_tool_guidance_block, _skills_prompt, _bot_mode_parts, _active_profile_line, _platform_hint, _memory_parts,
_zone_bits, _timestamp_line lifted out of the 600-line builder; tool_use_enforcement and execution_guidance
gates share _model_gate. Emitted prompt text is byte-identical.
* feat(compaction): always rebuild the system prompt at the commit boundary — keep-prompt now gated on byte equality of the LIVE builder output; plugin sections re-render with fail-open to last good bytes
* feat(clock): 'Conversation started' resolves through the session-lineage ROOT — a compacted/rotated session keeps its original birth date (Bot Mode forever-chats know when they were first born)
* test: retire old-contract pins — plugin sections re-render at invalidate (freeze stays restore-only), commit boundary always runs the live builder, byte-equal keep preserves object identity
* test(system_prompt): cover session-start anchoring + fix Windows-portable expectation
- Add TestSessionStartLike unit tests for _session_start_like(): session-id
embedded timestamp, session_start fallback, now fallback, non-matching id.
- Add a build-level regression: a session started Jan 1 must still render
'Conversation started: Thursday, January 01' when the prompt is rebuilt
on Jan 2 (the rebuild-drift bug).
- test_coding_prompt_preserves_legacy_workspace_order hardcoded '/hermes'
while production renders str(Path('/hermes')) — backslash on Windows made
the suite fail on Windows (CI runs Linux, so it was never caught). Build
the expectation via str(Path()) to match production on every platform.
* fix(system_prompt): anchor 'Conversation started' to the real session start
The timestamp line stamped hermes_time.now() at system-prompt build time.
The prompt is rebuilt on compression, fresh-agent gateway turns, and
resume-without-stored-prompt, so the date silently advanced to whatever
day the prompt was last rebuilt — a chat that started on Wednesday read
as 'Conversation started: Thursday' after a Thursday-morning resume,
contradicting the fresh per-turn time hint.
Resolve the true start via _session_start_like(): the timestamp embedded
in the session id (YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_..., immutable for the session life)
-> agent.session_start -> now() only as last resort. Box-local stamps are
attached to the box's local zone then converted to the rendered zone so
the date is consistent with the per-turn clock. The line stays date-only
and is now byte-stable for the whole session (never moves on rebuild),
preserving prefix-cache KV. The zone suffix and _bot_chat_timeless_prompt
behaviour are untouched.
* feat(system_prompt): two-line conversation clock — anchored start (salvaged #96224, credit @bobaba76) + as-of-last-rebuild date for multi-day sessions
---------
Co-authored-by: bobaba76 <79245850+bobaba76@users.noreply.github.com>
* refactor(prompt): remove the Nous Subscription block from the system prompt (~1.2K tokens/call)
* chore: retrigger CI (zero-job dispatch failure, auto-heal)
The external memory provider's `system_prompt_block()` was injected
unconditionally into the system prompt, while the provider's tools were
gated by `memory_provider_tools_enabled()` via platform_toolsets or
disabled_toolsets. Result: the agent received instructions to call
`mnemosyne_remember`, `mnemosyne_recall`, etc., that did not exist in
its tool surface.
Centralize the gating into `memory_provider_tools_exposed(agent)`, use
it from both `inject_memory_provider_tools` and the system prompt
assembly path, and add regression tests covering:
* memory toolset enabled -> both tools and prompt block exposed,
* memory in disabled_toolsets -> neither exposed,
* memory not in enabled_toolsets and not built-in -> neither exposed,
* the built-in "memory" tool present as an opt-in -> both exposed,
* parity between `inject_memory_provider_tools` and
`memory_provider_tools_exposed`.
Audit finding (Blank Slate): the system prompt advertised web_search,
skill_view, todo, and the hermes-agent skill even when the toolset had
none of them — the model chases phantoms it can't call.
- hermes-agent skill is now essential: cannot be disabled (config reads
strip it, hermes tools writes drop it), cannot be deleted by
skill_manage, is re-seeded past curator suppression, and is seeded
even on .no-bundled-skills profiles (Blank Slate / --no-skills).
- Blank Slate core toolsets grow from file+terminal to
file+terminal+vision+skills: read_file cannot read images and points
at vision_analyze; the essential skill needs skill_view to load.
- HERMES_AGENT_HELP_GUIDANCE degrades to a docs-URL-only variant when
skill tools are absent.
- Execution-discipline guidance drops its web_search lines when web
tools are off (execution_guidance_text renderer).
- Skills-index preamble says 'basic tools like terminal' instead of
naming web_search when web tools are off.
- Coding operating brief drops the todo-tracking sentence when the todo
tool isn't loaded.
All gating keys off agent.valid_tool_names, fixed at session
construction — prompt stays byte-stable per session (cache-safe).
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.
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>
Bot Chats break the "new sessions come often" assumption behind
build-once system prompts: capability edits used to sit invisible until
/new or compression, and the frozen birth date became misinformation.
