Generate project ideas through creative constraints. Constraint + direction
= creativity.
Core skill (SKILL.md, 147 lines):
- 15 curated constraints across 3 categories: developers, makers, anyone
- Developer-focused prompts: 'solve your own itch', 'the CLI tool that
should exist', 'automate the annoying thing', 'nothing new except glue'
- Matching table: maps user mood/intent to appropriate constraints
- Complete worked example with 3 concrete project ideas
- Output format for consistent, actionable idea presentation
Extended library (references/full-prompt-library.md, 110 lines):
- 30+ additional constraints: communication, screens, philosophy,
transformation, identity, scale, starting points
Constraint approach inspired by wttdotm.com/prompts.html. Adapted for
software development and general-purpose ideation.
session.resume was building conversation history with only role and
content, stripping tool_call_id, tool_calls, and tool_name. The API
requires tool messages to reference their parent tool_call, so resumed
sessions with tool history would fail with HTTP 500.
Use get_messages_as_conversation() which already preserves the full
message structure including tool metadata and reasoning fields.
- Add agent.close() call to _finalize_shutdown_agents() to prevent
zombie processes (terminal sandboxes, browser daemons, httpx clients)
- Global cleanup (process_registry, environments, browsers) preserved
in _stop_impl() during conflict resolution
- Move /restart CommandDef from 'Info' to 'Session' category to match
/stop and /status
* fix: circuit breaker stops CPU-burning restart loops on persistent errors
When a gateway session hits a non-retryable error (e.g. invalid model
ID → HTTP 400), the agent fails and returns. But if the session keeps
receiving messages (or something periodically recreates agents), each
attempt spawns a new AIAgent — reinitializing MCP server connections,
burning CPU — only to hit the same 400 error again. On a 4-core server,
this pegs an entire core per stuck session and accumulates 300+ minutes
of CPU time over hours.
Fix: add a per-session consecutive failure counter in the gateway runner.
- Track consecutive non-retryable failures per session key
- After 3 consecutive failures (_MAX_CONSECUTIVE_FAILURES), block
further agent creation for that session and notify the user:
'⚠️ This session has failed N times in a row with a non-retryable
error. Use /reset to start a new session.'
- Evict the cached agent when the circuit breaker engages to prevent
stale state from accumulating
- Reset the counter on successful agent runs
- Clear the counter on /reset and /new so users can recover
- Uses getattr() pattern so bare GatewayRunner instances (common in
tests using object.__new__) don't crash
Tests:
- 8 new tests in test_circuit_breaker.py covering counter behavior,
threshold, reset, session isolation, and bare-runner safety
Addresses #7130.
* Revert "fix: circuit breaker stops CPU-burning restart loops on persistent errors"
This reverts commit d848ea7109.
* fix: don't evict cached agent on failed runs — prevents MCP restart loop
When a run fails (e.g. invalid model ID → 400) and fallback activated,
the gateway was evicting the cached agent to 'retry primary next time.'
But evicting a failed agent forces a full AIAgent recreation on the next
message — reinitializing MCP server connections, spawning stdio
processes — only to hit the same 400 again. This created a CPU-burning
loop (91%+ for hours, #7130).
The fix: add `and not _run_failed` to the fallback-eviction check.
Failed runs keep the cached agent. The next message reuses it (no MCP
reinit), hits the same error, returns it to the user quickly. The user
can /reset or /model to fix their config.
Successful fallback runs still evict as before so the next message
retries the primary model.
Addresses #7130.
- Remove unreachable `if not content_sample` branch inside the truthy
`if content_sample` block in `_is_likely_binary()` (dead code that
could never execute).
- Replace `linter_cmd.format(file=...)` with `linter_cmd.replace("{file}", ...)`
in `_check_lint()` so file paths containing curly braces (e.g.
`src/{test}.py`) no longer raise KeyError/ValueError.
- Add 16 unit tests covering both fixes and edge cases.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
GPT-5+ models (except gpt-5-mini) are only accessible via the Responses
API on Copilot. When these models were configured as the compression
summary_model (or any auxiliary task), the plain OpenAI client sent them
to /chat/completions which returned a 400 error:
model "gpt-5.4-mini" is not accessible via the /chat/completions endpoint
resolve_provider_client() now checks _should_use_copilot_responses_api()
for the copilot provider and wraps the client in CodexAuxiliaryClient
when needed, routing calls through responses.stream() transparently.
