Follow-up to #106317. Typing the steer row (display_kind="steer") for the renderer and the
alternation-repair guard collided with the convention that any display_kind on a user row means
scaffolding: is_user_originated_turn / _is_actionable_user_turn / split_user_originated_turn
returned False for it (tail anchoring, auto-focus, dispatcher views, resume counts) while
_is_real_user_message returned True (anchor restoration) — the two predicate families disagreed
on the same row, and list_recent_user_messages (/undo, /rewind) skipped it in SQL. A steer
carries full user authority; the steer kind is now whitelisted in all four.
Also: the pre-API drain's requeue tail reuses _requeue_pending_steer instead of a copy; the TUI
history projection compares against STEER_DISPLAY_KIND; the steer() docstring describes the row.
Both steer sites now build the row through one helper, prompt_builder.steer_user_row:
a role:user row with display_kind="steer" and no leading blank lines. The alternation
repair (_merge_consecutive_users) skips a steer-typed prev row, so a run that ended
right after a steered batch (Ctrl-C, interrupt) does not get the next real prompt
merged INTO the already-persisted steer row — which would have rewritten it in place
and re-broken live≠replay parity, the exact class this PR fixes.
TUI/desktop history projects the steer row as the user's own words instead of the
model-facing marker wrapper; 'steer' joins the display_kind union. The compression
anchor scan keeps its tool-row branch for transcripts persisted before this change and
its docstring says so.
Second site of the same bug class #104444 fixes in apply_pending_steer_to_tool_results:
_inject_steer_into_newest_tool_result (the drain that runs when a /steer lands during an
API call) mutated the newest role:tool row in place. That row was already flushed
append-only, so the replayed history diverged from the live request bytes at the
injection point and broke the prompt cache exactly like the post-batch path.
Deliver it the same way: a standalone user row inserted right after the newest tool
result (not yet persisted, so the next flush writes it to the transcript). Restash when
there is no tool row yet, unchanged. Stale comments claiming steer lands "in the newest
tool result" and agent/AGENTS.md's alternation rule now describe the real shape.
The cherry-picked commit carried an unrelated hunk repointing three patch()
targets back to run_agent.* — those are PLUGIN-COMPAT re-exports, off limits
in-tree (scripts/check_compat_pointers.py; removed 2026-09-14). Keep main's
model_tools.* / agent.process_bootstrap.OpenAI targets.
`apply_pending_steer_to_tool_results` used to smear the steer text onto
the last `role:tool` message's content. That tool row had already been
flushed to the session store and carries `_DB_PERSISTED_MARKER`; the
append-only persistence never rewrites it, so the replayable transcript
diverged from the live request bytes at the injection point — resumed
sessions (surface switch / process restart / background-review close)
missed the provider prompt cache (75-85% hit) and the user's mid-run
instructions were never part of the durable history.
The steer is now emitted as a standalone `role:user` message (marker
text preserved):
- role alternation stays legal: assistant(tool_calls) -> tool -> user is
the documented 'user jumped in mid-run' pattern that
`repair_message_sequence` deliberately keeps;
- the appended dict carries no `_DB_PERSISTED_MARKER`, so the next
`_flush_messages_to_session_db` writes it to the session store —
transcript bytes and replayed history finally agree, and the steer
becomes searchable/retrievable like any other user message;
- the no-tool-result fallback (interrupt) still requeues the steer, which
the caller then delivers as a normal next-turn user message.
Tests: TestSteerInjection updated for the new shape plus a persistability
assertion (no marker => flushable); tool-batch-segmentation malformed
scenario updated. steer + segmentation suites: 67 passed, 1 skipped.
run_agent.py: delete the `# noqa: F401` re-export block (agent.process_bootstrap
OpenAI/_SafeWriter/_get_proxy_*, model_tools get_tool_definitions/
handle_function_call/check_toolset_requirements, FailoverReason,
_qwen_portal_headers/_routermint_headers, session_persistence names,
estimate_request_tokens_rough, ContextCompressor + friends, jittered_backoff,
prompt_builder names, message_sanitization names, tool_dispatch_helpers
names) — 41 names run_agent never used itself — and the `_STREAM_DIAG_HEADERS`
back-compat class alias (no in-tree reader). run_agent now imports only what
it uses (get_toolset_for_tool, is_local_endpoint, coalesce/uniquify tool-call
ids, cleanup_vm/get_active_env from terminal_tool_lifecycle).