- tools/bot_mode_probe.py: capability_fingerprint() hashes the profile's
capability surface (disabled skills, toolset pins, MCP config, SOUL.md,
installed skills, Bot-Mode roster); Bot Chat prompts embed the 12-hex
epoch stamp
- agent/conversation_loop.py restore path: stored Bot Chat prompt whose
epoch mismatches disk → ONE rebuild (through a cleared skills-prompt
cache so new installs appear), persisted so the next turn reuses the
new bytes verbatim. Prompts without a stamp — every non-Bot-Chat
session — never take the branch; probe failure fails closed to reuse
- agent/system_prompt.py: Bot Chat prompts are timeless — the
"Conversation started:" date is dropped (timezone kept); no ticking
fields in an eternal session
- tui_gateway: _sync_bot_capabilities at turn start rebuilds the live
agent (tool definitions are construction-baked) when the fingerprint
moves, same session id/history, with a user-visible notice
Cache stance: this is the /model exception applied to capabilities — a
loud, user-initiated, once-per-change prefix break. Unchanged state
hashes identically and stored bytes are reused verbatim (E2E-proven).
Validation: 9 probe unit tests incl. per-axis fingerprint changes;
E2E v3 against the real restore path (fresh build → verbatim reuse →
skill install → single refresh w/ new skill in index → verbatim reuse;
regular sessions dated, unstamped, never refreshed); tests/agent/
4647/4647.
Live desktop E2E caught a write-ordering bug the automated E2E missed:
tui_gateway applies pending_title to state.db AFTER the first turn, but
the system prompt builds at turn START — the DB-title gate saw nothing
and the Bot Chat was cached protocol-less forever. The gateway now
hands the agent its intended title at construction and the gate checks
the hint first, DB second (CLI/messaging-gateway paths unchanged).
Live-verified on the running desktop: fresh bot's Bot Chat persisted
with the protocol section, handle, and roster in its system prompt;
regular sessions and SOUL.md untouched.
Per review: the protocol belongs only in official Bot Mode interactions,
not every session on a managed install. The prompt builder now injects
the section only when the agent's session row is titled "Bot Chat"
(BOT_CHAT_TITLE, matching the desktop's createCanonicalChat pin and the
`hermes -p <bot> chat -c "Bot Chat"` resume target). Regular sessions
never carry it; the desktop composer middleware owns @mention sends.
Title is read once at first prompt build and the rendered prompt is
cached + DB-restored — cache-safe. E2E against the real AIAgent +
SessionDB: absent in an untitled session, present in Bot Chat,
byte-stable across rebuilds, absent after retitle, absent with the
flag off. Overhead unchanged (~916B, Bot Chat sessions only).
Replaces the plugin-side SOUL.md protocol append: on Bot-Mode-managed
installs (any profile carrying ui_meta['hermes-bots']) the prompt builder
injects the "Messaging other agents" section into every session of every
profile — including headless `hermes -p <bot> chat` sessions a teammate
starts — so bot handoffs work without mutating user-authored SOUL files.
- tools/bot_mode_probe.py: silent-when-unmanaged probe, cached per
(process, home), keyed off the agent's OWN home (not ambient
HERMES_HOME); silent when SOUL.md already carries the legacy section
- agent/system_prompt.py + agent_init.py + config_defaults.py: wired as
agent.bot_mode_protocol (default True), stable tier, byte-stable
across rebuilds (E2E-verified against the real build_system_prompt)
- tui_gateway profiles.list gains bot_mode_protocol capability flag;
the bundled plugin gates ALL SOUL protocol writes on it (backfill,
composeSoul, Edit save) — older gateways keep the SOUL-append path
- overhead: ~916 bytes, only on Bot-Mode installs; zero elsewhere
Supersedes the SOUL backfill half of Hermes-Bot-Mode#99 (credit
@kaduxo — the handle fix, `hermes profile list` correction, and
idempotent-append guards from that PR ship in the bundled plugin).
The "Conversation started:" line carried a bare date (%A, %B %d, %Y). Tools
that accept instants -- nutrition, calendar and similar MCP servers -- reject
naive datetimes and require an explicit UTC offset, so the model had to infer
EST vs EDT from the date alone. Near a DST boundary that is a coin flip, and a
wrong guess does not error: it silently writes the record onto the wrong day.
Append the IANA zone (when configured), the zone abbreviation and the UTC
offset, e.g.:
Conversation started: Saturday, August 15, 2026 (America/New_York, EDT, UTC-04:00)
get_timezone() returns None when no timezone is configured; in that case the
line falls back to the abbreviation and offset of the server-local (still
tz-aware) time, so behaviour is unchanged for users who never set one:
Conversation started: Saturday, August 15, 2026 (EDT, UTC-04:00)
Daily byte-stability is preserved -- the property the date-only format exists
to protect (PR #20451). Zone name, abbreviation and offset are all constant for
the whole day; they shift only at a DST transition, where a change is correct.
