The composer middleware is now identification-only: it resolves the
user's @tags against the live roster and annotates the draft with who
they refer to (profile, friendly title, device for cross-connection
rows). The agent decides whether to contact them and does it through
its message_agent tool — one send path, composed messages only.
Deleted the renderer's entire parallel delivery transport:
deliverRemoteRosterMentions / pollRemoteDmReply /
ensureRemoteCanonicalChat and the injected shellout instructions
('[@mention handoff — run hermes -p …]' and 'Desktop is delivering …
over Connections'). This retires the whole invocation bug class at the
source instead of sanitizing it: no verbatim user text is ever
forwarded by the renderer (#91397), and no shell command is ever
composed from prompt text (#91304, #91339 shape).
Tests: mention-identification.test.mjs replaces the two delivery-era
files — identification note shape, no-shellout/no-delivery containment
(sabotage-verified: re-adding a renderer delivery call fails 2 tests),
poisoned-title inertness, pass-through for unknown @s, and a source
contract pinning the deleted machinery. hide-bots + roster-cache-key
harnesses re-pinned to the new contract. 390/390 green.
Addresses @helix4u's review on #91493:
- conversation_loop now stamps failure_retryable (the real ClassifiedError
verdict) next to failure_reason; error_surface prefers it and only falls
back to the reason set for older results. Fallback set corrected to match
classify_api_error (auth, format_error, billing_unverified now
non-retryable).
- The descriptor carries the failing session's provider/model captured at
classification time; Copy error details prefers them over the foreground
composer atoms.
- Open logs is labeled 'Open Desktop logs' on remote/cloud connections —
the local folder holds transport logs, not the remote runtime's.
- API-exception module allowlist widened to botocore/boto3/google/grpc/
requests/aiohttp so other adapter SDKs don't misclassify as gateway.
Sessions running on provider 'nous' get a 'Nous support' action on the
failed-turn card, opening the portal help hub
(https://portal.nousresearch.com/help — docs, Discord, GitHub) in the
external browser. All five locales + docs updated.
Turn errors now carry a structured {layer, code, retryable} descriptor
(agent/error_surface.py) built from the same classifier the retry loop
uses. The tui_gateway stamps it on terminal error frames, retained
failed-turn snapshots, and resume replay; the Desktop error card renders
the layer title (provider / endpoint / streaming / auth / billing /
gateway / runtime / disk) plus matched actions: Retry, Switch provider,
Open logs, Copy diagnostics.
Older backends that omit the descriptor keep today's behavior (generic
title, string-sniff fallbacks) — the field is advisory on both sides.
Bot Mode agents now DM teammates through a real tool instead of
hand-assembled shell commands. message_agent(target, message) validates
the target against the live roster, applies the sender's attribution
prefix server-side, and delivers over the existing proven transports
(hermes -p ... --query-file for local teammates, hermes peer dm for
peer gateways) as a tracked background process with notify-on-complete
— fire-and-forget, the reply wakes the sender on a later turn.
Containment: the schema is injected per-turn ONLY into a bot's
canonical 'Bot Chat' session on Bot-Mode-managed installs (same gate as
the protocol section); it is never registered in the tool registry or
any toolset, and dispatch re-gates on the session title so a forged
call from any other session refuses. The gate is session-stable, so the
tool list stays byte-identical across turns (prompt-cache safe).
The protocol section is rewritten to teach the tool and now carries the
teammate roster WITH ROLES (Bot Mode title + profile description), so
bots know who does what before picking a recipient. Roles and a
protocol version salt join the capability fingerprint: existing eternal
Bot Chats adopt the v2 protocol + tool with one epoch refresh, and a
rename/description edit refreshes the roster on the next message.
A recurring job that fails at the scheduler layer - an exception escaping
run_one_job's body before the agent is ever constructed - has delivered a
failure alert since 4668750fa. It has never carried the repeated-failure
review nudge the normal agent-failure delivery carries: the nudge (#80752,
2026-08-06) predates that second delivery site by eight days and only ever
composed the first one.