agent/*: `_ra().X` late-binds that only reached a re-export now import the
defining module directly (agent_runtime_helpers -> process_bootstrap.OpenAI,
model_tools.handle_function_call, session_persistence._safe_session_filename_component;
agent_init -> model_tools.get_tool_definitions/check_toolset_requirements,
_lazy_headers("agent.client_lifecycle", ...) for qwen/routermint;
system_prompt -> agent.prompt_builder / model_tools directly, dropping its
own _ra() shim and the `_r` parameter threading). `_ra()` stays for
run_agent-resident names (logger, AIAgent, _hermes_home, _set_interrupt, ...).
toolsets.py: remove resolve_multiple_toolsets (shim-only, restored by
34abf954bd); tests/test_toolsets.py pins the same union behavior via
resolve_toolset over each name.
providers/__init__.py: drop the OMIT_TEMPERATURE re-export (no callers via the
package); ProviderProfile stays because __init__ uses it for annotations —
2 tests repointed to providers.base.
agent/iteration_budget.py: drop the "run_agent re-exports the class"
docstring pointer; 4 tests import IterationBudget from its home.
model_tools.py (arg_coercion names), agent/tool_executor.py, and
hermes_cli/cli_session_mixin.py repoints landed via a sibling commit on this
shared worktree.
Callers repointed: gateway/run.py, hermes_cli/cli_chat_turn_mixin.py,
hermes_cli/cli_tui_mixin.py, tui_gateway/session_workdir.py,
agent/transports/codex.py (one-line imports) + comment pointers in
tools/file_state.py, tools/schema_sanitizer.py, scripts/tool_search_livetest.py.
Tests: patch("run_agent.X") / monkeypatch.setattr(run_agent, "X") /
`from run_agent import X` -> defining module across 99 test files.
The salvaged writer-side fix stamps api_content on NEW hidden redirect
placeholders, but rows persisted before it (content="" + display_kind=hidden,
no sidecar) would keep re-triggering repair_empty_non_final_messages on every
call forever. Substitute [response interrupted] on the wire copy at the
api_content/display_kind projection stage so legacy sessions converge too.
Never the interrupt scaffold (#81841). Durable transcript untouched.
Regression tests drive run_conversation end-to-end with a spied sanitizer:
the projection must leave the sanitizer nothing to heal (its per-turn warning
spam is the bug), verified failing via sabotage run against the writer-only
fix.
Projection-side approach credit: @JoaoMarcos44 (PR #88996).
Bot-mode interrupted member turns with no visible assistant text persisted an
empty assistant row (content="" + display_kind="hidden"). The pre-call
sanitizer repair_empty_non_final_messages() re-healed that row on every later
call (wire copy only), so the loop never converged (#88955).
Stamp api_content="[response interrupted]" (the canonical
_INTERRUPTED_PLACEHOLDER) on the hidden placeholder instead. display_kind is
stripped before sanitization, but api_content is projected back into content
for historical assistant rows, so the provider sees a non-empty neutral turn
and the sanitizer stops touching the row — while the durable transcript stays
hidden and empty. Uses the neutral interruption text, never the
_INTERRUPTED_SCAFFOLD_MARKER, which replaying as assistant text caused #81841.
Adds regression coverage proving (A) the placeholder carries the replay
sidecar, (B) two consecutive projections converge without sanitizer healing,
(C) the sanitizer still repairs genuinely-empty unmarked assistants.
Refs #88955
The incomplete #73146 else branch still wrote the interrupt checkpoint into
the placeholder assistant row. Mid-tool steers then replayed that scaffold as
the model's own prior reply, which it echoed into a self-replicating ghost
loop. Carry the scaffold only on the user correction's api_content, matching
the assistant-tail branch.
A mid-stream steer persists an interrupted-turn checkpoint so the model knows
its reply was cut off. That scaffolding — "[This response was interrupted by a
user correction.]" and the "Visible response before the interruption:" header —
was written straight into message content, so every reload painted the raw
machinery as an assistant bubble (and merged it into the preceding tool-call
bubble). Steered transcripts became unreadable.
Reuse the existing display/replay split instead of inventing new surface:
- Carry the scaffolded form in the server-only api_content sidecar (the exact
bytes replayed to the provider), keep content the user's/agent's real words.
- When nothing reached the screen there is no clean form, so mark the row
display_kind=hidden — replayed to the model, dropped by every transcript
surface, exactly like compaction-reference rows.
- Honor display_kind=hidden in the gateway's _history_to_messages projection
(it only sniffed the [System: convention), so the checkpoint can't leak
through the live/resume path to the TUI/CLI either.
