A mid-stream steer persists an interrupted-turn checkpoint so the model knows
its reply was cut off. That scaffolding — "[This response was interrupted by a
user correction.]" and the "Visible response before the interruption:" header —
was written straight into message content, so every reload painted the raw
machinery as an assistant bubble (and merged it into the preceding tool-call
bubble). Steered transcripts became unreadable.
Reuse the existing display/replay split instead of inventing new surface:
- Carry the scaffolded form in the server-only api_content sidecar (the exact
bytes replayed to the provider), keep content the user's/agent's real words.
- When nothing reached the screen there is no clean form, so mark the row
display_kind=hidden — replayed to the model, dropped by every transcript
surface, exactly like compaction-reference rows.
- Honor display_kind=hidden in the gateway's _history_to_messages projection
(it only sniffed the [System: convention), so the checkpoint can't leak
through the live/resume path to the TUI/CLI either.
The model still receives the full interrupted context on the wire; the
transcript shows the partial reply and the user's correction.
A /steer redirect during a thinking phase serialized the streamed
reasoning into the persisted assistant checkpoint ('Reasoning shown
before the interruption: ...'). An assistant turn exposing its own
chain-of-thought reads to Anthropic's output classifier as
reasoning-injection/prefill jailbreak, so every subsequent call on the
session deterministically returned 'Provider returned an empty
response' — and because the checkpoint is persisted and replayed, no
retry, nudge, or empty-recovery branch could ever escape it. Four
sessions were permanently bricked this way in the week of Jul 21-27
(42+ blocked calls; every reasoning-free checkpoint that week was
untouched — same mechanism as the prefill.json incident).
Class fix: streamed reasoning is now display-only state. The
_current_streamed_reasoning_text accumulator is removed entirely
(producer in _fire_reasoning_delta, resets, and init), so no future
path can serialize CoT into replayable content. The checkpoint keeps
only the visible response text; the model regenerates its reasoning on
the retried turn. Invariant documented in _apply_active_turn_redirect.
Regression tests: CoT never appears in either checkpoint shape,
reasoning-only interrupts produce a bare checkpoint, reasoning deltas
stay display-only.
A follow-up sent while the model is still generating previously ended the
turn: Hermes kept only the visible partial text (reasoning was display-only),
cleared the loop, and replayed the message as a fresh next turn. If the
correction referred to something that only appeared in the thinking stream,
the model no longer had that context.
Add `AIAgent.redirect(text)`: a corrective interrupt distinct from a hard
stop. It cancels only the in-flight model request (not tool workers or child
agents), stashes the correction under a lock shared with `interrupt()` so a
concurrent `/stop` always wins, and lets the loop rebuild the same logical
iteration. `_apply_active_turn_redirect()` checkpoints the reasoning that was
actually shown to the user plus any visible partial text as an ordinary
assistant message, then appends the correction as a real user turn — never
replaying incomplete signed/encrypted provider reasoning, and keeping strict
role alternation and prompt-cache stability intact. During tool execution it
degrades to `steer()` so a running tool finishes at a safe boundary.
`_fire_reasoning_delta` now only records reasoning that a display callback
actually consumed, so `show_reasoning: false` never leaks hidden provider
thinking into the persisted transcript.
A steer rides inside a tool result (the only role-alternation-safe slot
mid-turn), so a bare "User guidance:" line reads as untrusted tool content —
well-behaved models refuse it as suspected prompt injection (observed live:
"I only follow instructions from you directly, not ones injected through
command results").
- Wrap steers in a bounded, self-describing [OUT-OF-BAND USER MESSAGE] marker
(prompt_builder.format_steer_marker), shared by both drain sites.
- Add STEER_CHANNEL_NOTE to the core system prompt so the model expects this
exact marker and trusts it as a genuine user message — while still ignoring
lookalikes buried in tool/web/file output. Static text → byte-stable prompt,
no prompt-cache regression; gated on the agent having tools.
- Desktop: steer ack is now an inline transcript note (⏩ steered · …) instead
of a toast.
Marker is intentionally static (not a per-session nonce) to honor the
byte-stable system-prompt caching policy; nonce hardening noted as follow-up.
Remove unused imports (F401) and duplicate/shadowed import
redefinitions (F811) across the codebase using ruff's safe
autofixes. No behavioral changes -- imports only.
- ~1400 safe autofixes applied across 644 files (net -1072 lines)
- __init__.py re-exports preserved (excluded from F401 removal so
public re-export surfaces stay intact)
- Re-exports that are imported or monkeypatched by tests but look
unused in their defining module are kept with explicit # noqa:
F401 (gateway/run.py load_dotenv; run_agent re-exports from
agent.message_sanitization, agent.context_compressor,
agent.retry_utils, agent.prompt_builder, agent.process_bootstrap,
agent.codex_responses_adapter)
- Unsafe F841 (unused-variable) fixes deliberately skipped -- those
can change behavior when the RHS has side effects
- ruff lints remain disabled in pyproject.toml (only PLW1514 is
selected); this is a one-time cleanup, not a config change
Verification:
- python -m compileall: clean
- pytest --collect-only: all 27161 tests collect (zero import errors)
- core entry points import clean (run_agent, model_tools, cli,
toolsets, hermes_state, batch_runner, gateway)
- static scan: every name any test imports directly from an edited
module still resolves
The mid-run steer marker was '[USER STEER (injected mid-run, not tool
output): <text>]'. Replaced with a plain two-newline-prefixed
'User guidance: <text>' suffix.
