-fix code via a scripted revert.
Verified: ruff clean on all touched files; 66/66 background-review and
interrupt-propagation tests pass; 256/256 across turn_finalizer +
run_agent regression suites; no fork-only symbols in the diff.
/refine [focus] fires the existing background review fork
(AIAgent._spawn_background_review) immediately instead of waiting for
the automatic 10-turn memory / 10-iteration skill nudge counters.
Optional focus instructions are appended to the review prompt so the
fork prioritizes what the user asked for (e.g. '/refine save the
deploy workflow as a skill').
- New optional focus parameter threaded through
_spawn_background_review -> spawn_background_review_thread.
Automatic post-turn reviews pass None and their prompts are
byte-identical to before.
- CLI handler snapshots conversation_history; gateway handler pulls
the idle session's cached AIAgent from _agent_cache (rejected while
the agent is running).
- Review runs in a daemon thread against the snapshot — live
conversation, message alternation, and prompt cache untouched.
- Slack stays under the 50-slash cap via /hermes refine.
Adapted from the /refine concept in Prime Intellect's Prime-Agent
(Continual Harness); Hermes' equivalent durable state is the
memory + skill stores, so the review fork is the natural target.
Completes the cache-parity bug class from #76938: the parent's request
body diverges from the fork's not only at the ephemeral system prompt
but also at prefill messages (inserted right after the system message
at API-call time) and, on OpenRouter, at upstream-provider selection
(prompt caches live per upstream; an unpinned fork can be routed to a
different upstream and miss a byte-identical prefix).
Also hardens the tests: pairwise asserts instead of re-implementing the
production prompt join, and routed-path omission guards for the whole
gated kwarg family.
Salvaged from #56085 (@Stoltemberg), rebased onto current main: sites
main had already converted (credential_pool, auxiliary_client MoA
paths, model_metadata, moa_loop, agent_runtime_helpers) resolve to
main's versions; the remaining ~29 read-only sites across 16 agent/
files swap to the no-deepcopy readonly loader (~135us saved per call).
Full per-site mutation audit performed (every enclosing function read,
escapes traced): 23 SAFE, 5 ESCAPES with read-only consumers, 1 UNSAFE
path (init_agent -> get_compatible_custom_providers -> normalizer
in-place alias writes) fixed by the preceding no-mutate commits, which
make the normalizer copy-safe for ALL callers.
The background write guard decided ownership from `isinstance(usage_rec, dict)`,
so a local skill with NO usage record passed. That successful write called
bump_patch(), which created a `created_by: null` record — and the identical
write was refused from then on. "Allowed exactly once, then never" is a race
with our own bookkeeping, not a policy. Reproduced on main: patch #1 succeeds,
patch #2 with the same arguments is refused.
Option B from the issue. Option A (split `session_review` from
`scheduled_curator` and let the session fork patch user-owned skills it
consulted) would widen autonomous write permission onto skills the user owns
with no user present to consent — wrong direction for a no-user-present actor.
- skill_manager_tool: missing and explicit-null records now resolve
IDENTICALLY, both fail closed. The refusal names the reason and points at
`hermes curator adopt <name>`.
- background_review: both review prompts told the reviewer to patch any skill
consulted in the session and claimed pinned skills could be improved, while
enforcement refused both. Prompts now list pinned, external, and user-owned
skills as protected, and tell the reviewer to RECOMMEND adoption instead of
attempting a write that will be refused.
- skill_usage: document that `created_by` is a curator-management policy flag,
not a provenance claim, and add `is_curator_managed()` so call sites read as
the question they ask. Field name retained — it is on disk in every
`.usage.json` and renaming would strand those records.
- curator CLI: `hermes curator list-unmanaged` itemizes unmanaged skills with
the reason each is unmanaged (completes the #67139 spec).
Foreground writes are untouched: a user-directed edit to a user-owned skill
still works, including on pinned skills.
Sibling tests: 9 failures in test_skill_manager_tool.py were fixtures that
created record-less skills to exercise OTHER guards (consolidation-delete,
read-before-write) and relied on ownership falling through. Fixed at the
fixture, since the real curator only ever operates on managed sediment. One
test asserted the old "manually authored" wording; rewritten to assert the
behavior contract instead of the string.
Validation: 274 targeted tests + all 7 background-review files (60 tests) pass.
E2E on a temp HERMES_HOME (30 checks) covers the flip, foreground writes,
adoption unblocking, pin semantics, prompt/enforcement parity, and the new verb.
Each new test sabotage-verified: revert the fix, confirm it goes red.
Fixes#67140
Review follow-up to the reasoning_config cache-parity fix:
- Only inherit the parent's reasoning_config when the fork runs on the
parent's model (not routed). On the routed aux path
(auxiliary.background_review.{provider,model}) the cache is cold
regardless, so parity buys nothing, and the parent's effort vocabulary
can be invalid for the routed model/provider: OpenRouter
extra_body.reasoning.effort is forwarded unclamped
(chat_completions.py) and codex_responses only maps max/ultra for
gpt-5.6 — an exotic parent effort routed to a strict provider could
400 the review. Mirrors the existing 'not _routed' gate on
_cached_system_prompt / session_start three lines below.
- Add a routed-path regression test asserting reasoning_config is
omitted from the fork kwargs when _resolve_review_runtime returns
routed=True.
- Extract the four copy-pasted recorder stubs in
test_background_review_cache_parity.py into a single
_make_recorder_class() factory so a new fork attribute needs one stub
edit, not four.
kshitijk4poor