The static-prefix reconstruction guard in _restore_plugin_sections matches on
"\n\nConversation started:" and is unaffected by a suffix after the date.
test_datetime_is_date_only_not_minute_precision used `re.search(r":\d{2}")`
over the whole line as a proxy for "no time-of-day". A UTC offset also matches
that pattern, so the check now applies to the date portion (everything before
the zone parenthetical) and the invariant is tightened rather than relaxed:
- test_datetime_includes_utc_offset asserts the offset is present
- test_datetime_line_is_stable_across_rebuilds asserts two rebuilds in the
same day produce a byte-identical line
Fixes#87403
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The messaging gateway multiplexes profiles over ONE shared launch-home
state.db, binding the profile per turn via the HERMES_HOME ContextVar
(copy_context into the worker thread). _agent_home derived the home from
db_path unconditionally, so on that lane the launch home stomped the
correctly-bound profile — deterministically inverting the leak #86313
fixed (found by @kshitijk4poor's post-merge probe; @helix4u flagged the
plugin-metadata half).
- _agent_home: bound override wins; session_db home is the unbound-thread
fallback
- _plugin_session_info: profile_name derives from _agent_home too
- full-prompt wiring regression (SOUL + skills + profile line on a bare
thread with the bot's DB) — reverting any call-site wire fails it;
multiplex, bare-thread, and plugin-metadata cases each pinned;
sabotage-verified both new tests fail against the merged behavior
- skills LRU cap 8 -> 32 (key is now per-profile x platform)
load_soul_md resolved the home ambiently, so a build thread that lost the
HERMES_HOME ContextVar read the launch profile's SOUL.md into another
profile's prompt — same class as the skills-index leak fixed in #86313.
load_soul_md and build_context_files_prompt now accept home_override, and
build_system_prompt_parts passes the agent's own home (from session_db)
at both SOUL call sites. Ambient behavior unchanged when no override.
The named-profile branch of the "Active Hermes profile" hint built its
paths by appending `/profiles/{active_profile}` to `get_hermes_home()`.
But `_resolve_active_profile_name()` returns a non-default name *only*
when `get_hermes_home()` has already resolved under `<root>/profiles/`
— that is how it derives the name in the first place. Both scoping
mechanisms (a `HERMES_HOME=<root>/profiles/<name>` env var and the
multiplexer's `set_hermes_home_override` contextvar) satisfy that, so
the suffix always doubled.
The same branch used `get_hermes_home()` for the *default* profile's
data pointers, where the root was intended — placing them inside the
active profile.
On a real 4-profile install the hint rendered:
reads and writes ~/.hermes/profiles/via/profiles/via/
default profile's data lives at ~/.hermes/profiles/via/skills/
against actual paths of `~/.hermes/profiles/via/` and `~/.hermes/skills/`.
Use the session home directly as the profile home, and
`get_default_hermes_root()` for the root pointers. Every named-profile
session was shipping a prompt that named nonexistent directories and
mislabeled this profile's own skills/plugins/cron/memories as the
default profile's — the exact cross-profile confusion the hint and
`classify_cross_profile_target` exist to prevent.
The default-profile branch is unchanged.
Fixes#72894
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The root-derivation for the profile-hint text now only engages when the
agent's own home is known; otherwise the line resolves exactly as before
(via this module's get_hermes_home), fixing
test_coding_prompt_preserves_legacy_workspace_order.
On a correctly bound profile session get_hermes_home() returns the profile
dir itself, so relative_to(home/'profiles') never matched and every profile
misreported as 'default' (with wrong paths in the profile hint text). Use
get_default_hermes_root() for both the name derivation and the default-data
root string. Adds regression tests for the bound-profile and root-home cases;
sabotage-verified the bound-profile test fails against the old resolution.
A bot profile's system prompt could list the DEFAULT profile's ~80
skills and print 'Active Hermes profile: default' — while the live
skills_list() correctly showed the bot's real (often empty) set. The
agent plans against that index, so a false inventory makes it claim
capabilities it doesn't have, waste context tokens, and lose trust.
Root cause (confirmed empirically): the skills-prompt builder and the
active-profile line resolve the home through get_hermes_home(), which
reads a HERMES_HOME ContextVar. ContextVars do NOT propagate into
threading.Thread, so an agent build running on a thread that didn't
bind the profile's home falls back to the launch (default) home and
builds default's index. A bare no-override thread builds default's
full 7621-char block; the same thread with the fix builds empty.
Fix: resolve the agent's OWN home from its dedicated _session_db.db_path
(ground truth, ContextVar-independent) and pass it explicitly:
- build_skills_system_prompt(skills_dir_override=...) scopes the index,
the disk snapshot, and external-dir resolution to that home
- the active-profile line derives the profile name from the same home
Both fall back to ambient resolution when no db is present, so the CLI
and default-profile paths are unchanged.
Regression tests: an empty bot profile yields an empty skills block on
a bare thread even with ambient HERMES_HOME bound to a skills-rich
default; agent-home resolution from session_db.db_path. 3/3.
Salvage the plugin-owned static prompt idea from PR #51589 into the constrained #64167 contract: stable IDs, deterministic placement, bounded fail-open rendering, and full-prompt resume recovery without new session columns.
Co-authored-by: Topher Ross <biz@topherross.com>
load_config_readonly() can raise FileNotFoundError (deleted profile),
RuntimeError (managed mode), and PermissionError before any inner
try/except protects the caller. The except ImportError narrowing would
crash build_system_prompt_parts() — aborting agent startup — instead of
falling back to the base Telegram hint. The isinstance guards from the
second commit handle the TypeError case; the broad except Exception
handles the remaining failure surface.