The streak itself is layer-agnostic. mark_job_run increments failure_streak
for an escaped failure exactly as it does for an agent failure, and the
escape handler calls it. So the counter climbs correctly and shows up in
`hermes cron list`, but the chat message that spends it is unreachable for a
job whose failures ALL escape - a half-applied update leaving a bad import,
a provider client that cannot construct. Those are precisely the failures
that repeat identically on every tick, so the operator gets the same one-line
error every 10 minutes indefinitely and is never told the automation itself
is worth reviewing or pausing.
Compose the nudge at the escape handler's delivery exactly as the normal
path does. It stays config-gated and threshold-gated by the same helper, so
a first-time escaped failure reads exactly as it did before.
Docs said the streak counts "runs where the agent failed", which is what the
reporter read and reasonably concluded their failures were out of scope. The
counter never worked that way; correct the sentence to match the code.
Tests: two cases on the escaped-failure delivery path - streak at threshold
appends the nudge (fails on the unfixed handler with the bare summary), and
streak below threshold delivers the unchanged one-liner, so the guard also
proves the nudge is not unconditional. The existing nudge tests only ever
exercised the helper in isolation, which is why the second delivery site
could be added without it.
Fixes#88655
deliver='bot-chat[:<profile>]' is a machine-local pseudo-platform: the
scheduler delivers job output as a real inbound turn in the target
profile's canonical Bot Chat via the chat CLI lane (--in ~ -c "Bot Chat"
--create-if-missing -Q --query-file), the same lane Bot Mode
agent-to-agent messages use. The bot reads the output, acts on it, and
responds in its chat — instead of the output only landing in Run history.
- cron/scheduler.py: token parsing, target resolution (own profile /
named local profile / unknown -> skipped with warning), subprocess
delivery lane with cron.bot_chat_delivery_timeout_seconds (default
600s), preflight exemption, and bot-chat entries in
cron_delivery_targets() for UI pickers. Excluded from 'all' by design.
- tools/cronjob_tools.py: create/update-time validation — named profiles
must exist on this machine (fail at create, not at 3am); deliver schema
documents the new token.
- tui_gateway/methods_tools.py: cron.manage add forwards deliver.
- hermes_cli/profiles.py: list_profile_names() cheap name-only scan.
- hermes-bots plugin: Create Cronjob dialog gains a 'Send results to'
picker (Run history only / <bot>'s chat); bot-chat jobs send the BARE
token on the profile-scoped create so Desktop-side aliases can never
name a profile the backend doesn't have.
- Docs: user cron guide, automate-with-cron, cron-internals.
Machine-local by construction: names resolve only against the executing
machine's ~/.hermes/profiles/, so overlapping profile names across
multiple connected gateways are unambiguous.
Generic Hermes callers still use the existing browser backend when extension control is disabled or no server-bound controller identity exists.
Once the gateway binds a controller identity, missing scope, disconnect, or capability loss now fail closed instead of silently switching a control-this-tab request to another local or cloud browser. Covers the schema-build to dispatch disconnect race.
Treat unexpected controller transport loss as recoverable until each command's original deadline. Same-identity reconnects refresh transport and capability state, flush deferred cancels before new dispatch, and can complete already-started work.
Keep explicit detach and different controller/browser identity replacement terminal, owner-gate every inbound lifecycle frame, distinguish slow in-flight WebSocket writes from real send failures, and exclude browser-control session identity from shared shell snapshots.
Keep extension control opt-in and preserve existing browser backends unless an exact server-bound controller is available. Centralize protocol and capability admission across API and dashboard transports, make selected-controller results authoritative, bypass stale availability caches only inside bound requests, and serialize structured results for the existing tool contract.
Add a real browser_snapshot route-table/WebSocket E2E, strict admission and ownership regressions, public configuration and protocol documentation, and tests proving feature-off/no-controller compatibility.