Adds tests for both the wrapping (gpt-5.4-mini) and non-wrapping
(gpt-4.1-mini) paths.
Add delegation.reasoning_effort config key so subagents can run at a
different thinking level than the parent agent. When set, overrides
the parent's reasoning_config; when empty, inherits as before.
Valid values: xhigh, high, medium, low, minimal, none (disables thinking).
Config path: delegation.reasoning_effort in config.yaml
Files changed:
- tools/delegate_tool.py: resolve override in _build_child_agent
- hermes_cli/config.py: add reasoning_effort to DEFAULT_CONFIG
- tests/tools/test_delegate.py: 4 new tests covering all cases
Follow-up fixes for the matrix-nio → mautrix migration:
1. Module-level mautrix.types import now wrapped in try/except with
proper stub classes. Without this, importing gateway.platforms.matrix
crashes the entire gateway when mautrix isn't installed — even for
users who don't use Matrix. The stubs mirror mautrix's real attribute
names so tests that exercise adapter methods (send, reactions, etc.)
work without the real SDK.
2. Removed _ensure_mautrix_mock() from test_matrix_mention.py — it
permanently installed MagicMock modules in sys.modules via setdefault(),
polluting later tests in the suite. No longer needed since the module
imports cleanly without mautrix.
3. Fixed thread persistence tests to use direct class reference in
monkeypatch.setattr() instead of string-based paths, which broke
when the module was reimported by other tests.
4. Moved the module-importability test to a subprocess to prevent it
from polluting sys.modules (reimporting creates a second module object
with different __dict__, breaking patch.object in subsequent tests).
The old nio code only handled RoomMessageText (m.text). The mautrix
rewrite dispatched both m.text and m.notice, which would cause infinite
loops between bots since m.notice is the conventional msgtype for bot
responses in the Matrix ecosystem.
- Add api.session.close() on E2EE dep check and E2EE setup failure
paths (two missing cleanup points from the mautrix migration)
- Replace raw pickle.load/dump with HMAC-SHA256 signed payloads to
prevent arbitrary code execution from a tampered store file
- Extract _resolve_message_context() to deduplicate ~40 lines of
mention/thread/DM gating logic between text and media handlers
- Move mautrix.types imports to module level (16 scattered local
imports consolidated)
- Parse mention/thread env vars once in __init__ instead of per-message
- Cache _is_bot_mentioned() result instead of calling 3x per event
- Consolidate send_emote/send_notice into shared _send_simple_message()
- Use _is_dm_room() in get_chat_info() instead of inline duplication
- Add _CRYPTO_PICKLE_PATH constant (was duplicated in 2 locations)
- Fix fragile event_ts extraction (double getattr, None safety)
- Clean up leaked aiohttp session on auth failure paths
- Remove redundant trailing _track_thread() calls
Address two bugs found by code review:
1. MemoryCryptoStore loses all E2EE keys on restart — now pickle the
store to disk on disconnect and restore on connect, preserving
Megolm sessions across restarts.
2. Encrypted events buffered for retry were silently dropped after
decryption because _on_encrypted_event registered the event ID
in the dedup set, then _on_room_message rejected it as a
duplicate. Now clear the dedup entry before routing decrypted
events.
Translate all nio SDK calls to mautrix equivalents while preserving the
adapter structure, business logic, and all features (E2EE, reactions,
threading, mention gating, text batching, media caching, voice MSC3245).
Key changes:
- nio.AsyncClient -> mautrix.client.Client + HTTPAPI + MemoryStateStore
- Manual E2EE key management -> OlmMachine with auto key lifecycle
- isinstance(resp, nio.XxxResponse) -> mautrix returns values directly
- add_event_callback per type -> single ROOM_MESSAGE handler with
msgtype dispatch
- Room state (member_count, display_name) via async state store lookups
- Upload/download return ContentURI/bytes directly (no wrapper objects)
matrix-nio pulls in peewee -> atomicwrites (sdist-only, archived,
missing build-system metadata) which breaks nix flake builds.
mautrix-python publishes wheels, has a leaner dep tree, and its
[encryption] extra uses the same python-olm without the problematic
transitive chain.
