`hermes --help` drops from ~700ms to ~180ms; `hermes version` from
~950ms to ~240ms. ~4-5x startup speedup on inspection / diagnostic
invocations.
Changes:
- hermes_cli/main.py: gate the argparse-setup `discover_plugins()` call
behind `_plugin_cli_discovery_needed()`. Eager plugin imports
(google.cloud.pubsub_v1, aiohttp, grpc, PIL) cost 500-650ms and are
pure waste when the user is running a built-in subcommand that
doesn't take plugin extensions (`--help`, `version`, `logs`,
`config`, `sessions`, etc.). New `_BUILTIN_SUBCOMMANDS` frozenset
+ `_first_positional_argv` helper handle flag-value skipping
(`-m gpt5 chat` → still fast).
- hermes_cli/main.py: `cmd_version` now reads the OpenAI SDK version
via `importlib.metadata` (~2ms) instead of `import openai` (~800ms
of pydantic type-module loading).
Agent-running paths (`hermes chat`, `hermes gateway run`) are
unaffected — the second `discover_plugins()` call later in `main()`
still runs so plugin hooks / tools wire up normally.
Tests:
- tests/hermes_cli/test_startup_plugin_gating.py: parity test guards
the `_BUILTIN_SUBCOMMANDS` set against drift (every registered
subparser must be declared; no phantom entries). Behavior tests for
flag-value skipping, `--` terminator, inline `--flag=value` form.
37 tests.