Normalize malformed memory config during initialization and bind per-target write permissions to the session MemoryStore so direct and staged writes cannot update a disabled built-in store.
Standing policy: models do not make model-configuration decisions (the
only exception is user-defined profile selection in Bot Mode/kanban).
The per-job reasoning pin stays fully functional via
`hermes cron create/edit --reasoning-effort` and the job store; the
cronjob tool still SURFACES the pin in listings but cannot set it.
A schema-absence test pins the policy.
A cron job can now pin its own reasoning (thinking) effort, independent
of the global agent.reasoning_effort and per-model reasoning_overrides.
Heavy scheduled analyses can run at high while cheap recurring jobs run
at minimal, without touching the fleet-wide default.
- cron/jobs.py: new optional job field, validated at the storage choke
point against the canonical grammar via the shared
hermes_constants.parse_reasoning_effort (spelling-only; capability
clamping stays owned by the provider transports at send time, same as
config-set effort). Empty string clears on update; invalid values
raise ValueError before anything persists. Not a drift-guard axis.
- cron/scheduler.py: _resolve_job_reasoning_config resolves per-job pin
> agent.reasoning_overrides > agent.reasoning_effort at fire time,
after the auth-fallback model swap (the pin is model-independent by
design). A stored value that no longer parses warns and falls back to
config resolution instead of killing the tick.
- tools/cronjob_tools.py: reasoning_effort on BOTH mutation verbs
(create and update), conditional key in _format_job, schema documents
grammar/precedence/transport clamping/clear semantics. Agent-settable,
unlike model/provider pins: it cannot redirect spend to a different
model.
- hermes cron create/edit --reasoning-effort (empty string clears).
- Docs: cron feature page tip + CLI reference rows.
Tests: tests/cron/test_cron_reasoning_effort.py (32) — store contract,
scheduler precedence incl. byte-identical absent-field behavior and
garbage fallback, tool create/update/clear/error paths, schema surface.
Builds on @fattchris resolve_turn_limit salvage (#67696): flips the default
from a numeric cap to unlimited across all construction paths (CLI, agent_init,
run_agent subagents), adds inf/infinity/null to the unlimited spellings, and
sets DEFAULT_CONFIG agent.max_turns to null. The turn cap caused more problems
than it solved (silent mid-task truncation).
Addresses teknium1 sweeper review on PR #67696:
1. Gateway bridge: Skip str(None) bridging when YAML value is Python None
(from or bare ). Previously str(None) → None → unlimited
instead of default 90. Now clears stale env var so resolver applies default.
2. TUI: Route _cfg_max_turns through resolve_turn_limit instead of bare
int(). Old code crashed on none/unlimited and swallowed 0 via
. HERMES_TUI_MAX_TURNS env var also routed through
resolver.
3. Docs: Document unlimited spellings (none/unlimited/infinite/0/-1) in
configuration.md.
4. Tests: Add TestGatewayBridgeNullHandling (4 tests) and TestTUIResolver
(8 tests) covering null handling, string spellings, env var override,
and legacy root-level config.
All 50 tests pass.
#90732 removed right-click → Sessions (one forever-chat per bot is the
product contract); #90756 cleaned the last in-app copy. This removes the
remaining docs bullet describing the dead affordance.
When the chosen/keyed backend fails a web_search or web_extract call
(bad key, upstream outage, 5xx, raised exception), that single call
retries on the keyless free-tier ring instead of erroring. The next
call attempts the chosen backend again — no sticky failover, no state.
Resolves the keyed half of #78984/#32159 (keyless half landed in the
ring PR).
