Policy: if it ain't a secret it goes in config.yaml. HERMES_INFERENCE_PROVIDER
was leaking behavioral config into the .env surface, including from the gateway,
which bypassed config.yaml entirely.
Behavior:
- gateway/run.py: drop HERMES_INFERENCE_PROVIDER read in _resolve_runtime_agent_kwargs.
Gateway now flows through resolve_runtime_provider() with no `requested` override,
which reads model.provider from config.yaml first.
Docs/UX (strip env var from user-facing surface):
- --provider help text no longer mentions the env var
- cli-config.yaml.example same
- reference/environment-variables.md: remove HERMES_INFERENCE_PROVIDER row and
the cross-reference from HERMES_INFERENCE_MODEL
- reference/cli-commands.md: blank the env-var column for --provider
- guides/xai-grok-oauth.md, guides/minimax-oauth.md: replace
HERMES_INFERENCE_PROVIDER=x hermes invocations with config.yaml / --provider
- developer-guide/adding-providers.md, model-provider-plugin.md: reframe
Internal mechanism (kept as-is):
- hermes_cli/main.py writes HERMES_INFERENCE_PROVIDER into the TUI subprocess env
- tui_gateway/server.py reads it on TUI startup
- resolve_requested_provider() / oneshot.py / cli.py still fall through to the
env var as a last-resort behind config.yaml, which is what makes the TUI
parent->child handoff work
This stays. We just stop documenting it as a user knob.
Tests: tests/gateway/test_auth_fallback.py — simplify mock to fail on first
call, succeed on second; drop monkeypatch.setenv lines that no longer matter.
Supersedes #31064 (closed with credit to @novax635 who surfaced the underlying
issue but proposed aligning gateway *to* the env var rather than removing it).
When the primary provider raises AuthError (expired OAuth token,
revoked API key), the error was re-raised before AIAgent was created,
so fallback_model was never consulted. Now both gateway/run.py and
cron/scheduler.py catch AuthError specifically and attempt to resolve
credentials from the fallback_providers/fallback_model config chain
before propagating the error.
Closes#7230
