diff --git a/gateway/profile_routing.py b/gateway/profile_routing.py
index 205f36d0630c..b2884858fe52 100644
--- a/gateway/profile_routing.py
+++ b/gateway/profile_routing.py
@@ -130,10 +130,15 @@ def parse_profile_routes(raw: Optional[List[Dict[str, Any]]]) -> List[ProfileRou
                 name,
             )
             continue
-        # Validate profile name to prevent path traversal
+        # Validate profile name to prevent path traversal. Lazy import avoids a
+        # circular dependency at module load time.
         try:
-            from hermes_constants import validate_profile_name as _validate
-            profile = _validate(profile)
+            from hermes_cli.profiles import (
+                normalize_profile_name,
+                validate_profile_name,
+            )
+            profile = normalize_profile_name(profile)
+            validate_profile_name(profile)
         except (ValueError, ImportError):
             logger.warning("Skipping profile route %s: invalid profile name %r", name, profile)
             continue
diff --git a/hermes_constants.py b/hermes_constants.py
index 3f26a4a27fd7..6e344844812d 100644
--- a/hermes_constants.py
+++ b/hermes_constants.py
@@ -10,7 +10,6 @@ import stat
 import sys
 import sysconfig
 from contextvars import ContextVar, Token
-import re
 from pathlib import Path
 
 
@@ -1218,46 +1217,3 @@ FINISH_REASON_LENGTH = "length"
 
 OPENROUTER_BASE_URL = "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1"
 OPENROUTER_MODELS_URL = f"{OPENROUTER_BASE_URL}/models"
-
-# ─── Profile Normalization ────────────────────────────────────────────────
-
-# Standard (non-isolated) profile names.  All three are treated identically
-# for gating and filtering purposes.  Named profiles (e.g. "ai-expert")
-# are anything *not* in this tuple.
-STANDARD_PROFILES: tuple[str, ...] = ("main", "default")
-
-
-_VALID_PROFILE_RE = re.compile(r"^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]*$")
-
-
-def normalize_profile(name: str | None) -> str:
-    """Canonicalize a profile name.  Never raises.
-
-    Returns ``"main"`` for all standard/empty profiles so that downstream
-    code only needs to compare against a single value.  Named profiles
-    are returned as-is (lowercased, stripped).
-    """
-    if not name or name.strip().lower() in STANDARD_PROFILES:
-        return "main"
-    return name.strip().lower()
-
-
-def validate_profile_name(name: str | None) -> str:
-    """Validate and canonicalize.  Raises ValueError for invalid names.
-
-    Use at config parse boundaries.  normalize_profile() is the safe
-    runtime version that never raises.
-    """
-    result = normalize_profile(name)
-    if result == "main":
-        return result
-    if not _VALID_PROFILE_RE.match(result):
-        raise ValueError(
-            f"Invalid profile name: {name!r} (must match [a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]*)"
-        )
-    return result
-
-
-def is_standard_profile(name: str | None) -> bool:
-    """Return True for default/main/None/empty — the unscoped profile."""
-    return not name or name.strip().lower() in STANDARD_PROFILES