With the selective prompt-cache copy (#57046), un-marked messages on the
decorated api_messages list share their nested content parts with the
persistent conversation history — the per-message copy in
conversation_loop is shallow and decoration now deep-copies only the
marked messages. try_shrink_image_parts_in_messages previously wrote the
re-encoded image INTO the aliased part/source dicts, so an
image-too-large retry on an Anthropic route would silently replace the
original image bytes in agent.messages (and persist the degraded copy).
Replace the in-place writes with copy-on-write: rebuild the content list
with fresh part/source/image_url dicts and reassign msg['content'] — a
top-level write on the per-call copy that never reaches history.
Adds two regression tests simulating the aliasing; both fail against the
old in-place implementation (mutation-verified).
Baseline diff vs clean upstream/main (182 pre-existing environmental
failures on both sides) showed exactly 6 PR-caused failures, all the same
mechanism: tests construct ContextCompressor under a
get_model_context_length mock and read threshold_percent/threshold_tokens
after the with block, or build via object.__new__ and assign
context_length AFTER the derived budgets (the setter now resets the
lazily-cached budgets).
- test_compression_small_ctx_threshold_floor: resolve inside _make()
- test_cjk_token_estimation: resolve inside mock
- test_per_model_compression_threshold: resolve inside mock (2 tests)
- test_pre_compress_memory_context: assign context_length before
threshold/tail/summary budgets; add summary_target_ratio
Every LLM call built a fresh openai.OpenAI wire client (new httpx pool,
TCP+TLS handshake, measured 19.2ms p50 / 35.5ms p95 per call at ~5 calls
per tool-loop turn) and closed it when the request finished. Cache ONE
reusable wire client on the agent, keyed by the effective client kwargs:
- _create_request_openai_client hands back the cached client when the
effective kwargs are identical; any change (credential rotation,
provider failover, vision default_headers) evicts and rebuilds.
- Only a request that produced a response reports a reuse close reason
(request_complete / stream_request_complete); error unwinds report
*_error_cleanup and really close, so a retry after a request error
always builds a fresh pool.
- Cross-thread aborts poison the slot: a pool whose sockets were
shutdown(SHUT_RDWR) from a stranger thread is never reused (#29507) —
the owner-thread close discards it and the next create rebuilds. The
holder read and the abort are atomic (under the holder lock) at all
three abort sites, so a late abort can never poison the NEXT request's
checked-out client.
- Worker-side interrupt breaks close the half-read SSE stream on the
owning thread before building the partial response; a failed close
poisons the slot (otherwise each interrupt leaked one checked-out
connection until the pool hit PoolTimeout). run_codex_stream gets the
same poison-on-close-failure handling.
- Single checked-out slot (in_use): a concurrent call gets an untracked
client with the old per-request lifecycle.
- release_clients() / close() really close the cached client when idle;
if a worker has it checked out they abort the sockets and detach the
slot, deferring the FD release to the worker's own close.
- MoA facade and Mock passthroughs never enter the cache; max_retries=0
is preserved on all request clients.
Every API call in the tool loop persisted its token/cost delta by
calling SessionDB.update_token_counts() synchronously on the turn
thread — a BEGIN IMMEDIATE sessions UPDATE plus a session_model_usage
upsert, measured in production at p50 3.3ms / p95 70.4ms per call and
up to 299ms against a cold multi-GB state.db. The tool loop stalls for
that long between calls, N times per multi-tool turn.
SessionDB gains queue_token_counts(): same signature and semantics as
update_token_counts(), but the critical path is a deque append plus a
condvar notify. A lazily started daemon thread applies deltas in
enqueue order through the existing update_token_counts ->
_execute_write path, so the established self._lock / BEGIN IMMEDIATE /
jitter-retry discipline is unchanged. When a backlog forms, adjacent
same-route incremental deltas coalesce into one UPDATE: token and
api-call fields sum, cost fields sum None-preservingly (an all-None
run stays None so COALESCE keeps the stored value), and absolute=True
deltas never merge and act as ordering barriers. Route equality is
required for a merge because those fields feed COALESCE backfill, the
last-non-None-wins status fields, and the per-model usage attribution
key — a merged apply is row-equivalent to sequential applies.
Correctness and durability:
- flush_token_counts() gives read-your-writes to token/cost readers
(get_session, list_sessions_rich, _get_session_rich_row,
list_gateway_sessions, InsightsEngine.generate) — a plain attribute
check when nothing is queued. The writer sets its busy flag before
popping the queue so the lock-free fast path can never miss an
in-flight batch.
