* test: deflake CI and dev-machine flaky tests in bulk
Fixes ten distinct flake sources found by mining recent CI failures and
running the full suite on a dev machine with real user state:
CI-observed races:
- tests/conftest.py live-system guard: allow signal 0 (pure liveness
probe) through _guarded_kill/_guarded_killpg. psutil.pid_exists()
probes a just-killed grandchild reparented to init; the subtree check
fails for it and the guard RuntimeError'd
test_entire_tree_is_sigkilled_not_just_parent intermittently on
unrelated PRs.
Hermeticity flakes (fail on dev machines with real state, pass on CI):
- agent/coding_context.py: _marker_root() now skips the shared temp
root (tempfile.gettempdir()) like it skips $HOME — a stray
/tmp/package.json flipped every tmp_path test into the coding
posture (9 failures in test_coding_context.py).
- test_agent_guardrails.py: pin MAX_CONCURRENT_CHILDREN=3 via autouse
monkeypatch instead of freezing the user's real config value at
import time (import-time vs call-time config mismatch).
- test_web_tools_config.py: TestCheckWebApiKey now neutralizes the
ddgs package probe and registry providers — the optional ddgs
package in a dev venv lit up the fallback backend.
- test_credential_pool.py: block claude_code/hermes-oauth credential
autodiscovery in the two pool-merge tests that assert exact id
lists (a real ~/.claude/.credentials.json seeded an extra entry).
- test_modal_sandbox_fixes.py: clear _permanent_approved /
_session_approved — the user's real command_allowlist silently
approved the guard-escalation commands under test.
- test_setup_irc.py: stub prompt_checklist to select only the IRC row;
the non-TTY cancel fallback re-ran the real configured platforms'
interactive setup_fn, which hit input() under captured stdin.
- test_doctor.py: TestGitHubTokenCheck now patches the module-level
HERMES_HOME constant (the file's established pattern) instead of
only setenv — doctor was running PRAGMA integrity_check against the
real multi-GB state.db and blowing the 300s per-file budget.
Latent atexit-duplication (same _enter_buffered_busy class as #34217):
- test_undo_command.py: drop importlib.reload(tui_gateway.server) in
fixture teardown; reload re-registers the module's atexit hooks.
- test_session_platform_resolution.py: drop per-test reload of
tui_gateway.server; every resolver reads env at call time.
* test: sentinel model value in ignore-user-config fallback assertion
With HERMES_IGNORE_USER_CONFIG=1, load_cli_config() falls back to the
repo-root cli-config.yaml (untracked, gitignored). On a dev machine that
file can legitimately set the same popular model the test hardcoded
(anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6), flipping the != assertion locally while
CI (no cli-config.yaml) stayed green. Use an impossible sentinel model
name instead.
The desktop app's chat panel reuses tui_gateway as its backend, so every chat session was stamped platform="tui". That made the agent read terminal-specific platform guidance while running in the graphical desktop chat surface.
Resolve the misclassification at its source: tui_gateway now picks platform="desktop" when HERMES_DESKTOP=1 and HERMES_DESKTOP_TERMINAL is unset, and keeps platform="tui" for the embedded terminal pane and standalone TUI. Add a PLATFORM_HINTS["desktop"] entry describing the actual chat surface (full GFM markdown, MEDIA: intercept, inline images). Move the embedded-pane clarifier to the platform-hint resolution site so it appends only to the tui hint under HERMES_DESKTOP_TERMINAL=1. Delete the now-dead desktop-hint block from build_environment_hints() that competed with the platform hint.
Standalone TUI sessions produce byte-identical prompts as before; the new desktop hint and clarifier are assembled once per session in the stable tier, so prompt caching is preserved.
