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 error guard in _search_with_rg/_search_with_grep was unreachable and,
if it had fired, would have discarded valid results.
Two root causes:
1. Unreachable. Both methods pipe the search through `| head` with no
pipefail, so the pipeline reported head's exit code (0), masking rg/grep's
error code (2). The guard never fired. Worse, because _exec merges stderr
into stdout (stderr=subprocess.STDOUT), the error text was then parsed as
bogus match lines instead of being surfaced — the user got garbage matches
with no indication the search failed.
2. Latent results-dropping. The original `not result.stdout.strip()` check
was always False on error (error text lives in stdout), and the
`hasattr(result, 'stderr')` branch was dead code (ExecuteResult has no
stderr field). A naive broadening to `exit_code == 2` would have nuked
real matches whenever rg/grep also hit a non-fatal error (e.g. one
unreadable file in a tree that otherwise matched), which both tools signal
with exit 2.
Fix:
- Prefix the piped command with `set -o pipefail` so rg/grep's real exit
status propagates. rg exits 0 on a truncating head; grep exits 141
(SIGPIPE), so the strict `== 2` guard ignores truncated-success.
- Add _split_tool_diagnostics() to separate tool diagnostics from match
output by tool prefix and output shape. Diagnostics never become matches;
on a hard error they are the message to surface.
- Only surface an error when exit==2 AND no usable match payload remains, so
partial errors keep their real matches.
Tests: tests/tools/test_search_error_guard.py drives both methods through the
real local backend (hard error surfaced, partial error keeps matches,
truncation no false error, files_only/count exclude diagnostics) plus unit
coverage for the splitter.
Supersedes #39710.