- update_session_model / update_session_billing_route /
update_session_meta write the sessions row synchronously, bypassing
the queue, so they flush it first: a still-queued first-of-session
delta carries the pre-switch route, and applying it after the switch
UPDATE would trip the first_accounted_route branch (api_call_count
== 0 plus a route mismatch) and resurrect the old model/provider.
- AIAgent._persist_session flushes at turn finalize and every
error-exit persist point; close() stops and drains the writer before
the WAL checkpoint; an atexit hook (registered on first enqueue,
unregistered on close so closed instances are not pinned until
interpreter exit) drains at shutdown. Worst-case crash loss is the
in-flight call's delta — the same window as the old inline write.
- A flush trusts a live stop-flagged writer (its loop drains before
exiting) and only drains on the caller's thread when the writer is
dead or never started, claiming the same busy flag so concurrent
flushes wait instead of racing an in-flight batch.
- After close() has stopped the writer, queue_token_counts applies the
delta inline instead of parking it on a queue nothing will drain; a
closed-connection failure then raises at the call site, which
already guards for it, exactly like the old synchronous path.
- Writer apply failures are logged and never raise into a turn; the
writer thread survives and keeps applying.
Call sites switched to the queue: the per-call site in
agent/conversation_loop.py and both codex app-server sites in
agent/codex_runtime.py. In-memory per-turn counters
(agent.session_estimated_cost_usd etc.) stay synchronous, so live turn
displays never see the queue.
Tests: tests/agent/test_async_token_accounting.py (19 tests: enqueue
ordering, absolute-as-barrier, backlog coalescing with exact sums,
coalesced-vs-sequential row equivalence, merge unit rules, None-cost
preservation, read-your-writes, flush vs stop-flagged/concurrent
drains, inline apply after writer stop, close/atexit durability,
_persist_session drain, writer failure isolation);
tests/run_agent/test_token_persistence_non_cli.py updated to the
queue_token_counts contract.
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.
The concept 'never send a turn that strict wire validation rejects as
empty' was forked across four sites, each with its own predicate and its
own blind spots:
1. build_assistant_message write-time ' ' pad — broke codex commentary
turns (content:'' is a designed state), and a DB-side pad can't
survive _rows_to_conversation's whitespace strip anyway. REMOVED.
2. conversation_loop send-time ' ' pad — main-loop only (summary path
uncovered), ordering-fragile (had to run after whitespace
normalization), assistant-only. REMOVED.
3. stream-stub '[response interrupted]' substitution — defeated the
loop's empty-stub guard (the stub no longer looked empty, entered
history, and the placeholder leaked into the stitched final
response via truncated_response_parts). REMOVED.
4. repair_empty_non_final_messages in sanitize_api_messages — the
unconditional pre-send chokepoint shared by the main loop AND the
summary path, covers user and assistant turns, non-final only,
copy-on-write. This is now the SINGLE OWNER.
The owner's payload predicate (_msg_has_payload) is extended to treat
codex_message_items / codex_reasoning_items as payload, so
designed-empty codex commentary turns are never rewritten on any
api_mode — the failure shape that broke site 1 in CI is encoded in the
owner, not special-cased at a call site.
Tests updated to pin the new contracts: builder stores textless turns
as-is; the empty stream stub stays recognizably empty for the loop
guard; poisoned resumed histories are repaired to the placeholder at
the send boundary; codex item carriers are never rewritten.
Sabotage-verified: unwiring the owner fails 3 regression tests.
Third layer of the empty-stub fix: full self-recovery. A poisoned transcript
(empty assistant stub or empty user turn already persisted before the write-
time guard, or fed in from a host history) previously 400'd every subsequent
request until it scrolled out — needing a manual DB edit + gateway restart.
sanitize_api_messages() (the unconditional pre-send chokepoint) now repairs
empty non-final messages on the per-call copy by substituting a minimal
'[response interrupted]' placeholder, so the session recovers itself IN MEMORY
on the very next send. The final message is left untouched (empty final
assistant is legal); stored history is never mutated; reasoning-only and
tool_call turns are preserved (negative controls).
Tests: production-shape repro (tool -> empty assistant -> user), empty-user
case, non-destructive guarantee, and negative controls. RED verified by
disabling the wire-in.
A stream that dies after delivering deltas but with 0 recovered chars (and
no captured tool call) produced a content-less assistant stub. That empty
non-final message is invalid for the Anthropic schema, so every later request
400s with 'all messages must have non-empty content' (INVALID_REQUEST_BODY).
