generate_base_drafts hardens every base draft to a transparent PNG with
_harden_transparency. When the provider returned a non-PNG file (webp,
jpg, or gif), the hardened PNG is saved under a new path and the original
draft is left in cache/images. Nothing prunes that directory outside the
gateway housekeeping loop, so a CLI or desktop draft round leaks one
original per non-PNG draft.
Remove the original after a successful hardening when the output path
differs from the input. PNG inputs (including mixed-case suffixes like
.PNG) are hardened in place so a case-insensitive filesystem cannot
treat with_suffix(".png") as a different file and unlink the output.
Each hatch generates one row strip per state into cache/images and
extracts the animation frames from it, but never removes the strip. The
only cleanup for that directory runs in the gateway housekeeping loop,
which a CLI, desktop, or cron hatch never starts, so the strips
accumulate for good.
Drop the strip after every attempt once its frames are decoded into
memory, including failed or retried attempts, so a hatch no longer grows
the image cache without bound.
The pet generation image-processing suite is deterministic but expensive enough
to blow the per-file CI timeout on Linux (140s), and it is not relevant to the
fast timeout PR's normal signal. Keep it available for manual validation, but do
not run it by default.
Set HERMES_RUN_SLOW_PET_TESTS=1 to enable the suite. The canonical test wrapper
now preserves that opt-in variable through its hermetic env.
OpenRouter/Nous image gen now runs a quality-first model chain by default:
attempt the highest-fidelity OpenAI image model first, then fall back to
Gemini 3 Pro Image when it's access-gated/unavailable/times out. An explicit
OPENROUTER_IMAGE_MODEL / config model override pins one model with no fallback.
Atlas validation rejects malformed model output instead of shipping it: adds a
per-state collapse guard (a single sliver/fragment row no longer passes because
other rows are healthy), on top of the existing postage-stamp + multi-pose
checks.
Desktop: pet-gen native notifications are now "global" (not tied to a chat
session), so a background generation started from the command center fires an
OS notification when the user is away even with no active session. Adds a
neutral "This can take up to 5 minutes." banner on step 1, and lets the
provider picker auto-size.
Tests updated/added for the OpenRouter fallback chain, the collapse guard, and
the global notification path.
Ship the final pet-generation UX polish (provider picker behavior, step-2 cancel flow, banner integration, and visual consistency) and make saturated-chroma background removal C-op driven so hatch processing no longer hammers the machine during long runs.
Turn a text prompt into a petdex-spec spritesheet (8×9 grid of 192×208
cells), grounded so every animation row stays the same creature:
- orchestrate: base drafts (distinct variation nudges) → per-row grounded
generation → atlas compose; one image call per row, rows fan out in parallel.
- atlas: frame-perfect registration in normalize_cells — 1-D cross-correlation
of each frame's column-mass profile locks the body (robust to limbs/cape),
one shared per-state scale, bottom-anchored; plus alpha-hole repair, gutter
severing, and interior-seeded chroma-pocket clearing.
- prompts: pixel-art-by-default style hints + registration constraints.
- store: local pet write (register_local_pet), slugify/unique_slug,
export_pet, slug-realigning rename_pet, createdBy provenance.
Teknium