BOOT.md was merged in PR #3733 before the feature was ready — the
built-in hook spawned a bare AIAgent() with no model/runtime kwargs,
which immediately 401s on any provider with a custom endpoint. Three
separate community PRs (#5240, #12514, #14992) tried to paper over it.
Remove the BOOT.md hook entirely and its user-facing docs/tips. Keep
the gateway/builtin_hooks/ package and the HookRegistry._register_builtin_hooks()
hook-point intact as the extension surface for future always-on
gateway hooks.
Closes#5239.
Co-authored-by: teknium1 <teknium@users.noreply.github.com>
16 callsites across 14 files were re-deriving the hermes home path
via os.environ.get('HERMES_HOME', ...) instead of using the canonical
get_hermes_home() from hermes_constants. This breaks profiles — each
profile has its own HERMES_HOME, and the inline fallback defaults to
~/.hermes regardless.
Fixed by importing and calling get_hermes_home() at each site. For
files already inside the hermes process (agent/, hermes_cli/, tools/,
gateway/, plugins/), this is always safe. Files that run outside the
process context (mcp_serve.py, mcp_oauth.py) already had correct
try/except ImportError fallbacks and were left alone.
Skipped: hermes_constants.py (IS the implementation), env_loader.py
(bootstrap), profiles.py (intentionally manipulates the env var),
standalone scripts (optional-skills/, skills/), and tests.
The gateway now ships with a built-in boot-md hook that checks for
~/.hermes/BOOT.md on every startup. If the file exists, the agent
executes its instructions in a background thread. No installation
or configuration needed — just create the file.
No BOOT.md = zero overhead (the hook silently returns).
Implementation:
- gateway/builtin_hooks/boot_md.py: handler with boot prompt,
background thread, [SILENT] suppression, error handling
- gateway/hooks.py: _register_builtin_hooks() called at the start
of discover_and_load() to wire in built-in hooks
- Docs updated: hooks page documents BOOT.md as a built-in feature