On a large session the 400 was misclassified as context overflow, dropping the
loop into a compression spiral that ends in 'Cannot compress further' — a
misleading context-size error on a session nowhere near its limit.
Root cause: substitute a minimal '[response interrupted]' placeholder so the
stub is never empty.
Misclassification: add _INVALID_MESSAGE_BODY_PATTERNS (checked before the
context-overflow heuristic) to classify these as non-retryable format_error,
and teach the body extractors the litellm/Bedrock errorMessage/errorCode/
errorArgs shape so descriptive proxy errors are not mistaken for generic ones.
Adds RED-verified regression tests for the stub path and three classifier tests
(including a guard that real overflows still compress).
Current main flattens multimodal assistant list-content to a plain string
before the send boundary, so the original assertion (list survives to the
wire) can't hold on this base. The test now asserts the load-bearing
contract instead: no crash, and the assistant turn's text is neither
dropped nor replaced by the pad. Adds a direct unit-shape check that the
pad predicate skips list content (the exact AttributeError shape from the
original bug) and pads only textless string turns.
The empty-content pad loop called .strip() on am.get("content") without
checking the type. Multimodal assistant turns carry content as a list
of parts (text/image), so a session with any image-bearing turn crashed
during request assembly:
AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'strip'
Guard with isinstance(content, str) — a multimodal turn is never the
empty textless shape the pad repairs. Adds a regression test driving a
multimodal history through the loop.
A mid-tool-call stream drop with no delivered text produces a
partial-stream stub carrying content:'' and tool_calls=None. The
conversation loop's truncation path appended it to history as
{"role":"assistant","content":""} before the continuation nudge, and
strict providers (Moonshot/Kimi via OpenRouter) reject empty assistant
content with HTTP 400 ("the message at position N with role 'assistant'
must not be empty") on the next replay. Because the message is
persisted, every subsequent turn re-failed — the session was
unrecoverable.
Three layers, smallest blast radius first:
1. conversation_loop (length path): an EMPTY partial-stream stub is no
longer appended as an interim assistant message; only the
continuation user-message is. Stubs that delivered partial text are
still persisted so continuation stitching is unchanged.
2. chat_completion_helpers.build_assistant_message: never serialize a
textless assistant turn with content:'' — pad to a single space, the
same trick as the reasoning_content pad (#15250, #17400). Tool-call
turns are exempt (content:'' alongside tool_calls is accepted
everywhere).
3. conversation_loop send boundary: pad a textless assistant turn's
empty content to a single space AFTER all content-mutating passes
(surrogate sanitize, whitespace normalization, thinking-only drops),
before token estimation. This is the durable repair for sessions
ALREADY poisoned by older builds: the persisted stub rows are rebuilt
to '' on every reload (_rows_to_conversation strips whitespace, so a
DB-side pad can't survive) and only a send-time pad repairs them.
Verified: 485 tests pass across the four affected files; live replay of
a real poisoned session's resumed history against Moonshot via
OpenRouter returns HTTP 200 (was HTTP 400).
Direct tool HTTP calls already identified as Hermes-Agent, but the main
OpenAI-SDK chat path still sent OpenAI/Python. Set Hermes-Agent/<ver> for
api.x.ai clients (xai + xai-oauth) so normal text traffic is attributed correctly.
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.
Three mechanisms to detect and notify when gateway sessions stall silently:
1. Mid-turn activity heartbeats stamped to SessionDB so hermes sessions list
and hermes status show progress during long turns without new message rows.
2. Stall watchdog: when a busy session has pending inbound and the shared
activity clock is idle past agent.session_stall_timeout (default 300),
log a WARNING and notify the user once to try /new. Notify-only; does
not kill the turn.
3. Compaction timeout: fenceless compress_context callers get a progress-aware
host budget (compression.context_timeout_seconds default 120 idle,
compression.context_total_ceiling_seconds default 600 ceiling). On timeout,
cancel via commit fence, skip compaction without dropping messages, and
continue the turn.
Closes#72016 (slices 1-3; slice 4 cumulative SSE stream-retry deadline
remains a follow-up).
Cherry-picked from PR #72424 by @fangliquanflq.
- codex app-server sibling path: surface a WARNING (was silent debug) when
the projected-message flush fails — same bug class as the main fix, but
codex output has already streamed so fail-closed and agent_persisted=False
are both wrong here (#860/#42039 duplicate-write hazard); loud durability
gap logging instead.