Guard both extra lookups with isinstance(dict) before merging, so a
truthy non-mapping `extra` value (e.g. `extra: "true"`) degrades to the
base Telegram hint instead of raising TypeError and aborting
system-prompt construction. Keep the narrowed except ImportError.
Add an integration test exercising the real config path (HERMES_HOME +
gateway.platforms.telegram.extra.rich_messages) and a regression test
for the malformed-extra fail-open path. The integration test fails on
main and passes with the fix.
Commit b45a217e0 gated the TELEGRAM_RICH_MESSAGES_HINT extension behind
a config read at the top-level ``platforms.telegram.extra.rich_messages``
key, but the Telegram adapter reads the same setting from the canonical
``gateway.platforms.telegram.extra.rich_messages`` path. When users set
the setting in the canonical location (the only one documented), the
lookup returned None and the extension never fired — the model degraded
pipe tables to bullet lists, task lists to plain dashes, and never
produced <details> blocks or block math.
Fix: merge both ``gateway.platforms.telegram.extra`` and the top-level
``platforms.telegram.extra`` with the same precedence the adapter uses
(top-level leaf wins), so config-wizard writes and dashboard-setup keys
are visible alongside the canonical gateway location. Narrow the
except-guard to ImportError so real config-stack failures surface.
Simplify-pass finding: the safety note still cited 'skills edited' as a stable-tier input whose change mismatches the rebuilt prefix — after this PR a skill edit changes only the volatile tail (that's the point). Swap the example for genuinely stable-tier inputs.
The skills index is runtime-mutable: the agent adds and patches skills mid-session, so it is not byte-stable. Keeping it in the stable band breaks that band prefix-cache contract, because every skill edit changes the stable band and invalidates the entire cached prefix in front of it. Move it to the front of the volatile band so the stable scaffold (identity, tool guidance, model guidance) stays cacheable across skill edits.
The static-prefix reconstruction pattern (build_system_prompt_parts ->
['stable'] -> startswith gate -> fail-open) existed in three copies:
session restore (conversation_loop), compression keep-prompt path
(conversation_compression), and the new failover redecoration helper.
Hoist it into agent/system_prompt.reconstruct_static_prefix and call it
from all three sites.
Also memoize failed rebuilds per stored prompt (_static_rebuild_failed_for):
the redecoration chokepoint runs at the top of every retry attempt, and a
persistent stable-tier mismatch (restored session whose SOUL.md/skills
changed since save) would otherwise re-run the full prompt build — SOUL.md,
context files, memory I/O — on every attempt of every API call for the
life of the session. A legitimately changed stored prompt retries once.
The system prompt building code hardcoded '~/.hermes' paths instead of
using get_hermes_home(). When HERMES_HOME is set to a custom location,
the prompt text still referenced ~/.hermes, confusing the AI about
where files actually live.
Changed:
- Import get_hermes_home from hermes_constants
- Default profile hint: ~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/ → <home>/profiles/<name>/
- Non-default profile hint: ~/.hermes/... → <home>/... for all paths
Closes#66450
Follow-up on the salvaged #64611 commit: the original guard blocked the
install tree unconditionally, which would have broken the legitimate
'developing Hermes from a source clone' CLI flow (launching hermes inside
the repo and getting its AGENTS.md as project context).
Refined policy:
- resolve_context_cwd(): validates configured paths (missing dir -> None +
warning) but honors an EXPLICIT install-tree cwd verbatim — deliberate
user choice.
- build_context_files_prompt(): blocks only the cwd=None -> os.getcwd()
FALLBACK into the install tree, with a new allow_install_tree_fallback
param. system_prompt.py passes it for platform cli/tui (launch dir is
the user's real shell cwd there); desktop/gateway surfaces keep the
guard (their fallback dir is self-spawned, never user-picked).
- Warning log names the resolved dir and the terminal.cwd remedy.
E2E-verified all five scenarios: desktop fallback blocked, in-tree CLI dev
keeps AGENTS.md, explicit install-tree cwd honored, invalid TERMINAL_CWD
falls to None then blocked, normal workspace loads.
The platform hint in PLATFORM_HINTS['telegram'] always encouraged rich
Markdown constructs (tables, task lists, math, collapsible details) even
when rich_messages: false (the default). This caused the agent to produce
formatting that MarkdownV2 cannot render, especially broken on Telegram Web.
Split the hint into a base hint (MarkdownV2-compatible) and a
TELEGRAM_RICH_MESSAGES_HINT extension. The extension is conditionally
appended in system_prompt.py only when
platforms.telegram.extra.rich_messages is true.
Fixes#57122
The desktop app's chat panel reuses tui_gateway as its backend, so every chat session was stamped platform="tui". That made the agent read terminal-specific platform guidance while running in the graphical desktop chat surface.
Resolve the misclassification at its source: tui_gateway now picks platform="desktop" when HERMES_DESKTOP=1 and HERMES_DESKTOP_TERMINAL is unset, and keeps platform="tui" for the embedded terminal pane and standalone TUI. Add a PLATFORM_HINTS["desktop"] entry describing the actual chat surface (full GFM markdown, MEDIA: intercept, inline images). Move the embedded-pane clarifier to the platform-hint resolution site so it appends only to the tui hint under HERMES_DESKTOP_TERMINAL=1. Delete the now-dead desktop-hint block from build_environment_hints() that competed with the platform hint.
