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.
Salvage-follow-up to @shannonsands's /reload-skills PR. Trims the feature to
match the design: user-initiated rescan, no prompt-cache reset, no new
schema surface, no phantom user turn, and the next-turn note carries each
added/removed skill's 60-char description (not just its name).
Changes vs the original PR:
* Drop the in-process skills prompt-cache clear in reload_skills(). Skills
are invoked at runtime via /skill-name, skills_list, or skill_view —
they don't need to live in the system prompt for the model to use them.
Keeping the cache intact preserves prefix caching across the reload so
/reload-skills pays no cache-reset cost. (MCP has to break the cache
because tool schemas must be known at conversation start; skills do not.)
* Drop the skills_reload agent tool and SKILLS_RELOAD_SCHEMA from
tools/skills_tool.py, plus the four skills_reload enumerations in
toolsets.py. No new schema surface — agents can already see a freshly-
installed skill via skill_view / skills_list the moment it's on disk.
* Replace the phantom 'role: user' turn injection with a one-shot queued
note. CLI uses self._pending_skills_reload_note (same pattern as
_pending_model_switch_note, prepended to the next API call and cleared).
Gateway uses self._pending_skills_reload_notes[session_key]. The note
is prepended to the NEXT real user message in this session, so message
alternation stays intact and nothing out-of-band is persisted to the
transcript.
* reload_skills() now returns added/removed as
[{'name': str, 'description': str}, ...] (description truncated to 60
chars — matches the curator / gateway adapter budget). The injected
next-turn note formats each entry as 'name — description' so the model
can actually reason about which new skills to call without running
skills_list first.
* Only emit the note when the diff is non-empty. On empty diff, print
'No new skills detected' and do nothing else.
* Tests rewritten to cover the queue semantics, the description payload,
and a regression guard that the prompt-cache snapshot is preserved.
Adds a public reload path for the in-process skill caches so newly
installed (or removed) skills become visible mid-session without a
gateway restart. Mirrors the shape of /reload-mcp.
Three surfaces:
* /reload-skills slash command — CLI (cli.py) and gateway (gateway/run.py),
with /reload_skills alias for Telegram autocomplete and an explicit
Discord registration.
* skills_reload agent tool (tools/skills_tool.py) — lets agents/subagents
pick up freshly-installed skills via tool call.
* agent.skill_commands.reload_skills() — shared helper that clears
_skill_commands, _SKILLS_PROMPT_CACHE (in-process LRU), and the
on-disk .skills_prompt_snapshot.json, then returns an added/removed
diff plus the new total count.
Tested:
* tests/agent/test_skill_commands_reload.py (9 cases)
* tests/cli/test_cli_reload_skills.py (3 cases)
* tests/gateway/test_reload_skills_command.py (4 cases)
Use case: NemoClaw / OpenShell-style sandboxed orchestrators that drop
skills into ~/.hermes/skills mid-session, plus agentic flows where the
agent itself installs a skill via the shell tool and needs it bound
without a gateway restart. The Python helper
clear_skills_system_prompt_cache(clear_snapshot=True) already exists
internally — this PR just exposes it via slash command and tool.