* feat(goals): /subgoal — user-added criteria appended to active /goal
Layers a /subgoal command on top of the existing freeform Ralph judge
loop. The user can append extra criteria mid-loop; the judge factors
them into its done/continue verdict and the continuation prompt
surfaces them to the agent. No new tool, no agent self-judging — the
existing judge model just sees a richer prompt.
Forms:
/subgoal show current subgoals
/subgoal <text> append a criterion
/subgoal remove <n> drop subgoal n (1-based)
/subgoal clear wipe all subgoals
How it integrates:
- GoalState gains `subgoals: List[str]` (default []), backwards-compat
for existing state_meta rows.
- judge_goal accepts an optional subgoals kwarg; non-empty switches to
JUDGE_USER_PROMPT_WITH_SUBGOALS_TEMPLATE which lists them as
numbered criteria and asks 'is the goal AND every additional
criterion satisfied?'
- next_continuation_prompt picks CONTINUATION_PROMPT_WITH_SUBGOALS_TEMPLATE
when non-empty so the agent sees what to target.
- /subgoal is allowed mid-run on the gateway since it only touches the
state the judge reads at turn boundary — no race with the running
turn.
- Status line shows '... , N subgoals' when present.
Surface:
- hermes_cli/goals.py — field, prompt blocks, manager methods, judge weave
- hermes_cli/commands.py — /subgoal CommandDef
- cli.py — _handle_subgoal_command
- gateway/run.py — _handle_subgoal_command + mid-run dispatch
- tests/hermes_cli/test_goals.py — 15 new tests (backcompat, mutation,
persistence, prompt template selection, judge-prompt content via mock,
status-line rendering)
77 goal-related tests passing across goals + cli + gateway + tui.
* fix(goals): slash commands don't preempt the goal-continuation hook
Two findings from live-testing /subgoal:
1. Slash commands queued while the agent is running landed in
_pending_input (same queue as real user messages). The goal hook's
'is a real user message pending?' check returned True and silently
skipped — but the slash command consumes its queue slot via
process_command() which never re-fires the goal hook, so the loop
stalls indefinitely. Now the hook peeks the queue and only defers
when a non-slash payload is present.
2. The with-subgoals judge prompt was too soft — opus 4.7 said 'done,
implying all requirements met' without verifying. Tightened to
demand specific per-criterion evidence (file contents, output line,
command result) and explicitly reject phrases like 'implying it was
done.'
Live verified: /subgoal injected mid-loop now correctly forces the
judge to refuse done until the new criterion is met. Agent gets the
continuation prompt with subgoals listed, updates the script, judge
confirms done with specific evidence cited.
* Revert "fix(goals): force judge to use tool calls instead of JSON-text replies (#23547)"
This reverts commit a63a2b7c78.
* Revert "fix(goals): forward standing /goal state on auto-compression session rotation (#23530)"
This reverts commit 4a080b1d5a.
* Revert "feat(goals): /goal checklist + /subgoal user controls (#23456)"
This reverts commit 404640a2b7.
Live-tested on gemini-3-flash-preview the judge kept returning empty
or non-JSON content, tripping the consecutive-parse-failures auto-
pause. Free-form JSON output is hopeful; tool-call schemas are
enforced server-side by virtually every modern provider.
Two new tools the judge calls:
- submit_checklist(items) — Phase A, decompose
- update_checklist(updates, new_items, reason) — Phase B, evaluate
Both phases now call the auxiliary client with tool_choice forcing
the right tool. read_file remains for Phase B history inspection,
with the loop exiting only when update_checklist is called or the
read budget is exhausted (at which point read_file is dropped from
the toolbox and update_checklist is forced).
Robustness:
- _call_judge_with_tool_choice falls back tool_choice forced→required→
auto if the provider rejects a particular shape.
- If a fully-broken provider still returns content instead of a tool
call, the legacy JSON-text parsers stay around as a last-ditch
backstop so we never silently lose a checklist.
- _normalize_update_args replaces the JSON parser for the apply
layer; same 1-based→0-based conversion + terminal-status filter.