Standalone TUI sessions produce byte-identical prompts as before; the new desktop hint and clarifier are assembled once per session in the stable tier, so prompt caching is preserved.
Make the computer_use toolset platform-agnostic by driving cua-driver on
macOS, Windows, and Linux. Consumes the 8 cua-driver decoupling surfaces
(capability discovery, structuredContent AX tree, opaque element_token,
click button enum, explicit mimeType, machine-readable manifest,
structured list_windows, structured health_report), each degrading
gracefully on older drivers.
Adds `hermes computer-use doctor` (drives cua-driver health_report with a
per-OS check matrix and an exit 0/1/2 ok/degraded/blocked contract), full
typed wrappers for the previously-uncovered cua-driver tools plus a generic
call_tool escape hatch, per-session agent-cursor lifecycle, platform-aware
system-prompt guidance (host-deterministic, cache-safe), and honors
HERMES_CUA_DRIVER_CMD end-to-end.
Replaces the macOS-only skills/apple/macos-computer-use skill with a
cross-platform skills/computer-use skill, and refreshes the EN + zh-Hans
docs.
Supersedes #44221 (Windows-enablement salvage of #30660).
Co-authored-by: Teknium <127238744+teknium1@users.noreply.github.com>
Add platform_hints config so an admin can append to or replace Hermes'
built-in platform hint for a single messaging platform (WhatsApp, Slack,
Telegram, ...) without affecting other platforms. Enables enterprise
managed profiles to steer platform-aware skills (e.g. invoke a custom
table-formatting skill on WhatsApp where Markdown tables don't render)
while leaving Telegram/Slack/CLI behavior unchanged.
- hermes_cli/config.py: document platform_hints in DEFAULT_CONFIG
- agent/agent_init.py: load platform_hints -> agent._platform_hint_overrides
- agent/system_prompt.py: _resolve_platform_hint() applies append/replace
(replace wins; bare string = append shorthand); defensive on bad config
- tests: 16 cases covering append/replace/shorthand/isolation/malformed
Override only affects the platform-hint segment of the system prompt;
SOUL/context/memory tiers and general instructions are unchanged.
* Port from cline/cline#11514: encourage parallel tool calls
Add a universal system-prompt guidance block telling the model to batch
independent tool calls (reads, searches, web fetches, read-only commands)
into a single assistant turn instead of one call per turn. The runtime
already executes independent batches concurrently (read-only tools always;
non-overlapping path-scoped file ops); the open-source system prompt had
nothing steering the model to PRODUCE the batch. Fewer round-trips means
less resent context, which compounds over a long conversation.
- prompt_builder.py: new PARALLEL_TOOL_CALL_GUIDANCE block (short, static,
cache-amortised) modeled on TASK_COMPLETION_GUIDANCE.
- system_prompt.py: inject right after the task-completion block, gated by
agent.valid_tool_names + the new toggle.
- agent_init.py: read agent.parallel_tool_call_guidance (default True).
- config.py: add the default under the agent section.
- test_prompt_builder.py: behavior-contract tests (batching steer, dependent
carve-out, length bound) — invariants, not wording snapshots.
Adapted from Cline's TypeScript tool-surface guidance to hermes-agent's
Python prompt-assembly architecture and config-over-env conventions.
* fix(desktop): never persist or restore a named custom provider as bare "custom"
Custom providers vanish from the Desktop/TUI model picker with
"No LLM provider configured" — repeatedly fixed (#44062, #44109, #45578)
and repeatedly regressed (#44022, #47714) because every fix only recovered
the entry identity from a persisted base_url. When a session is
persisted/restored with the resolved provider "custom" and NO base_url, bare
"custom" leaked through verbatim; resolve_runtime_provider("custom") routes to
the OpenRouter default URL with no api_key, so the next turn/resume dies.
Bare "custom" is the resolved billing class shared by every named providers:/
custom_providers: entry — it is not a routable identity. Centralize the
"never let bare custom escape" invariant in one helper,
runtime_provider.canonical_custom_identity(), and apply it at all four leak
sites in tui_gateway/server.py:
- _ensure_session_db_row — the ORIGIN: first DB write seeds the bad row
- _runtime_model_config — live persist
- _stored_session_runtime_overrides — resume restore (heals old rows; drops
unrecoverable bare custom so resume falls back to config default)
- _make_agent — rebuild / per-turn
The helper recovers custom:<name> from the endpoint URL when present, else
from config.model.provider (the durable identity left when no base_url
survived). Regression tests in test_custom_provider_session_persistence.py
lock the no-base_url vector at every site so it cannot regress again.
Context files (AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, .hermes.md, .cursorrules, SOUL.md) were
hard-capped at a flat 20K chars before head/tail truncation. Among the agent
harnesses we track, only Codex caps project docs at all (32 KiB); Claude Code,
OpenCode, and Cline load them whole. The flat 20K predates large context
windows and silently truncates real-world AGENTS.md files.