- map session_persistence_failed in _format_turn_completion_explanation so
the user sees an actionable reason instead of 'The request failed:
unknown error' + explainer test.
- contributors/emails mapping for elco@thedaoist.gg (attribution CI).
Two sibling tests asserted the #34452 'No reply:' explainer text for
reasoning-only exhaustion. That terminal now delivers the labeled
reasoning excerpt (strictly more informative — it carries the model's
reasoning, which may contain the answer); the explainer still covers
the truly-empty case. Update the assertions to pin the new contract:
excerpt present, reasoning text included, '(empty)' never delivered.
When the empty-response ladder is fully exhausted (thinking-prefill
continuation, empty-content retries, provider fallback) and the model
produced structured reasoning but never any visible text, deliver a
clearly labeled excerpt of that reasoning instead of a bare '(empty)' —
the reasoning frequently contains the actual answer.
Delivery-only by design: raw chain-of-thought is never promoted to a
normal answer earlier in the ladder (prefill continuation still gets
first crack, retries and fallback still run), transcript persistence
semantics are untouched (the '(empty)' sentinel scaffolding keeps its
replay-safety behavior), and a truly empty exhaustion still returns the
existing terminal.
Idea credit: PR #48795 (@ligl0325) proposed falling back to
reasoning_content on empty content; this lands the safe kernel of that
idea at the one point in the ladder where it is strictly an improvement.
Port from openclaw/openclaw#110518 / #110956: some models reuse one call id
for different tool calls in a single batch (native Kimi Responses replays,
Ollama-compatible endpoints, degraded models at long context). Hermes kept
both calls but the pre-API sanitizer then dropped the later call/result pair
per id (#58327), so the second call's output silently vanished from every
replayed payload — the model never saw it and confabulated.
_uniquify_tool_call_ids renames later collisions to a deterministic <id>_d<n>
suffix at ingestion, before validation/dispatch/history build, so both pairs
survive. Composite Responses ids collide on the call half and keep their
response-item half. Deterministic suffixes preserve prompt-cache prefix
stability (no random UUIDs).
test_interrupt_child_during_api_call pinned the OLD worker-thread contract:
a bare time.sleep(5) fake request that only 'interrupts fast' because the
worker thread gets abandoned. Delegated children now run the request INLINE
(#60203) and interrupt responsiveness comes from the cross-thread socket
abort (_abort_request_openai_client) — which a sleep can't feel. Wire the
fake request to an abort event that raises ConnectionError when the child's
abort hook fires, exactly as a real httpx recv unblocks on socket shutdown.
Sabotage-verified: disabling the abort hook fails the test at the full 5s;
with it the interrupt lands in ~10ms.
The whole-prompt scan for "Current working directory:" matched USER project
content, not just Hermes' own host-info line. The prompt embeds AGENTS.md /
CLAUDE.md / .cursorrules in the context tier, which sits AFTER the host-info
block, and line_value() takes the LAST match — so any project file containing
a line starting with that label won the scan.
The comparison then ran runtime state against project prose, a mismatch that
never clears: the stored prompt was rejected on EVERY turn, rebuilding the
system prompt each message and destroying the prefix cache for the whole
session. Strictly worse than the staleness the check exists to catch, and
invisible to CI because no test encoded the invariant.
"last match wins" was only ever safe because Model/Provider/Platform live in
the volatile tier at the very END of the prompt. The cwd line is the one field
read from the STABLE tier near the start, so it needs an anchored read:
locate Hermes' own "User home directory:" line and take the working-directory
line that follows it.
Verified against the real builder on a real AIAgent, not a stub:
- stable cwd, clean project -> prompt REUSED (0 rebuilds)
- stable cwd, AGENTS.md naming the
field -> prompt REUSED (was: rebuild/turn)
- drifted cwd -> rebuilt
- drifted cwd, AGENTS.md naming the
NEW cwd -> rebuilt (prose can't mask drift)
Also re-verified no spurious rebuild across all five cwd-resolution paths
(pinned contextvar, TERMINAL_CWD, launch dir, symlinked workspace,
trailing-slash cwd).
The contributor's fixtures omitted the host-info anchor, so they silently
stopped exercising the cwd path once the read was anchored; reshaped them to
match real prompt structure via a _host_block() helper.
The three refresh tests asserted the replaced shared client gets
close()d — the exact cross-thread close#70773 removes. They now pin
the new contract: close() is NOT called from the refresh path; the
old client is retired (sockets shutdown, FD release deferred to GC).
