Second real-world topology reported and confirmed on native Windows 11:
the repository itself is a cross-drive junction (D:\hermes\hermes-agent ->
C:\...\hermes-agent) under a real HERMES_HOME directory. The editable
import spelling resolves to the physical location, so _hermes_repo_root is
physical while the launcher writes the lexical spelling into PYTHONPATH.
The home-relative mapping cannot express a cross-drive link (commonpath
raises on different drives), so the lexical repo root survives stripping;
and with the repo alias missing, a lexical VIRTUAL_ENV
(D:\hermes\hermes-agent\venv) also fails _validated_runtime_venv, so the
venv site-packages survives too (uv-base gateway: both entries survive).
Fix: after the existing home/profile-root mapping, try the single
deterministic candidate <lexical root>/<repo dirname> for every trusted
home candidate (configured home, plus the profile root when the configured
home is a profile path) and accept it only when strict resolve proves it is
the exact physical repo root (fail-closed: missing paths, real directories
that are not the known repo, and unrelated spellings are never aliased).
This also re-enables the VIRTUAL_ENV validation for lexical venv spellings,
so uv-base gateway site-packages cleanup follows the repo alias.
Tests: repo-level junction positive + negative control (same-named real
directory preserved), profile-home + repo-level junction combination,
lexical VIRTUAL_ENV validation after recovery (root + site-packages
stripped, user entries kept), and a no-provenance lookalike preserved.
The execute_code composition test now compares composed paths with
os.path.normcase so a Windows case-only spelling difference (resolve() vs
abspath() casing) can never fail the composition contract.
Xinyu Du
d67cd58e77