B — dynamic cap: when context_file_max_chars is unset (now the shipped
default), the cap scales with the model's context window
(ctx_tokens * 4 * 0.06, floor 20K, ceiling 500K). Small-context models stay at
the historical 20K; a 200K model gets 48K; large models stop truncating real
docs. An explicit context_file_max_chars still wins. Context length is resolved
once per conversation (stable -> prompt cache untouched).
C — when truncation does happen, the marker now names the concrete file path
and tells the agent to read_file it for the full content.
Validation: 154 targeted tests + full agent/ + hermes_cli/ + test_config
(0 failures); E2E against a real 60K AGENTS.md confirms small windows truncate
with the path-bearing marker, large windows load whole, and the system prompt
is byte-stable across rebuilds.
PROBLEM: Automatic context files such as SOUL.md and AGENTS.md were capped by a hardcoded CONTEXT_FILE_MAX_CHARS value. Amy's local fork had raised that constant from 20K to 25K so a larger SOUL.md would not be silently truncated, but the hardcoded 25K value changed upstream default behavior and made the patch less generally useful.
SOLUTION: Restore the upstream-compatible 20K default, add a context_file_max_chars config setting for users who intentionally keep larger identity/project-context files, keep chat-visible truncation warnings, and document the new setting. Tests cover the default, config override, explicit max_chars precedence, and the warning text.
The coding posture's names-only demotion of non-coding skill categories
(#44342) applied under the default auto mode, silently changing the skill
index for every user in a git repo. Index changes must be opt-in: demotion
now only fires under agent.coding_context=focus, alongside the toolset
collapse. auto/on leave the skill index untouched; focus semantics are
unchanged (demoted, never hidden; deny-list keeps coding-adjacent and
custom categories at full entries).
Real-world failure with the original index pruning: under the default auto
posture, an agent-created ops skill in a demoted category vanished from the
prompt's skill index mid-project, and the agent silently fell back to a
stale sibling skill instead. The "discovery-only" premise didn't hold —
models do not reach for skills_list to rediscover what the index stops
showing them, and agent-created skills are the model's accumulated project
memory (runbooks, pitfalls, operating rules).
Gating pruning behind the opt-in focus mode was the wrong fix too: users
opening a worktree don't know the config exists, so the index-noise win
would effectively never ship.
Instead, the coding posture now DEMOTES non-coding categories rather than
hiding them: each demoted category renders as a single names-only line
("gaming [names only]: allthemons10-ops, mc-backup") with a footer note
explaining the omitted descriptions. Every skill name stays in the prompt,
so memory-anchored recall ("load <name>") keeps working in every mode,
while the description noise is still cut. Applies in auto/on/focus alike;
the general posture demotes nothing. Deny-list semantics unchanged —
unknown/custom categories and coding-adjacent ones keep full entries.
API renamed to match the honest semantics: hidden_skill_categories →
compact_skill_categories, build_skills_system_prompt(hidden_categories=) →
compact_categories=.
* feat(agent): coding-context posture with per-model edit-format tuning
Hermes detects when it's running in a coding context — an interactive
surface (CLI, TUI, ACP, desktop) sitting in a code workspace (git repo or
recognised project root) — and shifts into a coding posture. Outside that
(chat platforms, non-workspaces) nothing changes.
The posture is modelled as a frozen RuntimeMode selected from a small
ContextProfile registry (coding/general). A profile is data: the toolset to
collapse to, the operating brief to inject, and seams for model routing and
memory. Every domain reads the same resolved object instead of re-probing
git/config on its own:
- System prompt — RuntimeMode.system_blocks(): an operating brief (gather
context before editing, edit through tools not chat, verify with terminal,
cap retry loops) plus a live git/workspace snapshot, built once and baked
into the stable prompt tier so per-conversation caching is preserved.
- Per-model edit-format tuning — the brief nudges each model family toward
the patch mode it handles best: OpenAI/Codex toward mode='patch' (V4A
multi-file diffs), Anthropic toward mode='replace' (string replacement).
The model id rides on RuntimeMode; unknown families keep neutral wording.
- Skill index — non-coding skill categories are pruned from the prompt's
skill index (discovery-only; skills_list/skill_view still reach the full
catalog, with a disclosure note).
- Toolset — only under the opt-in 'focus' mode does the posture collapse to
the coding toolset + enabled MCP servers; the default posture is
prompt-only and never overrides configured toolsets.
Activation via agent.coding_context: auto (default), focus, on, off.
Subagents inherit the posture for free via toolset inheritance + the shared
prompt builder. Detection is not memoized so a long-lived gateway/TUI
process can't pin a stale posture across working directories.
* feat(agent): cover new-file authoring in the coding edit-format nudge
The per-model edit-format guidance only addressed editing existing code
(patch mode='patch' vs 'replace'), but authoring a brand-new file —
write_file, not patch — is a large fraction of real coding work and the
nudge was silent on it. Surfaced when building a single-file artifact where
the dominant operation was write_file and the steering offered no guidance.
Both family lines now lead with "author new files with write_file; for
edits to existing code prefer ...". Tests assert write_file appears in each
family's brief; unknown families still get neutral wording.
