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.
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.
#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.
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.
Follows PR #89762: cli-commands reference and CLI guide document the new
--query-file flag; bot-mode.md's DM and peer-dm recipes now show the
file/stdin transport instead of inlining message bodies into the shell.
New agents now get a blobatar — a deterministic soft-body face generated
from the bot's name (same name, same face, forever) — as the default
shapes mode, with full manual control:
- Face follows the name live while typing in New Agent
- Randomize re-rolls the seed; Lock face pins the current one so a later
rename can't change it (Unlock returns to name-following)
- Any of the six silhouettes (round/organic/boxy/nub/cloud/sun) can be
pinned via frozen-per-major trait positions while the rest stays
name-derived
- Classic geometric shapes remain one click away, and existing bots keep
their stored looks untouched
Wiring: blobatar@0.2.0 (zero deps, ~3.7KB) exported through the plugin
SDK (blobatarSvg / Blobatar), feature-detected in plugin.js with a
legacy-shape fallback for older desktops. Blob shape strings are
'blobatar[:seed[:kind]]' inside the existing meta.shape field, so
persistence, cross-machine ui_meta sync, and the roster's PNG backfill
(data-bot-face tag preserved) all work unchanged.
A profile belongs to one gateway, but the Capabilities surface (Skills /
Tools / MCP) always read and wrote through the window's active backend —
scoping to a remote-owned profile silently edited the wrong machine.
- hermes.ts: capability REST helpers accept a ProfileScope
(string | {connectionId, profile}); ambient path now also carries the
active registry connection tag (same contract as the cron helpers,
#87882); profileScopeKey namespaces cache keys per connection.
- SkillsView: scope selector lists (profile, device) rows from the union
agent roster on multi-connection desktops; new fixedConnection prop
pins the whole view to a registered connection (plugin door), with a
probe-able SkillsView.supportsFixedConnection flag.
- MCP tab: live reload.mcp RPC withheld for cross-backend scopes (it
rides the active gateway socket and would reload the wrong machine).
- Bot Mode: remote-target drafts now get the live Capabilities tab
pinned to the target machine via fixedConnection, feature-detected so
older desktops keep the staged checklists.
- Config-record/hub-action stores accept scopes; cache keys fold in the
connection id so two gateways' same-named profiles never share rows.
Bots could message teammates on their own machine (hermes -p <bot> chat) and
the desktop could relay user mentions over Connections, but a bot had NO
transport to a bot on another gateway. This adds one, with zero new server
surface: the peer's existing api_server platform is the wire.
- hermes_cli/subcommands/peer.py: `hermes peer add/list/remove/dm`.
`dm <peer>[/<agent>]` resolves the remote agent's canonical "Bot Chat"
(list by title, create when missing), runs one synchronous agent turn via
POST /api/sessions/{id}/chat, and prints the reply on stdout — the exact
cross-machine twin of the local bot-messaging command, so the Bot Mode
protocol composes over it unchanged. Named profiles route via the peer's
/p/<profile>/ multiplex mirror. Peer URLs live in config.yaml
(`bot_peers`); the peer's API_SERVER_KEY is a credential and lives in
~/.hermes/.env as HERMES_PEER_<NAME>_KEY.
- hermes_cli/main.py: parser wiring + fast-path/session-flag command sets.
- tools/bot_mode_probe.py: when peers are registered, the injected Bot Chat
messaging protocol gains a cross-machine paragraph (peer roster +
`hermes peer dm` pattern) so agents discover remote teammates on their
own; peers join the capability fingerprint so registering/removing one
refreshes eternal Bot Chat prompts on the next message (loud, one-time,
user-initiated — no per-turn cache drift).
- Docs: Bot Mode guide (bot-initiated DMs across machines) + cli-commands
reference (`hermes peer` section + summary row).
Tests: tests/hermes_cli/test_peer_cmd.py (target parsing, /p/ scoping,
registry round-trip in isolated config, real-loopback-HTTP dm flow incl.
Bot Chat create-vs-reuse and bearer auth), bot_mode_probe peer-paragraph +
epoch tests. E2E: real `python -m hermes_cli.main peer ...` against a live
fake peer over HTTP with isolated HERMES_HOME (config/.env persistence,
bare + /p/<profile> routing, stdin, --json). 23 passed; ruff clean.
Community asks (Discord, Aug 17): unclear what happens across cloud vs
desktop, whether every bot replies in group chats, and how to persist
connections to multiple gateways.
Extends the Bot Mode user-guide page (landed on main today) with the new
cross-connection features:
- "Create on" picker: creating an agent on another registered machine, with
the remote-target caveats (clone source, staged capability checklists,
draft discard).
- Group chats: explicit "not every bot replies" explanation of the
round-robin/pass model, and rooms spanning machines with device badges.
- @mentions across machines via the Connections registry (no gateway switch).
- Bots-across-machines section: persistent SSH inventory, last-known rows,
and the stay-in-your-chat interaction model; cloud+desktop recipe.
- desktop.md Bot Mode section links to the full guide; multi-connection
page's Bot Mode reference points at the docs page instead of the old
standalone repo.
Bot Mode ships built into the desktop app (default on) but only had a
short section in desktop.md. This adds a dedicated user-guide page
covering the Bots roster, creating and editing Bots, avatars, routines,
group chats, bot-to-bot messaging (agent.bot_mode_protocol), the
multi-connection roster, and CLI parity.
Teknium