Follow-up to the previous commit which flipped 'hermes curator run'
default from async to sync. Updates the curator.md feature page and
cli-commands.md reference to show --background as the opt-in async
flag and note that the default now blocks until the LLM pass finishes.
Previously, pinning a skill blocked every skill_manage write action
(edit, patch, delete, write_file, remove_file). The 'hard fence'
design conflated two concerns:
1. Pin as deletion protection — don't let the curator archive
or the agent delete a stable skill.
2. Pin as content freeze — don't let the agent rewrite it mid-conversation.
In practice (1) is what users pin for: they want a skill to survive
curator passes. (2) created friction — agents finding a new pitfall
in a pinned skill had to ask the user to unpin, then the agent
patches, then the user re-pins. The dance discouraged skill
maintenance and pinned skills went stale.
This narrows the _pinned_guard to skill_manage(action='delete') only.
Patches, edits, and supporting-file writes go through on pinned
skills so the agent can keep improving them. The curator's own
pinned-skip behavior (agent/curator.py:271 for auto-archive,
line 349 for the LLM review prompt) is unchanged — curator still
never touches pinned skills.
Changes:
- tools/skill_manager_tool.py: remove _pinned_guard calls from
_edit_skill, _patch_skill, _write_file, _remove_file; keep on
_delete_skill. Updated _pinned_guard docstring and error message.
- tools/skill_manager_tool.py: updated skill_manage model-facing tool
description to reflect the new semantic.
- website/docs/user-guide/features/curator.md: updated pinning
section.
- tests/tools/test_skill_manager_tool.py: flipped refuses-pinned
tests for edit/patch/write_file/remove_file into allowed-when-pinned;
kept test_delete_refuses_pinned (strengthened assertion to check the
'cannot be deleted' wording).
Closes#18354
* fix(curator): defer first run and add --dry-run preview (#18373)
Curator was meant to run 7 days after install, not on the very first
gateway tick. On a fresh install (no .curator_state), should_run_now()
returned True immediately because last_run_at was None — so the gateway
cron ticker fired Curator against a fresh skill library moments after
'hermes update'. Combined with the binary 'agent-created' provenance
model (anything not bundled and not hub-installed), this consolidated
hand-authored user workflow skills without consent.
Changes:
- should_run_now(): first observation seeds last_run_at='now' and returns
False. The next real pass fires one full interval_hours later (7 days
by default), matching the original design intent.
- hermes curator run --dry-run: produces the same review report without
applying automatic transitions OR permitting the LLM to call
skill_manage / terminal mv. A DRY-RUN banner is prepended to the
prompt and the caller skips apply_automatic_transitions. State is
NOT advanced so a preview doesn't defer the next scheduled real pass.
- hermes update: prints a one-liner on fresh installs pointing at
--dry-run, pause, and the docs. Silent on steady state.
- Docs: curator.md and cli-commands.md explain the deferred first-run
behavior and warn that hand-written SKILL.md files share the
'agent-created' bucket, with guidance to pin or preview before the
first pass.
Tests:
- test_first_run_defers replaces the old 'first run always eligible'
assertion — same fixture, inverted expectation.
- test_maybe_run_curator_defers_on_fresh_install covers the gateway tick
path end-to-end.
- Three new dry-run tests cover state-advance suppression, prompt
banner injection, and apply_automatic_transitions skipping.
Fixes#18373.
* feat(curator): pre-run backup + rollback (#18373)
Every real curator pass now snapshots ~/.hermes/skills/ into
~/.hermes/skills/.curator_backups/<utc-iso>/skills.tar.gz before calling
apply_automatic_transitions or the LLM review. If a run consolidates or
archives something the user didn't want touched, 'hermes curator
rollback' restores the tree in one command. Dry-run is skipped — no
mutation means no snapshot needed.
Changes:
- agent/curator_backup.py (new): tar.gz snapshot + safe rollback. The
snapshot excludes .curator_backups/ (would recurse) and .hub/ (managed
by the skills hub). Extract refuses absolute paths and .. components,
and uses tarfile's filter='data' on Python 3.12+. Rollback takes a
pre-rollback safety snapshot FIRST, stages the current tree into
.rollback-staging-<ts>/ so the extract lands in an empty dir, and
cleans the staging dir on success. A failed extract restores the
staged contents.