* docs(agent): correct memoization docstring + clarify TUI config-load asymmetry
* feat(agent): sharpen the coding posture — verify-loop facts, wider edit steering, $HOME guard
Tuning pass on the coding posture from dogfooding it as a harness:
- Workspace snapshot now hands the model its verify loop up front:
detected manifests + package manager (lockfile sniff), the exact
verify commands (package.json scripts, Makefile targets,
scripts/run_tests.sh, pytest config), and which context files
(AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md / .cursorrules) exist at the root. Marker-only
(non-git) projects get the snapshot too instead of nothing. The
"verify before claiming done" brief line was the highest-value piece
in evals — this turns it from advice into an executable loop instead
of making the model rediscover the test command every session. Still
stat-cheap, size-guarded reads, built once at prompt time.
- Edit-format steering covers the families Hermes actually serves:
Gemini and open-weight coding models (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, GLM,
Grok, Hermes, Llama, Mistral, Devstral, MiniMax) steer to
mode='replace' — their RL scaffolds use str_replace-style editors.
Previously only GPT/Codex and Claude families got steering; the
models Hermes users disproportionately run all fell to neutral.
- Operating brief gains four behaviors elite harnesses encode: batch
independent reads/searches in one turn; fix root causes and the bug
class (sibling call paths), not the reported site; no drive-by
refactors/renames/reformatting; never read, print, or commit secrets.
Plus a patch-failure escalation ladder: after the same region fails
twice, rewrite the enclosing function/file with write_file instead of
a third patch attempt.
- $HOME dotfiles guard: a git repo rooted exactly at the home directory
(or a marker sitting in it, e.g. a global ~/AGENTS.md) is user config,
not a code workspace — without the guard, every session anywhere under
a dotfiles-managed home silently flipped to the coding posture. Real
projects under such a home still detect via their own markers/repos;
'on' mode bypasses the guard.
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.
* fix(codex): surface error code in Responses 'failed' status errors
When a Codex Responses turn ends with status=failed, the response carries
the failure details under `response.error` as
`{code, message, param, ...}`. The previous extractor pulled only
`message`, so users seeing a rate-limit failure got a bare "Slow down"
string indistinguishable from a generic stream truncation; an
internal_error with empty message degraded to a dict dump
("{'code': 'internal_error', 'message': ''}").
Extract a `_format_responses_error()` helper that:
- prefixes `code` when both code and message are present
(e.g. 'rate_limit_exceeded: Slow down')
- falls back to the bare `code` when message is empty
- accepts both dict and attribute-style payloads (SDK and JSON-RPC paths)
- preserves the prior status-only fallback when no error payload exists
Apply the same helper at the sibling site in
`codex_app_server_session.run_turn()` so codex-CLI subprocess turn
failures get the same treatment.
Tests:
- 8 new unit tests for `_format_responses_error` covering both shapes,
empty/missing fields, non-string fields, and the status-only fallback.
- 2 regression tests on `_normalize_codex_response` for failed status
with and without a code, asserting the exact RuntimeError message.
- All 3603 tests in tests/agent/ pass.
Adapted from anomalyco/opencode#28757.
* feat(prompt): universal task-completion guidance + local Python toolchain probe
Two cross-model failure modes get a single-line answer in the cached
system prompt. Both gated by config (default on), both add zero overhead
when not needed, both verified via real AIAgent prompt builds.
## What changed
`TASK_COMPLETION_GUIDANCE` — short prompt block applied to ALL models.
Targets two failure modes observed on a real Sarasota real-estate build
task: (1) Opus stopped after writing an 85-byte stub and gave a prose
response with finish_reason=stop on call #3 of 90; (2) DeepSeek pushed
through a PEP-668 wall, then returned fabricated listings instead of
admitting the blocker. Both behaviors are model-family-agnostic, so the
guidance lives outside the existing tool_use_enforcement gate (~192
tokens, paid once per session via prefix cache).
`tools/env_probe.py` — local Python toolchain probe. Detects
python3/pip/uv/PEP-668 state and emits ONE short line in the system
prompt when something is non-default. Emits NOTHING when the env is
clean (zero token cost for normal users). Skipped entirely for remote
terminal backends (docker/modal/ssh) — they have their own probe.
Example output on a broken environment (the actual case):
Python toolchain: python3=3.11.15 (no pip module),
python=missing (use python3), pip→python3.12 (mismatch),
PEP 668=yes (use venv or uv).
## Config
Both flags live under `agent.` in config.yaml, default True:
agent:
task_completion_guidance: true # universal "finish the job" block
environment_probe: true # local Python toolchain hints
Neither addition required a `_config_version` bump — deep-merge fills
defaults in for existing user configs.
## Validation
| Test surface | Result |
|---|---|
| tests/tools/test_env_probe.py | 10/10 pass (probe unit) |
| tests/run_agent/test_run_agent.py — new classes | 8/8 pass (integration) |
| TestToolUseEnforcementConfig | 17/17 pass (no regression) |
| TestBuildSystemPrompt | 9/9 pass (no regression) |
| TestInvalidateSystemPrompt | 2/2 pass (no regression) |
| tests/agent/test_prompt_builder.py | 124/124 pass (no regression) |
| tests/hermes_cli/ | 5662/5662 pass (config defaults) |
| E2E AIAgent build (broken env) | Both blocks present, 2,178 chars |
| E2E AIAgent build (clean env) | 771-char net overhead, env probe silent |
* fix(profiles): cross-profile soft guard on file-write tools + system-prompt hint
Adds a soft guard so an agent running under one Hermes profile cannot
silently edit a different profile's skills/plugins/cron/memories.
