Follow-up fixes on top of the salvaged #22566 mechanism:
- N-collector now counts only REAL actionable user turns via
_is_actionable_user_turn + _is_synthetic_compression_user_turn —
the same filter pair _find_last_user_message_idx uses post-#69291.
The contributor's bare role=='user' + _is_context_summary_content
check let blank platform echoes and continuation/todo rows consume
N slots, silently degrading the guarantee.
- Default flipped 3 -> 1 (behavior-preserving): a default of 3 was
measured to change the tail cut on transcripts whose budget covers
only the last turn. min_tail_user_messages=1 delegates to the
existing single-user anchor; N>1 is opt-in, and the call site is
gated so the default path is byte-identical to main.
- Hardened config parse in agent_init (bool rejected, fractional
floats rejected, floor 1) matching the max_attempts parser shape.
- Wired the recurring external-PR config gaps: hermes_cli/config.py
DEFAULT_CONFIG + cli-config.yaml.example (PR only had cli.py).
- Regression tests: blank echoes / synthetic rows don't count toward
N; tool-call/result pairs never split by the N-boundary (no-orphan
both directions); N-guarantee wins over tail_token_budget and the
_MAX_TAIL_MESSAGE_FLOOR (floor is a minimum, not a cap); default
parity pin; DEFAULT_CONFIG pin.