Spill files (terminal overflow, hook context, web_extract full text,
subagent summaries) were written with plain open()/write_text into
predictable directories. A pre-planted symlink at any of those paths
redirected the write onto an arbitrary user-owned file, and raw
pre-redaction terminal/hook spills landed world-readable under the
default umask.
New tools/spill_safety.py helpers create files with
O_CREAT|O_EXCL|O_NOFOLLOW (a link-shaped path fails the write instead of
following it) and overwrite via lstat-checked unlink + exclusive
re-create, so even the redaction rewrite cannot be diverted. Private
tier (0o700 dir / 0o600 file) covers raw terminal and hook spills;
cache/web and cache/delegation keep umask perms because those dirs are
bind-mounted into remote backends that must read them.
Pattern borrowed from DeepSeek Harness dsh-spill-local (MIT):
private root + exclusive owner-only opens for spill artifacts.
Port from openai/codex#21069 ("Spill large hook outputs from context").
Both shell hooks and Python plugins can return {"context": "..."} from
pre_llm_call, which gets appended to the current turn's user message on
every subsequent API call. A plugin that emits a large blob inflates
every turn and blows out the prompt cache prefix.
- tools/hook_output_spill.py: shared helper that writes oversized
context to $HERMES_HOME/hook_outputs/<session_id>/<uuid>.txt and
returns a head/tail preview plus the saved path. Never raises.
- agent/turn_context.py: apply the cap at the pre_llm_call aggregation
site (moved here from run_agent.py since the original PR), covering
both Python plugins and shell hooks.
- agent/shell_hooks.py: reserve output_spill as a sub-key under hooks:
so the config block doesn't emit unknown-hook-event warnings.
- Docs: document the cap + config in build-a-hermes-plugin.md.
Config (behaviour-preserving when absent):
hooks.output_spill: enabled/max_chars/preview_head/preview_tail/directory
Tests: 14 unit tests; shell_hooks (56) and plugins (100) suites green.
E2E validated with isolated HERMES_HOME (spill, passthrough, traversal
sanitisation, reserved-key skip).
Teknium