The prefix is an address: the caller is naming WHICH agent the request is
for. With gateway.multiplex_profiles off, _resolve_request_profile ignored
the prefix entirely — "don't 404 a would-be valid route" — so a request
explicitly addressed to one agent was silently answered by a different one.
Observed live (Aug 2026): `hermes peer dm mini/researcher` was answered by
the mini's DEFAULT agent with no error on either side, because that host
runs one LaunchDaemon per profile and only the default daemon hosted an
api_server. A wrong-agent answer is strictly worse than an error: the
sender believes the addressee got the message.
With multiplexing off the process serves exactly one profile, so the prefix
is honored when it names that profile (peers address single-profile daemons
this way without knowing the host's topology — get_active_profile_name() is
the same identity the file already uses for model resolution) and rejected
otherwise through the existing _PROFILE_REJECTED path (404). A process that
cannot resolve its own identity rejects too: if it cannot prove who it is,
it must not answer as anyone.
Unprefixed requests are untouched, and multiplexed hosts are untouched —
the change is confined to the prefix-present, multiplexing-off branch that
previously discarded the caller's addressing.
John Paul Soliva
265bdcac82