Second, deeper pass over tools/gateway/hermes_cli plus first pass over
the trees wave 1 missed (acp, acp_adapter, skills, computer_use, docker,
dashboard, conformance, monitoring, secret_sources, hermes_state,
providers). Same rubric as wave 1 (AGENTS.md test policy); security,
alternation/caching invariants, issue-number regressions, and E2E kept.
Real test-quality fixes found and rooted out along the way:
- tests/tools/test_command_guards.py made real auxiliary-LLM HTTPS calls
(DEFAULT_CONFIG smart-approval leaked in) — pinned approval
mode=manual via autouse fixture: 17.4s → 0.4s.
- test_model_switch_custom_providers.py / test_user_providers_model_switch.py
silently probed live provider catalogs (~2s/test) — stubbed
cached_provider_model_ids/provider_model_ids/fetch_api_models.
- test_telegram_noise_filter.py: 15-platform copy-paste matrix over
shared gateway.run logic → 3 representative platforms (55s → 3.9s).
- test_gateway_shutdown.py: stop()'s 5s interrupt-deadline loop spun on
MagicMock agents — interrupt.side_effect now clears _running_agents
(22s → 1.0s).
- test_gateway_inactivity_timeout.py poll-harness timings shrunk 3-5x
(24s → 1.1s); test_mcp_stability.py backoff/SIGTERM-grace sleeps
patched (15.4s → 2.5s); test_async_delegation.py negative-drain wait
5s → 0.5s.
- test_telegram_init_deadline.py: loop-block margin restored to 1.0s
with rationale comment — the watchdog-dump assertion needs the loop
blocked well past deadline+grace under parallel load (flaked once in
the 40-worker verification run at a 0.2s margin).
Verification: full hermetic suite via scripts/run_tests.sh —
2,438 files, 21,718 tests passed, 0 failed, 293.9s wall.
Suite totals vs original baseline: 46,820 → 19,757 test functions
(−57.8%), wall 583.5s → 293.9s (−50%), subprocess CPU 13,564s → 11,623s.
The gateway startup maintenance block gained a maybe_auto_archive call in
the same provably-off-loop __init__ site as maybe_auto_prune_and_vacuum;
bump the reviewed sync-escape count from 3 to 4.
The topic-mode helpers (_telegram_topic_mode_enabled,
_recover_telegram_topic_thread_id, _record/_sync_telegram_topic_binding,
_is_telegram_topic_lane/_root_lobby, _normalize_source_for_session_key,
_telegram_topic_new_header, _schedule_telegram_topic_title_rename, and the
base.py _apply_topic_recovery hook) each run a synchronous SessionDB read or
write. They reach the event loop through async handlers, so a contended
state.db froze the loop the same way the handoff watcher did.
These helpers already run off-loop in the run_sync thread-pool closure, so
they are proven thread-safe there. Rather than colour them async, loop-side
callers now invoke them via asyncio.to_thread(...); the executor callers are
unchanged. Inside the helpers the SessionDB handle is unwrapped to the sync
door (getattr(db, '_db', db)) since they always run on a worker thread, and
AIAgent construction + query_session_listing are handed the sync SessionDB
directly. base.py wraps its single _apply_topic_recovery call in to_thread.
The guard is now alias-aware (catches db = getattr(self, '_session_db', None);
db.method(...)) and enforces the offload contract: the offloaded sync helpers
may never be called bare on the loop. Sibling test fixtures wrap their injected
SessionDB in AsyncSessionDB to match how the gateway holds it.