- Add shared is_wsl() to hermes_constants (like is_termux)
- Update supports_systemd_services() to verify systemd is actually
running on WSL before returning True
- Add WSL-specific guidance in gateway install/start/setup/status
for both cases: WSL+systemd and WSL without systemd
- Improve help strings: 'run' now says recommended for WSL/Docker,
'start'/'install' now mention systemd/launchd explicitly
- Add WSL gateway FAQ section with tmux/nohup/Task Scheduler tips
- Update CLI commands docs with WSL tip
- Deduplicate _is_wsl() from clipboard.py to shared hermes_constants
- Fix clipboard tests to reset hermes_constants cache
- 20 new WSL-specific tests covering detection, systemd check,
supports_systemd_services integration, and command output
Motivated by user feedback: took 1 hour to figure out run vs start
on WSL, Telegram bot kept disconnecting due to flaky WSL systemd.
Cover the three key behaviors:
- bulk_upload_fn is called instead of per-file upload_fn
- Fallback to upload_fn when bulk_upload_fn is None
- Rollback on bulk upload failure retries all files
warnings.warn() is suppressed/invisible when running as a gateway
or agent. Switch to logger.warning() so the disk cap message
actually appears in logs.
Fixes#7362 (item 3).
Add terminal.container_cpu, container_memory, container_disk, and
container_persistent to the _config_to_env_sync dict so that
`hermes config set terminal.container_memory 8192` correctly
writes TERMINAL_CONTAINER_MEMORY=8192 to ~/.hermes/.env.
Previously these YAML keys had no effect because terminal_tool.py
reads only env vars and the bridge was missing these mappings.
Fixes#7362 (item 2).
FileSyncManager now accepts an optional bulk_upload_fn callback.
When provided, all changed files are uploaded in one call instead
of iterating one-by-one with individual HTTP POSTs.
DaytonaEnvironment wires this to sandbox.fs.upload_files() which
batches everything into a single multipart POST — ~580 files goes
from ~5 min to <2s on init.
Parent directories are pre-created in one mkdir -p call.
Fixes#7362 (item 1).
- Remove auto-activation: when context.engine is 'compressor' (default),
plugin-registered engines are NOT used. Users must explicitly set
context.engine to a plugin name to activate it.
- Add curses_radiolist() to curses_ui.py: single-select radio picker
with keyboard nav + text fallback, matching curses_checklist pattern.
- Rewrite cmd_toggle() as composite plugins UI:
Top section: general plugins with checkboxes (existing behavior)
Bottom section: provider plugin categories (Memory Provider, Context Engine)
with current selection shown inline. ENTER/SPACE on a category opens
a radiolist sub-screen for single-select configuration.
- Add provider discovery helpers: _discover_memory_providers(),
_discover_context_engines(), config read/save for memory.provider
and context.engine.
- Add tests: radiolist non-TTY fallback, provider config save/load,
discovery error handling, auto-activation removal verification.
Follow-up fixes for the context engine plugin slot (PR #5700):
- Enhance ContextEngine ABC: add threshold_percent, protect_first_n,
protect_last_n as class attributes; complete update_model() default
with threshold recalculation; clarify on_session_end() lifecycle docs
- Add ContextCompressor.update_model() override for model/provider/
base_url/api_key updates
- Replace all direct compressor internal access in run_agent.py with
ABC interface: switch_model(), fallback restore, context probing
all use update_model() now; _context_probed guarded with getattr/
hasattr for plugin engine compatibility
- Create plugins/context_engine/ directory with discovery module
(mirrors plugins/memory/ pattern) — discover_context_engines(),
load_context_engine()
- Add context.engine config key to DEFAULT_CONFIG (default: compressor)
- Config-driven engine selection in run_agent.__init__: checks config,
then plugins/context_engine/<name>/, then general plugin system,
falls back to built-in ContextCompressor
- Wire on_session_end() in shutdown_memory_provider() at real session
boundaries (CLI exit, /reset, gateway expiry)
- PluginContext.register_context_engine() lets plugins replace the
built-in ContextCompressor with a custom ContextEngine implementation
- PluginManager stores the registered engine; only one allowed
- run_agent.py checks for a plugin engine at init before falling back
to the default ContextCompressor
- reset_session_state() now calls engine.on_session_reset() instead of
poking internal attributes directly
- ContextCompressor.on_session_reset() handles its own internals
(_context_probed, _previous_summary, etc.)