Live verification: same fizzbuzz goal that was hitting 'judge model
returned unparseable output 3 turns in a row' before now terminates
in 2 turns, all 11 items marked completed with item-specific
evidence, no auto-pause. Agent log shows
'produced 11 checklist items via tool call' instead of the JSON-
parse path.
Tests: 7 new cases for the tool-call path (Phase A success, Phase B
update only, Phase B read_file→update, JSON-content backstop,
empty-text item dropping, non-terminal status filter).
When run_agent's _compress_context fires mid-turn it ends the parent
session in SessionDB and creates a new continuation session with a
fresh session_id. The /goal state is keyed on session_id in
state_meta ("goal:<sid>"), so without forwarding the goal silently
disappears: _get_goal_manager() rebinds for the new session_id,
load_goal() returns None, mgr.is_active() is False, and the
continuation loop dies with no user-visible signal.
Fix: in the same SessionDB transaction block that creates the
continuation session, copy state_meta[goal:<old>] →
state_meta[goal:<new>] when present. No-op when the user has no
active goal. Logged at INFO so a stuck loop is debuggable.
Tests cover the round-trip via SessionDB and the no-op path.
Affects all three run-conversation surfaces (CLI, gateway, TUI
gateway) because _compress_context is the single rotation site.
* feat(goals): /goal checklist + /subgoal user controls
Two-phase judge for /goal — Phase A decomposes the goal into a detailed
checklist on first turn; Phase B evaluates each pending item harshly
against the agent's most recent response. The goal completes only when
every item is in a terminal status (completed or impossible). Adds
/subgoal so the user can append, complete, mark impossible, undo,
remove, or clear items the judge missed or got wrong.
Mechanics:
- GoalState gains `checklist` and `decomposed` fields, both backwards
compatible (old state_meta rows load unchanged).
- Phase A: aux call writes a harsh, exhaustive checklist; biased toward
more items not fewer. Falls through to legacy freeform judge when
decompose fails.
- Phase B: judge gets the checklist + last-response snippet + path to
a per-session conversation dump at <HERMES_HOME>/goals/<sid>.json.
A bounded read_file tool (max 5 calls per turn, restricted to that
one file) lets the judge inspect history when the snippet is
ambiguous. Stickiness in code: terminal items are frozen, only the
user can revert via /subgoal undo.
- Continuation prompt shows checklist progress when non-empty;
reverts to old prompt when empty.
- Status line shows M/N done counts.
CLI + gateway + TUI gateway all pass the agent reference into
evaluate_after_turn so the dump can be written. Gateway-side
/subgoal is allowed mid-run since it only modifies the checklist
the judge consults at turn boundaries.
Tests: 24 new cases — backcompat round-trip, Phase A decompose,
Phase B updates + new_items + stickiness, user override flows,
conversation dump (incl. unsafe-sid sanitization), judge read_file
restriction. Existing freeform-mode tests updated to patch the
renamed `judge_goal_freeform` and skip Phase A explicitly.
* fix(goals): off-by-one in judge index, message-list plumbing, prompt tuning
Three live-test findings from running /goal end-to-end against
gemini-3-flash-preview as the judge:
1. Off-by-one bug — the judge sees the checklist rendered with 1-based
indices ('1. [ ] foo, 2. [ ] bar') but the apply layer indexed
state.checklist as 0-based. Result: every judge update landed on
the wrong item, evidence got attached to neighbouring rows, and
the genuine 'first pending' item (usually #1) never got marked.
Fix: convert 1 → 0 in _parse_evaluate_response. Also tightened the
user prompt to call out the 1-based scheme explicitly. New tests
cover the parser conversion + an end-to-end fake-judge round-trip.
2. Conversation dump never happened — _extract_agent_messages tried
common AIAgent attribute names (.messages, .conversation_history,
etc.) but AIAgent doesn't expose the message list as an instance
attribute; it lives inside run_conversation()'s scope. Result: the
judge's read_file tool always saw history_path=unavailable. Fix:
added an explicit messages= kwarg to evaluate_after_turn that all
three call sites (CLI, gateway, TUI gateway) now pass directly.