Widen the #70773 fix beyond the three in-request cleanup sites removed in
the cherry-picked commit: every remaining path that swaps out the shared
OpenAI client could still hard-close its pool from a thread that doesn't
own the in-flight sockets (credential rotation/refresh on the turn thread,
dead-connection cleanup, gateway cache eviction, transport recovery) —
the same FD-recycle corruption vector, just rarer.
Add AIAgent._retire_shared_openai_client(): shutdown(SHUT_RDWR) all pooled
sockets (FD-safe from any thread, unblocks in-flight readers) but never
call client.close() — FD release is deferred to GC, which cannot run until
every borrowing thread has unwound its SSL BIO. Refcounting is the
ownership handshake; with no borrowers the FDs are released immediately.
Wired into:
- _replace_primary_openai_client (rotation/refresh/dead-conn cleanup)
- try_recover_primary_transport (primary_recovery)
- release_clients (gateway cache_evict)
agent.close() keeps the hard close: full teardown is a real session
boundary where no request may be in flight.
Tests: new tests/run_agent/test_70773_shared_client_fd_corruption.py
covers the three watchdog/retry sites plus retire semantics; existing
close-assertions updated to pin retire-not-close.
Review follow-up for the dropped tool-call recovery (#69630): the
re-prompt pair was tagged _dropped_toolcall_nudge, but that marker was
not part of the ephemeral-scaffolding contract. _persist_session /
_flush_messages_to_session_db would therefore write the synthetic
'issue the actual tool call now' user message (and the narration-only
interim assistant turn) as real transcript rows — a resumed session
could replay the internal retry instruction as user-authored context
and prompt unsolicited tool use.
- Add _dropped_toolcall_nudge to _EPHEMERAL_SCAFFOLDING_FLAGS
(run_agent.py) so both SQLite and JSON persistence skip the pair.
- Add it to _SYNTHETIC_USER_FLAGS (conversation_compression.py) so the
compressor never treats the nudge as human intent.
- Flag the interim assistant half of the pair too, and include the
marker in the finalization scaffolding pop so a genuine turn end
strips the pair from the live transcript (mirrors the
_empty_recovery_synthetic pattern).
- Regression tests: flagged messages classify as ephemeral, the
returned transcript contains no scaffolding, and the turn tail stays
on the real assistant answer.
The initial fix guarded the no-tool-calls else branch, but that branch only
SETS final_response — the turn actually finalizes later, in a separate block
after final_msg is built. Runs that reached finalization via that path exited
without the guard ever running (observed live: a scheduled PR reviewer stalled
at tool_turns=1-2 with zero recovery nudges).
Move the recovery to the finalization chokepoint (right after final_msg is
built), so it catches every path that ends a turn. Single guard now:
- increments a consecutive-stall counter and re-prompts (bounded to 3),
- resets on any successful tool round, and
- resets on a genuine (non-mismatch) turn end,
so it guards each stall independently without capping the whole run and
without looping forever.
Verified live: the scheduled reviewer now recovers through the stalls and
submits real reviews — PR 57800 APPROVED, PR 54826 COMMENTED — one PR per run.
Some providers (observed: claude-opus-4.8 / claude-sonnet-4.5 on GitHub
Copilot, ~2026-07) return finish_reason="tool_calls" while the parsed
tool_calls array is empty — the model signalled it wanted to act but the
payload shipped no call. The conversation loop took the no-tool-calls
else branch, treated the turn's narration as the final answer, and exited
with the task unstarted.
On unattended multi-step jobs this is silent failure: a scheduled PR
reviewer, for example, would narrate "Let me verify the PR..." and stop
at tool_turns=0 every run, never submitting a review, while the job still
reported success.
Fix: in the no-tool-calls branch, detect the provider contract violation
(finish_reason == "tool_calls" with zero tool_calls) and re-prompt the
model to emit the call instead of exiting. Bounded to 3 consecutive
stalls; the budget resets after any successful tool round so it guards
each stall independently rather than capping the whole run. The narration
may live in content or only in the reasoning field (empty content) — the
guard keys on the finish_reason/tool_calls mismatch, so both are covered.
A genuine finish_reason="stop" text turn is unaffected.
Verified live: a scheduled reviewer that died at tool_turns=0 every run
now recovers through 20+ stalls per run and submits real reviews.
Tests: tests/run_agent/test_dropped_tool_call_recovery.py covers the
re-prompt, the empty-content case, the clean-stop control, and the
bounded-loop guard.