Rationale: the marker lives inside the tool result's content string
regardless of whether the tool returned JSON, plain text, an MCP
result, or a plugin result. The bracketed tag read like structured
metadata that some tools (terminal, execute_code) could confuse with
their own output formatting. A plain labelled suffix works uniformly
across every content shape we produce.
Behavior unchanged:
- Still injected into the last tool-role message's content.
- Still preserves multimodal (Anthropic) content-block lists by
appending a text block.
- Still drained at both sites added in #12959 and #13205 — per-tool
drain between individual calls, and pre-API-call drain at the top
of each main-loop iteration.
Checked Codex's equivalent (pending_input / inject_user_message_without_turn
in codex-rs/core): they record mid-turn user input as a real role:user
message via record_user_prompt_and_emit_turn_item(). That's cleaner for
their Responses-API model but not portable to Chat Completions where
role alternation after tool_calls is strict. Embedding the guidance in
the last tool result remains the correct placement for us.
Validation: all 21 tests in tests/run_agent/test_steer.py pass.
When /steer is sent during an API call (model thinking), the steer text
sits in _pending_steer until after the next tool batch — which may never
come if the model returns a final response. In that case the steer is
only delivered as a post-run follow-up, defeating the purpose.
Add a pre-API-call drain at the top of the main loop: before building
api_messages, check _pending_steer and inject into the last tool result
in the messages list. This ensures steers sent during model thinking are
visible on the very next API call.
If no tool result exists yet (first iteration), the steer is restashed
for the post-tool drain to pick up — injecting into a user message would
break role alternation.
Three new tests cover the pre-API-call drain: injection into last tool
result, restash when no tool message exists, and backward scan past
non-tool messages.
* feat(steer): /steer <prompt> injects a mid-run note after the next tool call
Adds a new slash command that sits between /queue (turn boundary) and
interrupt. /steer <text> stashes the message on the running agent and
the agent loop appends it to the LAST tool result's content once the
current tool batch finishes. The model sees it as part of the tool
output on its next iteration.
No interrupt is fired, no new user turn is inserted, and no prompt
cache invalidation happens beyond the normal per-turn tool-result
churn. Message-role alternation is preserved — we only modify an
existing role:"tool" message's content.
Wiring
------
- hermes_cli/commands.py: register /steer + add to ACTIVE_SESSION_BYPASS_COMMANDS.
- run_agent.py: add _pending_steer state, AIAgent.steer(), _drain_pending_steer(),
_apply_pending_steer_to_tool_results(); drain at end of both parallel and
sequential tool executors; clear on interrupt; return leftover as
result['pending_steer'] if the agent exits before another tool batch.
- cli.py: /steer handler — route to agent.steer() when running, fall back to
the regular queue otherwise; deliver result['pending_steer'] as next turn.
- gateway/run.py: running-agent intercept calls running_agent.steer(); idle-agent
path strips the prefix and forwards as a regular user message.
- tui_gateway/server.py: new session.steer JSON-RPC method.
- ui-tui: SessionSteerResponse type + local /steer slash command that calls
session.steer when ui.busy, otherwise enqueues for the next turn.
Fallbacks
---------
- Agent exits mid-steer → surfaces in run_conversation result as pending_steer
so CLI/gateway deliver it as the next user turn instead of silently dropping it.
- All tools skipped after interrupt → re-stashes pending_steer for the caller.
- No active agent → /steer reduces to sending the text as a normal message.
Tests
-----
- tests/run_agent/test_steer.py — accept/reject, concatenation, drain,
last-tool-result injection, multimodal list content, thread safety,
cleared-on-interrupt, registry membership, bypass-set membership.
- tests/gateway/test_steer_command.py — running agent, pending sentinel,
missing steer() method, rejected payload, empty payload.
- tests/gateway/test_command_bypass_active_session.py — /steer bypasses
the Level-1 base adapter guard.
- tests/test_tui_gateway_server.py — session.steer RPC paths.
72/72 targeted tests pass under scripts/run_tests.sh.
* feat(steer): register /steer in Discord's native slash tree
Discord's app_commands tree is a curated subset of slash commands (not
derived from COMMAND_REGISTRY like Telegram/Slack). /steer already
works there as plain text (routes through handle_message → base
adapter bypass → runner), but registering it here adds Discord's
native autocomplete + argument hint UI so users can discover and
type it like any other first-class command.