- tools/web_tools.py: _rescue_eligible (keyed ring vendors + non-ring
backends eligible; keyless-mode calls excluded — they already walked
the ring), _rescue_search/_rescue_extract (search annotates
rescued_from + backend_error naming the original failure and the
retry-next-call semantics; extract rescues only whole-batch failures,
partial failures pass through untouched; rescue failure preserves the
ORIGINAL backend error with the rescue note appended)
- both dispatchers wrap the provider call: failure-results AND raised
exceptions rescue; ineligible paths re-raise unchanged
- web.keyless_rescue config key (default true; implicitly off when
keyless_fallback is off); docs updated
Live E2E: keyed Tavily with an invalid key 401'd and the call was
served by the real ring with the rescue annotation; a second call
re-attempted Tavily first (statelessness proven); whole-batch extract
rescue returned real page content. 13 new tests; 67 green across the
keyless suites.
Remote-mode installs had every update affordance (About panel Update now,
⌘K Update Hermes, the update-ready toast) pointed at the BACKEND only, so
users updated their VPS forever while the desktop app itself sat weeks
stale — with no signal it was behind (the skew warning only fired the
other way). Reported by Santiago Sarceda: mac app on v0.20.0 kept
repro'ing UI bugs fixed on main because 'update' never touched the app.
- store/updates.ts: applyEverythingUpdate() orchestrates all targets —
active backend first (detailed progress), every other eligible
registered gateway via the existing Electron fan-out (cloud rows skip),
the client LAST (its apply relaunches the app). startActiveUpdate/
requestActiveUpdate route through it whenever more than one update
target exists; single-machine installs keep the one-button flow.
- After ANY successful backend update, the client version is re-checked
and a one-click 'Update desktop app' warning fires if the GUI is still
behind — the reverse-skew signal that didn't exist.
- electron: hermes:connections:update-all accepts optional excludeIds so
the flow doesn't double-dispatch the active backend / local runtime.
- i18n: 7 new updates.* keys across en/zh/zh-hant/ja/ar.
- docs: desktop.md Updating section + multi-connection guide.
- tests: 10 new cases (gating, ordering, exclusions, failure isolation,
memoization, nudge on/off).
Fresh installs with zero web credentials now rotate web_search/
web_extract across FIVE vendors' public free tiers — Exa, Parallel,
Tavily, Firecrawl, Keenable — instead of a 2-vendor 50/50 split, with
next-in-line ring failover on rate limits (multi-hop until a vendor
serves or the ring is exhausted; served_by marks the actual vendor).
- plugins/web/keenable/: new bundled provider (search via /v1/search,
fetch via /v1/fetch; keyed Bearer or keyless with the mandatory
X-Keenable-Title app header). Credit: integration proposed by
Ilya Gusev (Keenable) in #49758; Free/Paid picker rows included.
- keyless_mcp: tavily/firecrawl/keenable keyless search+extract
wrappers, _KEYLESS_RING + per-process round-robin cursor (seeded by
the random session id, advances per unpinned request), pinned-vendor
entry (pin = start there; rotation off), paid-pinned vendors excluded
from the ring entirely.
- Tavily/Firecrawl providers route keyless traffic through the ring;
both are now default-on ring members (no longer selection-gated).
- web_tools/registry: keenable in backend sets, auto-detect, availability
probes; _keyless_preference() delegates to the ring cursor.
- KEENABLE_API_KEY in OPTIONAL_ENV_VARS; docs updated (ring semantics).
Live E2E: all 10 vendorXcapability paths (5 search + 5 extract) served
real results keyless; rotation cycled all five vendors over 5 dispatch
calls; double-throttle failover walked exa->parallel->tavily.
Renaming a bot (Bot Mode title or 'hermes profile rename' display_name)
changed the roster row but not what the user could @-tag it with — mentions
still only resolved the original profile handle, and the composer
autocomplete never offered the new name.
- mentionNameForms()/botFriendlyNames()/botMentionTag(): one resolver for
the taggable forms a friendly name yields (slugged + collapsed), with
reserved tokens (hermes/default/everyone/all/user) excluded so a rename
can never hijack them.
- resolveRosterMentions() and parseGroupChatMentions() accept the friendly
forms alongside the profile name/handle (both keep working).
- Composer @ autocomplete (global provider + group-room popover) inserts
the renamed tag and prefix-matches on tag, handle, and display name.