- agent/curator.py: run_curator_review() calls curator_backup.
snapshot_skills(reason='pre-curator-run') before apply_automatic_
transitions. Best-effort — a failed snapshot logs at debug and the
run continues (a transient disk issue shouldn't silently disable
curator forever).
- hermes_cli/curator.py: new 'hermes curator backup' and 'hermes curator
rollback' subcommands. rollback supports --list, --id <ts>, -y.
- hermes_cli/config.py: curator.backup.{enabled, keep} config block
with sane defaults (enabled=true, keep=5).
- Docs: curator.md gets a 'Backups and rollback' section; cli-commands
.md table gets the new rows.
Tests (new file tests/agent/test_curator_backup.py, 16 cases):
- snapshot creates tarball + manifest with correct counts
- snapshot excludes .curator_backups/ (recursion guard) and .hub/
- snapshot disabled via config returns None without creating anything
- snapshot uniquifies ids within the same second (-01 suffix)
- prune honors keep count, newest-first
- list_backups + _resolve_backup cover newest-default and unknown-id
- rollback restores a deleted skill with content intact
- rollback is itself undoable — safety snapshot shows up in list_backups
- rollback with no snapshots returns an error
- rollback refuses tarballs with absolute paths or .. components
- real curator runs take a 'pre-curator-run' snapshot; dry-runs do not
All curator tests: 210 passing locally.
Voscko reported curator.auxiliary.provider/model was advertised in the
docs but ignored — the review fork read only model.provider/default. The
narrow fix would wire the one-off key through, but that leaves curator
as a parallel system: not in `hermes model` → auxiliary picker, not in
the dashboard Models tab, missing per-task base_url/api_key/timeout/
extra_body.
Unify curator with the rest of the aux task system so `hermes model`
and the dashboard configure it like every other aux task.
Four sources of truth updated:
- hermes_cli/config.py — add 'curator' slot to DEFAULT_CONFIG.auxiliary
(timeout=600 since reviews run long), drop the one-off curator.auxiliary
block from DEFAULT_CONFIG.curator.
- hermes_cli/main.py — add ('curator', 'Curator', 'skill-usage review pass')
to _AUX_TASKS so the CLI picker offers it.
- hermes_cli/web_server.py — add 'curator' to _AUX_TASK_SLOTS so the
dashboard REST endpoint accepts it.
- web/src/pages/ModelsPage.tsx — add Curator entry so the dashboard
Models tab renders the task.
agent/curator.py _resolve_review_model() now reads auxiliary.curator
first (canonical), falls back to legacy curator.auxiliary (with an info
log asking users to migrate), then falls back to the main chat model.
Pre-unification users keep working.
Docs updated: docs/user-guide/features/curator.md now points at
`hermes model` → auxiliary → Curator and the dashboard Models tab.
Tests: 6 unit tests on _resolve_review_model (auto default, canonical
slot honored, partial override fallback, legacy fallback with
deprecation log assertion, new-wins-over-legacy, empty-config safety)
plus a cross-registry test that curator is wired into all four sources
of truth. test_aux_tasks_keys_all_exist_in_default_config already
covers the DEFAULT_CONFIG ↔ _AUX_TASKS invariant.
Reported by Voscko on Discord.
Add a dedicated 'Pinning a skill' section that covers both gating
layers — curator auto-transitions AND the agent's skill_manage tool
— so users know what the flag actually protects against after
PR #17562. Updates the one-line claim in 'How it runs' to cross-link
the new section instead of only mentioning auto-transitions.
Skill catalog pages (bundled/optional) were drowning out real user-guide
and reference docs in search results. There are ~3100 of them and they
match on almost every generic term.
- Add `ignoreFiles` regexes to docusaurus-search-local for
`user-guide/skills/bundled/` and `user-guide/skills/optional/`.
The two human-written catalog indexes (`reference/skills-catalog`,
`reference/optional-skills-catalog`) remain indexed.
- Add a new feature page `user-guide/features/curator.md` covering the
curator subsystem merged in #16049 and refined in #17307 (per-run
reports): how it runs, config, CLI (`hermes curator status/run/pin/
restore/...`), `.usage.json` telemetry, archival semantics, and
recovery. Slotted into the Core features sidebar next to Skills.
Search index size dropped from 5822 docs to 2704 in the main section;
`user-guide/features/curator` is indexed.