Three layers:
A. agent/file_safety.classify_cross_profile_target
Classifies a write target against the active HERMES_HOME. Returns
a {active_profile, target_profile, area, target_path} dict when the
path lands in another profile's scoped area. PROFILE_SCOPED_AREAS =
(skills, plugins, cron, memories). get_cross_profile_warning()
wraps it into a model-facing error string that names both profiles,
names the area, and points at the cross_profile=True bypass.
Defense-in-depth, NOT a security boundary — the terminal tool runs
as the same OS user and can write any of these paths directly. The
guard exists to prevent confused-agent corruption, not to stop a
determined attacker. SECURITY.md §3.2 (terminal-bypass posture)
still applies.
Wired into tools/file_tools.write_file_tool and patch_tool with a
cross_profile=False kwarg. WRITE_FILE_SCHEMA and PATCH_SCHEMA both
advertise cross_profile so the model can pass it after explicit
user direction. patch_tool extracts target paths from V4A patch
bodies before checking (same shape as the existing sensitive-path
check).
skill_manage is already scoped to the active profile's SKILLS_DIR
by construction, so no extra guard wiring is needed there. The
D-side error message (below) still names other profiles when the
skill exists elsewhere.
B. agent/system_prompt
One deterministic line near the environment-hints block names the
active profile and tells the model not to modify another profile's
skills/plugins/cron/memories without explicit direction. Profile
name is stable for the lifetime of the AIAgent, so the line is
prompt-cache-safe.
D. tools/skill_manager_tool._skill_not_found_error
Replaces the bare "Skill 'X' not found." with a message that:
- names the active profile,
- searches OTHER profiles' skills dirs for the same name,
- names the profile(s) where the skill exists and the path,
- suggests `hermes -p <name>` to switch profiles, or
cross_profile=True for an explicit edit.
All 5 "not found" sites in skill_manager_tool (edit, patch, delete,
write_file, remove_file) now go through the helper.
Reference incident (May 2026): a hermes-security profile session
edited skills under both ~/.hermes/profiles/hermes-security/skills/
AND ~/.hermes/skills/ (the default profile's skills) without
realizing the second path belonged to a different profile. Three of
the four skill files needed manual restoration afterward.
What this PR does NOT do:
* No hard block. The terminal tool can still touch any of these
paths with no guard — same posture as the dangerous-command
approval flow. SECURITY.md §3.2 applies.
* No regex sweep on terminal commands for cross-profile paths.
That direction is a Skills-Guard-style arms race (cd + relative
paths, base64, etc.) and would false-positive on legitimate
cross-profile reads. Filed as a follow-up.
* No on-disk path migration. ~/.hermes/skills/ remains the
default profile's skills dir; this PR is about telling the
agent about that boundary, not changing the layout.
Tests:
tests/agent/test_file_safety_cross_profile.py (16 tests)
- _resolve_active_profile_name covers default/named/failure paths
- classify_cross_profile_target covers all four scoped areas,
both directions (default → named, named → default, named → named),
non-Hermes paths, and root-level config files
- get_cross_profile_warning covers in-profile no-op, cross-profile
message shape, and the defense-in-depth self-documentation
tests/tools/test_cross_profile_guard.py (12 tests)
- write_file: in-profile allow, cross-profile block, cross_profile=True
bypass, non-Hermes pass-through
- patch: replace-mode block, cross_profile=True bypass, V4A patch
path extraction
- skill_manage: error names the other profile (single + multiple),
missing-everywhere falls back to skills_list hint
- system prompt: contract-level checks (both branches present,
cross_profile=True mentioned, ~/.hermes/profiles/ referenced)
All 207 existing tests in file_safety/file_operations/skill_manager
still pass. 10 system-prompt tests still pass.
E2E verified: the exact incident scenario (security profile editing
default's hermes-agent-dev skill) is now blocked with the warning
message; cross_profile=True unblocks.
* fix(code_execution): add cross_profile to write_file/patch stubs
The cross_profile kwarg added to write_file_tool/patch_tool needs to
flow through the execute_code sandbox stubs in _TOOL_STUBS so the
test_stubs_cover_all_schema_params drift test passes. Without this,
scripts running inside execute_code couldn't pass cross_profile=True
through hermes_tools.write_file().
Caught by CI on PR #31290.
Salvages #24402 by @RyanRana. The KANBAN_GUIDANCE block (~835 tokens)
is session-static — the dispatcher decides at spawn time whether the
process is a kanban worker via the kanban_show tool's check_fn (gated
on HERMES_KANBAN_TASK env var). Re-checking 'kanban_show' in
valid_tool_names and re-loading the reference on every system-prompt
rebuild (init + each context compression) is wasted work.
Caches the resolved string on agent._kanban_worker_guidance once in
agent_init and consumes it in system_prompt.build_system_prompt(),
with a getattr fallback for code paths that bypass agent_init.
Teknium