- Mention middleware's cold-cache fallback now runs the same resolver
instead of a bare-names-only parse, so renamed tags resolve there too.
- durableGroupChatMembers persists title/display_name so renamed-tag
mentions survive connection switches in cross-machine rooms.
- Docs: bot-mode.md documents renamed tags.
The startup pruner is deliberately conservative (unattended, pre-banner),
so real installs accumulate what it can never touch: trees preserved for
untracked-only scratch, and orphaned local branches beyond the two
auto-generated prefixes it deletes. A measured multi-agent box: 35 trees /
15GB / 244 local branches, 120 of them fully merged.
New attended surface (hermes_cli/worktree_gc.py + worktree_cmd.py):
- hermes worktree list — audit every tree: age, size, verdict, reason,
plus deletable-branch count
- hermes worktree prune [--dry-run|--trees-only|--branches-only]
- /worktree prune [--dry-run] — same engine in-session; never touches the
session's own active tree
- startup escalation: one WARNING when .worktrees/ exceeds 10 trees or
5GB, naming the reclaim commands (silence is how boxes hit 15GB)
Safety invariants (shared with the startup pruner via cli.py primitives):
tracked modifications and unique unpushed commits never deleted at any
age; live-locked trees untouched; branch deletion gated on worktree
removal success; untracked-only scratch ARCHIVED to
~/.hermes/archive/worktree-prune/ before its tree is reaped.
Branch GC is content-gated, not name-gated: any local branch fully merged
or git-cherry patch-equivalent upstream is safe to delete (rebase merges
rewrite SHAs, so --merged alone misses the dominant leak); unique-commit,
checked-out, protected, and stale-base (>50 ahead) branches are kept.
Classification is parallel (8 workers) — 244 branches audit in ~64s live.
git timeouts degrade to keep (returncode 124) instead of crashing the
audit — live-verified failure on a 746MB .git repo.
16 behavior-contract tests against real git fixtures; live dry-run on the
production repo: 12 trees reclaimable, 120 branches deletable, 0 false
positives among kept trees.
Follow-up to PR #90183 — computer_use now saves a bounded shareable copy of
image captures, so attachment-capable surfaces (Telegram, Discord, Desktop)
can deliver the real screenshot when the user asks. Documents the behavior,
the 20-file cache bound, and the no-automatic-send rule.
With memory_enabled: false but user_profile_enabled: true, the memory tool
stays (it backs USER.md) but the full MEMORY_GUIDANCE told the model to save
notes to a MEMORY.md store that does not exist. Split the guidance: a
profile-only block is injected for that configuration, directing writes to
target='user' only.
With memory.memory_enabled and memory.user_profile_enabled both false,
agent_init never builds a MemoryStore -- but check_memory_requirements()
returned True unconditionally and MEMORY_GUIDANCE was gated only on the
tool being present in valid_tool_names. So the tool shipped in every
request's schema while answering "Memory is not available" on every call,
and the system prompt still told the model to save durable facts there.
Gate both on the config flags, using the store predicate for the tool and
the already-resolved agent state for the guidance (config is not re-read
mid-conversation, so the prompt stays byte-stable). Either flag alone
still backs the tool, so only turning both off removes it.
This lets a user running a third-party provider (Hindsight, Mem0, ...)
turn the built-in files off without paying for the dead surface on every
API call. The provider's own tools are unaffected: hiding the built-in
tool moves the decision onto the toolset gate, and listing memory under
agent.disabled_toolsets remains the only switch that takes those down.
- Cross-vendor failover: when Exa's or Parallel's keyless free tier
returns a rate-limit-shaped error, the request retries once on the
other vendor's free endpoint (search + whole-batch extract). Result
notes served_by; a peer pinned to its paid tier is never used;
non-throttle errors never fail over.
- Docs: failover note + Tavily/Firecrawl keyless-when-selected rows.
- Firecrawl keyless test expectations aligned with the keyless tier.
