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.
/goal was silently broken outside the classic CLI.
TUI: /goal was routed through the HermesCLI slash-worker subprocess,
which set the goal row in SessionDB but then called
_pending_input.put(state.goal) — the subprocess has no reader for that
queue, so the kickoff message was discarded. No post-turn judge was
wired into prompt.submit either, so even a manual kickoff would not
continue the goal loop. Intercept /goal in command.dispatch instead,
drive GoalManager directly, and return {type: send, notice, message}
so the TUI client renders the Goal-set notice and fires the kickoff.
Run the judge in _run_prompt_submit after message.complete, surface
the verdict via status.update {kind: goal}, and chain the continuation
turn after the running guard is released.
Gateway: _post_turn_goal_continuation was gated on
hasattr(adapter, 'send_message'), but adapters only expose send().
That branch was dead on every platform — users never saw
'✓ Goal achieved', 'Continuing toward goal', or budget-exhausted
messages. Replace the dead call with adapter.send(chat_id, content,
metadata) and drop a broken reference to self._loop.
Tests:
- tests/tui_gateway/test_goal_command.py — full /goal dispatch matrix
(set / status / pause / resume / clear / stop / done / whitespace)
plus regressions for slash.exec → 4018 and 'goal' staying in
_PENDING_INPUT_COMMANDS.
- tests/gateway/test_goal_verdict_send.py — locks in the adapter.send
path for done / continue / budget-exhausted and verifies the hook
no-ops when no goal is set or the adapter lacks send().