The model still receives the full interrupted context on the wire; the
transcript shows the partial reply and the user's correction.
A /steer redirect during a thinking phase serialized the streamed
reasoning into the persisted assistant checkpoint ('Reasoning shown
before the interruption: ...'). An assistant turn exposing its own
chain-of-thought reads to Anthropic's output classifier as
reasoning-injection/prefill jailbreak, so every subsequent call on the
session deterministically returned 'Provider returned an empty
response' — and because the checkpoint is persisted and replayed, no
retry, nudge, or empty-recovery branch could ever escape it. Four
sessions were permanently bricked this way in the week of Jul 21-27
(42+ blocked calls; every reasoning-free checkpoint that week was
untouched — same mechanism as the prefill.json incident).
Class fix: streamed reasoning is now display-only state. The
_current_streamed_reasoning_text accumulator is removed entirely
(producer in _fire_reasoning_delta, resets, and init), so no future
path can serialize CoT into replayable content. The checkpoint keeps
only the visible response text; the model regenerates its reasoning on
the retried turn. Invariant documented in _apply_active_turn_redirect.
Regression tests: CoT never appears in either checkpoint shape,
reasoning-only interrupts produce a bare checkpoint, reasoning deltas
stay display-only.
A follow-up sent while the model is still generating previously ended the
turn: Hermes kept only the visible partial text (reasoning was display-only),
cleared the loop, and replayed the message as a fresh next turn. If the
correction referred to something that only appeared in the thinking stream,
the model no longer had that context.
Add `AIAgent.redirect(text)`: a corrective interrupt distinct from a hard
stop. It cancels only the in-flight model request (not tool workers or child
agents), stashes the correction under a lock shared with `interrupt()` so a
concurrent `/stop` always wins, and lets the loop rebuild the same logical
iteration. `_apply_active_turn_redirect()` checkpoints the reasoning that was
actually shown to the user plus any visible partial text as an ordinary
assistant message, then appends the correction as a real user turn — never
replaying incomplete signed/encrypted provider reasoning, and keeping strict
role alternation and prompt-cache stability intact. During tool execution it
degrades to `steer()` so a running tool finishes at a safe boundary.
`_fire_reasoning_delta` now only records reasoning that a display callback
actually consumed, so `show_reasoning: false` never leaks hidden provider
thinking into the persisted transcript.
A steer rides inside a tool result (the only role-alternation-safe slot
mid-turn), so a bare "User guidance:" line reads as untrusted tool content —
well-behaved models refuse it as suspected prompt injection (observed live:
"I only follow instructions from you directly, not ones injected through
command results").
- Wrap steers in a bounded, self-describing [OUT-OF-BAND USER MESSAGE] marker
(prompt_builder.format_steer_marker), shared by both drain sites.
- Add STEER_CHANNEL_NOTE to the core system prompt so the model expects this
exact marker and trusts it as a genuine user message — while still ignoring
lookalikes buried in tool/web/file output. Static text → byte-stable prompt,
no prompt-cache regression; gated on the agent having tools.
- Desktop: steer ack is now an inline transcript note (⏩ steered · …) instead
of a toast.
Marker is intentionally static (not a per-session nonce) to honor the
byte-stable system-prompt caching policy; nonce hardening noted as follow-up.
Remove unused imports (F401) and duplicate/shadowed import
redefinitions (F811) across the codebase using ruff's safe
autofixes. No behavioral changes -- imports only.
- ~1400 safe autofixes applied across 644 files (net -1072 lines)
- __init__.py re-exports preserved (excluded from F401 removal so
public re-export surfaces stay intact)
- Re-exports that are imported or monkeypatched by tests but look
unused in their defining module are kept with explicit # noqa:
F401 (gateway/run.py load_dotenv; run_agent re-exports from
agent.message_sanitization, agent.context_compressor,
agent.retry_utils, agent.prompt_builder, agent.process_bootstrap,
agent.codex_responses_adapter)
- Unsafe F841 (unused-variable) fixes deliberately skipped -- those
can change behavior when the RHS has side effects
- ruff lints remain disabled in pyproject.toml (only PLW1514 is
selected); this is a one-time cleanup, not a config change
Verification:
- python -m compileall: clean
- pytest --collect-only: all 27161 tests collect (zero import errors)
- core entry points import clean (run_agent, model_tools, cli,
toolsets, hermes_state, batch_runner, gateway)
- static scan: every name any test imports directly from an edited
module still resolves
The mid-run steer marker was '[USER STEER (injected mid-run, not tool
output): <text>]'. Replaced with a plain two-newline-prefixed
'User guidance: <text>' suffix.