- Updated the Tavily API key description to clarify that it is optional and keyless access is supported.
- Modified the Tavily plugin and provider to handle requests with or without an API key, using Bearer authentication when the key is provided.
- Enhanced documentation to reflect the new keyless functionality and updated environment variable descriptions.
- Added tests to ensure correct behavior for both keyed and keyless requests.
Composio eval traces showed Hermes wasting turns re-issuing identical tool
calls (same tool, same args, same result — 3x/4x in one run) and ending
turns by announcing an action it never took. Two conservative, config-gated
guards (agent.stall_guards, default true):
- Identical-call loop breaker: ToolCallGuardrailController.observe_identical_call
tracks the consecutive streak of (tool, canonical args, result-hash); on
the 3rd identical call a compact one-line notice is appended to that tool
RESULT at construction time (cache-safe — tool results are append-only).
Never blocks the call. Pollers (process, *_get_result, *_poll) are exempt
via STALL_GUARD_REPEATABLE_TOOLS. Streak resets on any different call,
changed result, or new turn. Observed on the raw result before the
tool-loop warning suffix so its changing count can't defeat matching.
- Said-continue-but-stopped recovery: trailing_continue_intent() detects a
short reply ENDING on an announced next action ('Let me now…', 'I will
now…', 'Next, I…'); the conversation loop feeds it into the EXISTING
intent-ack continuation path (same interim-assistant + user-nudge
mechanism, same codex_ack_continuations cap of 2), preserving message
alternation — no parallel recovery machinery.
Config: agent.stall_guards in DEFAULT_CONFIG; docs in configuration.md;
unit tests for streak/allowlist/reset/gate and detector pos/neg cases.
Composio-style MCP servers return un-paginated 22-47K-char payloads that
sail under the generic 100K per-result spillover threshold, bloating
context and ballooning per-turn reasoning time on long conversations.
Competitors cap harder (OpenCode/pi 50KB, Claude Code 30K, Codex ~10K
tokens). Three changes:
- mcp_* tools spill at a tighter 50K default (BudgetConfig.mcp_result_size,
config-overridable via tool_budget.mcp_result_size_chars; pinned and
per-tool overrides still win; capped by the context-scaled default).
- The persisted-output preview now teaches recovery: page the saved file
with read_file or process with execute_code instead of re-requesting the
same data from the remote API.
- Untrusted/MCP string results are scanned (bounded, first 64KB) for
provider-side elision markers ('...N more items', "has_more": true,
'saved to sandbox', data_preview) and get ONE cache-safe incompleteness
notice appended at result-construction time, before untrusted wrapping —
so the model stops treating provider-elided enumerations as complete.
- Hard 2M-char allocation cap in mcp_tool.py (text, error, and
structuredContent paths) so a pathological multi-MB server payload is
bounded before it propagates, while ordinary large results reach
spillover intact. Distilled from #56060/#56072/#56511 (issue #56059);
supersedes their 50K lossy truncation with spillover-friendly semantics.
Docs: configuration.md spillover-budget section + cli-config.yaml.example.
Co-authored-by: Stoltemberg <215755014+Stoltemberg@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: AlexFucuson9 <295703459+AlexFucuson9@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Tranquil-Flow <66773372+Tranquil-Flow@users.noreply.github.com>
Unpinned zero-credential installs now pick Exa or Parallel by the
parity of the per-process random session id (stable within a process,
even split fleet-wide) instead of always favoring Parallel. An explicit
hermes tools selection (web.backend / per-capability keys) bypasses the
split entirely; the runner-up vendor stays in the walk as fallback.
Live E2E: 6 fresh processes split 3/3 between vendors, each performed
a real keyless search via its picked endpoint; explicit pin verified.
