API keys containing Unicode lookalike characters (e.g. ʋ U+028B instead
of v) cause UnicodeEncodeError when httpx encodes the Authorization
header as ASCII. This commonly happens when users copy-paste keys from
PDFs, rich-text editors, or web pages with decorative fonts.
Three layers of defense:
1. **Save-time validation** (hermes_cli/config.py):
_check_non_ascii_credential() strips non-ASCII from credential values
when saving to .env, with a clear warning explaining the issue.
2. **Load-time sanitization** (hermes_cli/env_loader.py):
_sanitize_loaded_credentials() strips non-ASCII from credential env
vars (those ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY) after dotenv
loads them, so the rest of the codebase never sees non-ASCII keys.
3. **Runtime recovery** (run_agent.py):
The UnicodeEncodeError recovery block now also sanitizes self.api_key
and self._client_kwargs['api_key'], fixing the gap where message/tool
sanitization succeeded but the API key still caused httpx to fail on
the Authorization header.
Also: hermes_logging.py RotatingFileHandler now explicitly sets
encoding='utf-8' instead of relying on locale default (defensive
hardening for ASCII-locale systems).
When .env files become corrupted (e.g. concatenated KEY=VALUE pairs on
a single line due to concurrent writes or encoding issues), both
python-dotenv and load_env() would parse the entire concatenated string
as a single value. This caused bot tokens to appear duplicated up to 8×,
triggering InvalidToken errors from the Telegram API.
Root cause: _sanitize_env_lines() — which correctly splits concatenated
lines — was only called during save_env_value() writes, not during reads.
Fix:
- load_env() now calls _sanitize_env_lines() before parsing
- env_loader.load_hermes_dotenv() sanitizes the .env file on disk
before python-dotenv reads it, so os.getenv() also returns clean values
- Added tests reproducing the exact corruption pattern from #8908Closes#8908
Hermes startup entrypoints now load ~/.hermes/.env and project fallback env files with user config taking precedence over stale shell-exported values. This makes model/provider/base URL changes in .env actually take effect after restarting Hermes. Adds a shared env loader plus regression coverage, and reproduces the original bug case where OPENAI_BASE_URL and HERMES_INFERENCE_PROVIDER remained stuck on old shell values before import.