Rationale: the marker lives inside the tool result's content string
regardless of whether the tool returned JSON, plain text, an MCP
result, or a plugin result. The bracketed tag read like structured
metadata that some tools (terminal, execute_code) could confuse with
their own output formatting. A plain labelled suffix works uniformly
across every content shape we produce.
Behavior unchanged:
- Still injected into the last tool-role message's content.
- Still preserves multimodal (Anthropic) content-block lists by
appending a text block.
- Still drained at both sites added in #12959 and #13205 — per-tool
drain between individual calls, and pre-API-call drain at the top
of each main-loop iteration.
Checked Codex's equivalent (pending_input / inject_user_message_without_turn
in codex-rs/core): they record mid-turn user input as a real role:user
message via record_user_prompt_and_emit_turn_item(). That's cleaner for
their Responses-API model but not portable to Chat Completions where
role alternation after tool_calls is strict. Embedding the guidance in
the last tool result remains the correct placement for us.
Validation: all 21 tests in tests/run_agent/test_steer.py pass.
When /steer is sent during an API call (model thinking), the steer text
sits in _pending_steer until after the next tool batch — which may never
come if the model returns a final response. In that case the steer is
only delivered as a post-run follow-up, defeating the purpose.
Add a pre-API-call drain at the top of the main loop: before building
api_messages, check _pending_steer and inject into the last tool result
in the messages list. This ensures steers sent during model thinking are
visible on the very next API call.
If no tool result exists yet (first iteration), the steer is restashed
for the post-tool drain to pick up — injecting into a user message would
break role alternation.
Three new tests cover the pre-API-call drain: injection into last tool
result, restash when no tool message exists, and backward scan past
non-tool messages.
* feat(steer): /steer <prompt> injects a mid-run note after the next tool call
Adds a new slash command that sits between /queue (turn boundary) and
interrupt. /steer <text> stashes the message on the running agent and
the agent loop appends it to the LAST tool result's content once the
current tool batch finishes. The model sees it as part of the tool
output on its next iteration.
No interrupt is fired, no new user turn is inserted, and no prompt
cache invalidation happens beyond the normal per-turn tool-result
churn. Message-role alternation is preserved — we only modify an
existing role:"tool" message's content.
Wiring
------
- hermes_cli/commands.py: register /steer + add to ACTIVE_SESSION_BYPASS_COMMANDS.
- run_agent.py: add _pending_steer state, AIAgent.steer(), _drain_pending_steer(),
_apply_pending_steer_to_tool_results(); drain at end of both parallel and
sequential tool executors; clear on interrupt; return leftover as
result['pending_steer'] if the agent exits before another tool batch.
- cli.py: /steer handler — route to agent.steer() when running, fall back to
the regular queue otherwise; deliver result['pending_steer'] as next turn.
- gateway/run.py: running-agent intercept calls running_agent.steer(); idle-agent
path strips the prefix and forwards as a regular user message.
- tui_gateway/server.py: new session.steer JSON-RPC method.
- ui-tui: SessionSteerResponse type + local /steer slash command that calls
session.steer when ui.busy, otherwise enqueues for the next turn.
Fallbacks
---------
- Agent exits mid-steer → surfaces in run_conversation result as pending_steer
so CLI/gateway deliver it as the next user turn instead of silently dropping it.
- All tools skipped after interrupt → re-stashes pending_steer for the caller.
- No active agent → /steer reduces to sending the text as a normal message.
Tests
-----
- tests/run_agent/test_steer.py — accept/reject, concatenation, drain,
last-tool-result injection, multimodal list content, thread safety,
cleared-on-interrupt, registry membership, bypass-set membership.
- tests/gateway/test_steer_command.py — running agent, pending sentinel,
missing steer() method, rejected payload, empty payload.
- tests/gateway/test_command_bypass_active_session.py — /steer bypasses
the Level-1 base adapter guard.
- tests/test_tui_gateway_server.py — session.steer RPC paths.
72/72 targeted tests pass under scripts/run_tests.sh.
* feat(steer): register /steer in Discord's native slash tree
Discord's app_commands tree is a curated subset of slash commands (not
derived from COMMAND_REGISTRY like Telegram/Slack). /steer already
works there as plain text (routes through handle_message → base
adapter bypass → runner), but registering it here adds Discord's
native autocomplete + argument hint UI so users can discover and
type it like any other first-class command.
kshitijk4poor