Un-fences OPENAI_MODEL_EXECUTION_GUIDANCE from the gpt/codex/grok substring
check and gives it its own injection gate, independent of
tool_use_enforcement, controlled by config.yaml `agent.execution_guidance`
(auto/true/false/list — same semantics as tool_use_enforcement). The "auto"
list (EXECUTION_GUIDANCE_MODELS) now also covers deepseek, kimi, qwen, glm,
minimax, mimo, and mistral.
Composio agentic-eval traces showed Hermes+DeepSeek/Kimi failing where
competitors passed: financial math done in prose, no read-back after
external writes, malformed identifiers "repaired", completeness claimed
despite count mismatches. The discipline block existed but those models
never received it.
The block is extended with compact clauses distilled from that analysis:
- external-write read-back (tool-call success is not task success; internal
file edits already confirmed by the tool are not re-verified)
- count reconciliation (declared totals/has_more are hard assertions)
- literal preservation (never normalize identifiers that fail a stated
format; lookup success does not validate a malformed token)
- retry-differently (empty/partial/suspiciously narrow results get a
broader retry before concluding)
- completion gated on verification (done = every named acceptance
criterion verified, never a plausible subset)
The todo tool description now encourages enumeration-as-checklist for
"all N items" tasks and gates completed status on verified work, never
intent.
Guidance is chosen once at session start keyed on model name, so the
system prompt stays byte-stable for the life of a conversation.
Supersedes/absorbs prior contributor proposals: #20588, #35087, #41874
(MiMo), #53847 (GLM tool-calls-as-text stall).
Co-authored-by: Mat-London <56627804+Mat-London@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: intelac <8803887+intelac@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: 6ylqq <51219463+6ylqq@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: tauros1983 <267660491+tauros1983@users.noreply.github.com>
Exa and Parallel now each render as two picker rows in hermes tools —
'Free (keyless)' and 'Paid (API key)'. Selection persists to
web.provider_tier.<name>:
- free: always the anonymous public endpoint, even with a key set
- paid: always the keyed SDK path; missing key errors instead of
silently downgrading to the free tier (is_keyless_available also
returns False so the auto-fallback walk can't route there)
- unset: auto (key present -> paid, else keyless)
Mechanism: get_setup_schema() gains a 'variants' list the picker
flattens into sibling rows sharing one web_backend; selection writes
the tier via both _write_provider_config sites; active-row detection
matches the tier (auto mirrors use_keyless). Routing goes through a
single use_keyless() chokepoint shared by search+extract in both
providers.
Live E2E: tier=free with a fake key present searched keyless OK (a
keyed call would have 401'd); tier=paid without key errored naming
PARALLEL_API_KEY; picker rows verified for both vendors x both tiers.
A 12-request sequential burst from the same IP that earlier saw the
free-tier rate-limit error went 12/12 OK — the limit is a transient
burst/load control, not a tight standing per-IP quota. Soften the docs
and setup-schema wording accordingly (opencode users hit Exa keyless
as their default path in practice without throttling).
With zero web credentials configured, web_search/web_extract previously
resolved to the nonfunctional firecrawl sentinel and errored. Now the
backend resolution walks a strictly-last keyless tier: Parallel's and
Exa's public anonymous MCP endpoints (the same free tiers opencode ships
as its default search path).
- plugins/web/keyless_mcp.py: minimal JSON-RPC tools/call client for
mcp.exa.ai + search.parallel.ai (SSE + plain JSON parsing, typed
errors, per-process random session id, no user identifiers)
- WebSearchProvider.is_keyless_available(): separate weaker tier that
never leaks into is_available(), so keyed setups are never pre-empted
- Exa/Parallel providers: route to keyless endpoints when their key is
absent; keyed SDK path unchanged
- registry + _get_backend(): keyless walk (parallel -> exa) strictly
after every keyed/importable candidate; check_web_api_key() lights
the tools up on zero-credential installs
- web.keyless_fallback config key (default true) to disable the tier
- docs: web-search.md + configuration.md
E2E-verified against both live endpoints from an isolated HERMES_HOME
(search + extract via the real dispatchers, disable-flag negative path).
Teknium