Agent-attribute extraction kept as back-compat fallback.
3. Prompt was too harsh on simple goals. The original 'be HARSH,
default to leaving items pending' wording made the judge refuse
to mark 'file exists' completed even after the agent ran ls,
test -f, os.path.isfile, and find — burning the entire 8-turn
budget on a fizzbuzz task. Softened to 'strict but not absurd'
with explicit guidance on what counts as evidence and a directive
not to require re-proving items already established earlier.
Re-tested live with the same fizzbuzz goal: now terminates in 2
turns with all 8 checklist items correctly attributed to their
own evidence. /subgoal user-action flow (add / complete / undo /
impossible) verified live as well.
Weak judge models (e.g. deepseek-v4-flash) return empty strings or prose
when asked for the strict {done, reason} JSON verdict. The old code
failed-open to continue on every such turn, burning the entire turn
budget with log lines like
judge returned empty response
judge reply was not JSON: "Let me analyze whether the goal..."
and /goal clear could not stop it mid-loop without /stop.
After N=3 consecutive *parse* failures (transport/API errors don't
count — those are transient), the loop auto-pauses and prints:
⏸ Goal paused — the judge model (3 turns) isn't returning the
required JSON verdict. Route the judge to a stricter model in
~/.hermes/config.yaml:
auxiliary:
goal_judge:
provider: openrouter
model: google/gemini-3-flash-preview
Then /goal resume to continue.
The counter resets on any usable reply (both "done"/"continue" and
API errors) and persists across GoalManager reloads so cross-session
resumes carry the correct state.
Also fixes test_goal_verdict_send.py sharing a hardcoded session_id
across tests — the shared id only worked because the previous
_post_turn_goal_continuation was a never-awaited coroutine. Now that
PR #19160 made it properly awaited, the xdist test-leakage bug
surfaced. Each test gets a unique session_id via uuid suffix.
Add a standing-goal slash command that keeps Hermes working toward a
user-stated objective across turns until it is achieved, paused, or
the turn budget runs out. Our take on the Ralph loop — cf. Codex CLI
0.128.0's /goal.
After each turn, a lightweight auxiliary-model judge call asks 'is
this goal satisfied by the assistant's last response?'. If not, and
we're under the turn budget (default 20), Hermes feeds a continuation
prompt back into the same session as a normal user message. Any real
user message preempts the continuation loop automatically.
Judge failures fail OPEN (continue) so a flaky judge never wedges
progress — the turn budget is the real backstop.
### Commands
- `/goal <text>` — set a standing goal (kicks off the first turn)
- `/goal` or `/goal status` — show current state
- `/goal pause` — pause the continuation loop
- `/goal resume` — resume (resets turn counter)
- `/goal clear` — drop the goal
Works on both CLI and gateway platforms via the central CommandDef
registry.
### Design invariants preserved
- **Prompt cache**: continuation prompts are regular user-role
messages appended to history. No system-prompt mutation, no toolset
swap.
- **Role alternation**: continuation is a user turn, never injected
mid-tool-loop.
- **Session persistence**: goal state lives in SessionDB.state_meta
keyed by `goal:<session_id>`, so `/resume` picks it up.
- **Mid-run safety**: on the gateway, `/goal status|pause|clear` are
allowed mid-run (control-plane only); setting a new goal requires
`/stop` first so we don't race a second continuation prompt against
the current turn.
### Files
- `hermes_cli/goals.py` (new, 380 lines) — GoalManager + judge + state
- `hermes_cli/commands.py` — CommandDef entry
- `hermes_cli/config.py` — `goals.max_turns` default
- `hermes_cli/web_server.py` — dashboard category merge
- `cli.py` — /goal handler + post-turn continuation hook in
process_loop
- `gateway/run.py` — /goal handler + post-turn continuation hook
wrapping _handle_message_with_agent
- `tests/hermes_cli/test_goals.py` (new, 26 tests) — judge parsing,
fail-open semantics, lifecycle, persistence, budget exhaustion
- `website/docs/reference/slash-commands.md` — docs entry