- 19 new tests covering ABC contract, defaults, plugin slot registration,
rejection of duplicates/non-engines, and compressor reset behavior
- All 34 existing compressor tests pass unchanged
Introduces agent/context_engine.py — an abstract base class that defines
the pluggable context engine interface. ContextCompressor now inherits
from ContextEngine as the default implementation.
No behavior change. All 34 existing compressor tests pass.
This is the foundation for a context engine plugin slot, enabling
third-party engines like LCM (Lossless Context Management) to replace
the built-in compressor via the plugin system.
When models return empty responses (no content, no tool calls, no
reasoning), Hermes previously retried 3 times silently then fell through
to '(empty)' — without ever trying the fallback provider chain. Users on
GLM-4.5-Air and similar models experienced what appeared to be a
complete hang, especially in gateway (Telegram/Discord) contexts where
the silent retries produced zero feedback.
Changes:
- After exhausting 3 empty retries, attempt _try_activate_fallback()
before giving up with '(empty)'. If fallback succeeds, reset retry
counter and continue the conversation loop with the new provider.
- Replace all _vprint() calls in recovery paths with _emit_status(),
which surfaces messages through both CLI (_vprint with force=True)
and gateway (status_callback -> adapter.send). Users now see:
* '⚠️ Empty response from model — retrying (N/3)' during retries
* '⚠️ Model returning empty responses — switching to fallback...'
* '↻ Switched to fallback: <model> (<provider>)' on success
* '❌ Model returned no content after all retries [and fallback]'
- Add logger.warning() throughout empty response paths for log file
visibility (model name, provider, retry counts).
- Upgrade _last_content_with_tools fallback from logger.debug to
logger.info + _emit_status so recovery is visible.
- Upgrade thinking-only prefill continuation to use _emit_status.
Tests:
- test_empty_response_triggers_fallback_provider: verifies fallback
activation after 3 empty retries produces content from fallback model
- test_empty_response_fallback_also_empty_returns_empty: verifies
graceful degradation when fallback also returns empty
- test_empty_response_emits_status_for_gateway: verifies _emit_status
is called during retries so gateway users see feedback
Addresses #7180.
Tool progress markers (e.g. `⏰ list`) were injected directly into
SSE delta.content chunks. OpenAI-compatible frontends (Open WebUI,
LobeChat, etc.) store delta.content verbatim as the assistant message
and send it back on subsequent requests. After enough turns, the model
learns to emit these markers as plain text instead of issuing real tool
calls — silently hallucinating tool results without ever running them.
Fix: Send tool progress as a custom `event: hermes.tool.progress` SSE
event instead of mixing it into delta.content. Per the SSE spec, clients
that don't understand a custom event type silently ignore it, so this is
backward-compatible. Frontends that want to render progress indicators
can listen for the custom event without persisting it to conversation
history.
The /v1/runs endpoint already uses structured events — this aligns the
/v1/chat/completions streaming path with the same principle.
Closes#6972
* fix(nix): gate matrix extra to Linux in [all] profile
matrix-nio[e2e] depends on python-olm which is upstream-broken on modern
macOS (Clang 21+, archived libolm). Previously the [matrix] extra was
completely excluded from [all], meaning NixOS users (who install via [all])
had no Matrix support at all.
Add a sys_platform == 'linux' marker so [all] pulls in [matrix] on Linux
(where python-olm builds fine) while still skipping it on macOS. This
fixes the NixOS setup path without breaking macOS installs.
Update the regression test to verify the Linux-gated marker is present
rather than just checking matrix is absent from [all].
Fixes#4594
* chore: regenerate uv.lock with matrix-on-linux in [all]
Six platforms (matrix, mattermost, dingtalk, feishu, wecom, homeassistant)
were missing from the session-based discovery loop, causing /channels and
send_message to return empty results on those platforms.
Instead of adding them to the hardcoded tuple (which would break again when
new platforms are added), derive the list dynamically from the Platform enum.
Only infrastructure entries (local, api_server, webhook) are excluded;
Discord and Slack are skipped automatically because their direct builders
already populate the platforms dict.
