The smart-approval guardian (`_smart_approve`) gates every flagged
terminal command with a synchronous auxiliary LLM call, but it never
passes `timeout=` and logs nothing on the normal path. In production a
stalled provider response silently froze the agent turn for 62 minutes
with zero log output; the gateway kill-switch eventually fired, and only
an unrelated error surfaced afterwards (#82846; watchdog-style fix in
#72500). The call was invisible by design — nothing logs at the hang
point.
Changes in tools/approval.py:
- Resolve the same configured timeout the client would use internally
(`auxiliary.approval.timeout` via `_get_task_timeout("approval")`) and
pass it explicitly to `call_llm`, so the deadline cannot be lost if the
internal default resolution changes or is misconfigured.
- Log the assessment call and its duration (DEBUG), and promote the
failure branch from DEBUG to WARNING with elapsed time + exception
class, so a wedged guardian call is visible in the logs instead of
silent.
- Failure still returns "escalate" (fail open to the human/pattern
gate) — behavior unchanged, observability only.
Complements #72500 (watchdog hard ceiling) rather than duplicating it:
explicit timeout is the root-cause hardening, logging closes the
silence gap; the watchdog remains the safety net if the SDK-level
timeout itself is defeated.
Tests: explicit timeout forwarded to call_llm (revert-fails), failure
logs WARNING + escalates. 49 approval-adjacent tests pass; one unrelated
test_approval.py failure is pre-existing (fails on clean main too).
Second, deeper pass over tools/gateway/hermes_cli plus first pass over
the trees wave 1 missed (acp, acp_adapter, skills, computer_use, docker,
dashboard, conformance, monitoring, secret_sources, hermes_state,
providers). Same rubric as wave 1 (AGENTS.md test policy); security,
alternation/caching invariants, issue-number regressions, and E2E kept.
Real test-quality fixes found and rooted out along the way:
- tests/tools/test_command_guards.py made real auxiliary-LLM HTTPS calls
(DEFAULT_CONFIG smart-approval leaked in) — pinned approval
mode=manual via autouse fixture: 17.4s → 0.4s.
- test_model_switch_custom_providers.py / test_user_providers_model_switch.py
silently probed live provider catalogs (~2s/test) — stubbed
cached_provider_model_ids/provider_model_ids/fetch_api_models.
- test_telegram_noise_filter.py: 15-platform copy-paste matrix over
shared gateway.run logic → 3 representative platforms (55s → 3.9s).
- test_gateway_shutdown.py: stop()'s 5s interrupt-deadline loop spun on
MagicMock agents — interrupt.side_effect now clears _running_agents
(22s → 1.0s).
- test_gateway_inactivity_timeout.py poll-harness timings shrunk 3-5x
(24s → 1.1s); test_mcp_stability.py backoff/SIGTERM-grace sleeps
patched (15.4s → 2.5s); test_async_delegation.py negative-drain wait
5s → 0.5s.
- test_telegram_init_deadline.py: loop-block margin restored to 1.0s
with rationale comment — the watchdog-dump assertion needs the loop
blocked well past deadline+grace under parallel load (flaked once in
the 40-worker verification run at a 0.2s margin).
Verification: full hermetic suite via scripts/run_tests.sh —
2,438 files, 21,718 tests passed, 0 failed, 293.9s wall.
Suite totals vs original baseline: 46,820 → 19,757 test functions
(−57.8%), wall 583.5s → 293.9s (−50%), subprocess CPU 13,564s → 11,623s.
Teknium