Reported by sprmn24 in PR #7416.
When two gateway messages arrived concurrently, _set_session_env wrote
HERMES_SESSION_PLATFORM/CHAT_ID/CHAT_NAME/THREAD_ID into the process-global
os.environ. Because asyncio tasks share the same process, Message B would
overwrite Message A's values mid-flight, causing background-task notifications
and tool calls to route to the wrong thread/chat.
Replace os.environ with Python's contextvars.ContextVar. Each asyncio task
(and any run_in_executor thread it spawns) gets its own copy, so concurrent
messages never interfere.
Changes:
- New gateway/session_context.py with ContextVar definitions, set/clear/get
helpers, and os.environ fallback for CLI/cron/test backward compatibility
- gateway/run.py: _set_session_env returns reset tokens, _clear_session_env
accepts them for proper cleanup in finally blocks
- All tool consumers updated: cronjob_tools, send_message_tool, skills_tool,
terminal_tool (both notify_on_complete AND check_interval blocks), tts_tool,
agent/skill_utils, agent/prompt_builder
- Tests updated for new contextvar-based API
Fixes#7358
Co-authored-by: teknium1 <127238744+teknium1@users.noreply.github.com>
Two fixes from PR review:
1. Session expiry was looking in _running_agents for the cached agent,
but idle expired sessions live in _agent_cache. Now checks
_agent_cache first, falls back to _running_agents.
2. Global cleanup in stop() was missing process_registry.kill_all(),
so background processes from agents evicted without close() (branch,
fallback) survived shutdown.
Use getattr guard for _agent_cache_lock in _handle_reset_command
because test fixtures may create GatewayRunner without calling
__init__, leaving the attribute unset.
Fixes e2e test failure: test_new_resets_session,
test_new_then_status_reflects_reset, test_new_is_idempotent.
Add 9 tests covering the full zombie process prevention chain:
- TestZombieReproduction: demonstrates that processes survive when
references are dropped without explicit cleanup (the original bug)
- TestAgentCloseMethod: verifies close() calls all cleanup functions,
is idempotent, propagates to children, and continues cleanup even
when individual steps fail
- TestGatewayCleanupWiring: verifies stop() calls close() and that
_evict_cached_agent() does NOT call close() (since it's also used
for non-destructive cache refreshes)
- TestDelegationCleanup: calls the real _run_single_child function and
verifies close() is called on the child agent
Ref: #7131
Call child.close() in the _run_single_child finally block after
unregistering the child from the parent's active children list.
Previously child AIAgent instances were only removed from the tracking
list but never had their resources released — the OpenAI/httpx client
and any tool subprocesses relied entirely on garbage collection.
Ref: #7131
Wire AIAgent.close() into every gateway code path where an agent's
session is actually ending:
- stop(): close all running agents after interrupt + memory shutdown,
then call cleanup_all_environments() and cleanup_all_browsers() as
a global catch-all
- _session_expiry_watcher(): close agents when sessions expire after
the 5-minute idle timeout
- _handle_reset_command(): close the old agent before evicting it from
cache on /new or /reset
Note: _evict_cached_agent() intentionally does NOT call close() because
it is also used for non-destructive cache refreshes (model switch,
branch, fallback) where tool resources should persist.
Ref: #7131
Add a close() method to AIAgent that acts as a single entry point for
releasing all resources held by an agent instance. This prevents zombie
process accumulation on long-running gateway deployments by explicitly
cleaning up:
- Background processes tracked in ProcessRegistry
- Terminal sandbox environments
- Browser daemon sessions
- Active child agents (subagent delegation)
- OpenAI/httpx client connections
Each cleanup step is independently guarded so a failure in one does not
prevent the rest. The method is idempotent and safe to call multiple
times.
Also simplifies the background review cleanup to use close() instead
of manually closing the OpenAI client.
Ref: #7131
Add is_network_accessible() helper using Python's ipaddress module to
robustly classify bind addresses (IPv4/IPv6 loopback, wildcards,
mapped addresses, hostname resolution with DNS-failure-fails-closed).
The API server connect() now refuses to start when the bind address is
network-accessible and no API_SERVER_KEY is set, preventing RCE from
other machines on the network.
Co-authored-by: entropidelic <entropidelic@users.noreply.github.com>
