The gateway turn-inactivity watchdog (gateway/run.py::_watch_gateway_turn_inactivity)
abandons a turn once seconds_since_activity exceeds the inactivity timeout
(default 30 min). Activity was only stamped when a tool started and when it
completed, so a tool call that runs silently for 30+ minutes (quiet builds,
long pytest suites, large downloads, network waits with no output) froze the
clock and the watchdog hard-abandoned a turn that was still making progress,
reaping the tool's processes mid-execution (issue #84491).
Add a daemon-thread heartbeat inside _run_agent_tool_execution_middleware that
touches agent._touch_activity every 30s while the tool is in flight, until the
call returns. Both the sequential and concurrent execution paths funnel through
this single middleware, so one heartbeat covers every tool. The thread is
stopped in a try/finally so it always tears down even if execute() raises, and
is never started when a guardrail/authorization block short-circuits before
dispatch. A genuinely hung tool remains bounded by the tool layer's own
timeouts (terminal default 180s, concurrent batch deadline ~420s), so the
heartbeat only extends the turn's life while the call is legitimately running.
Verified by an independent reviewer (no security/logic defects); 5 unit/integration
tests pass on Python 3.12 (upstream CI). The 30-min gateway backstop remains
for turns whose agent loop itself stalls.
Follow-up on the #84795 salvage: the sequential deadline gets its own
resolver key. Unset, it inherits the concurrent batch deadline (same
value, same HERMES_CONCURRENT_TOOL_TIMEOUT_S bridge) so the two executor
paths cannot drift by default; set, it can be tuned or disabled
independently. Documented in cli-config.yaml.example; 5 contract tests.
Deliberately NOT on run_bounded_sync: the executors extend deadlines
dynamically during human approval waits (authorization-gate excluded
seconds) — the shared primitive is fixed-deadline. Noted in the docstring.
Clarify waits on a human for up to 3600s or unlimited. The generic sequential timeout was aborting that wait at 420s and leaving the prompt and worker active.
delegate_task gains a control plane: action='list' / 'steer' / 'stop'
let the parent agent see, redirect, and early-stop its own running
subagents mid-flight — the model-facing counterpart of the TUI's
delegation.pause / subagent.interrupt / subagent.steer RPCs.
- action='list': live children of this conversation's spawn tree
(ids, goal, status, running_seconds, accepting_steer, live
transcript path). Ownership is enforced via a _delegate_parent_ref
weakref chain stamped at child build time, so a conversation can
only control its own descendants, never a sibling tree.
- action='steer': queues text into a running child via the existing
steer_subagent() registry path (delivered at the child's next tool
boundary; missed steers surface as missed_steer in the completion).
- action='stop': interrupt_subagent() — child stops at its next
iteration boundary, partial result still re-enters as a completion.
- Spawn dispatch response now includes subagent_ids + control hint.
- Control actions run synchronously (never backgrounded) and bypass
the spawn pause gate and depth limit; they also never consume the
per-turn subagent spawn cap, and remain usable once the cap is hit
(that is when stop matters most).
- Small-model robustness (found live with gpt-5.4-mini on Nous
Portal): tasks=[] alongside goal no longer trips the "Batch mode
requires at least 2 tasks" gate — treated as single-goal.
- CLI display: control calls render as "steer sa-…" / "list" instead
of an empty goal.
Live-tested E2E on Nous Portal (fable-5 + gpt-5.4-mini): full
spawn→list→steer→stop cycle, plus a steer-efficacy run where the
child acked the steer mid-essay and switched topics before finishing.
One shared foundation for the timeout/hang backlog instead of per-incident
site-local fixes:
- agent/deadline.py: run_bounded_async (thread-timer deadline that survives
a blocked event loop, generalizing the telegram adapter primitive),
run_bounded_sync, clamp_timeout (kills the #83220 time_t OverflowError
class at the boundary), resolve_timeout (config.yaml timeouts: section >
legacy env bridge > default), kill_process_tree (whole-tree termination
for the #71148 orphan class), DeadlineExpired (our deadline, mechanically
distinct from provider timeouts).
- tool_executor._resolve_concurrent_tool_timeout migrates onto the resolver;
exact legacy env-var contract preserved (default 420, 0 disables).
- timeouts: accepted as a known config root; documented in
cli-config.yaml.example.
Pure addition otherwise — no behavior change, no new env vars, no cache
impact. Later phases (#85125) migrate tool-execution, MCP, and subprocess
call sites onto these primitives.
New desktop_ui tool: the agent proposes an MCP server (install/enable/
authorize + a one-line reason) and blocks on mcp.setup.request until the
renderer's consent card answers mcp.setup.respond with the outcome
(installed/enabled/authorized/declined/unanswered/error). Same lifecycle
as clarify: 10-min timeout, allow_expired late answers, tool lifecycle
events forced on so the card mounts even with tool progress off. Desktop
prompt hint steers the model to the tool instead of hand-editing config;
every other surface keeps the schema out and is pointed at hermes mcp
install.
Desktop-gated (desktop_ui toolset) metadata-only window awareness: the agent
can ask which application window sits directly behind the Hermes window
(app, title, bounds — never pixels). Rides the same blocking bridge as
read_terminal: the gateway emits window.read.request and the renderer
answers window.read.respond.
Post-merge simplify finding on #81613: the wrapper's docstring claimed it
existed for 'existing callers', but every caller was introduced by the same
PR - there was never a pre-existing import path to preserve. All callers
(conversation_loop, tool_executor, run_agent's own flush handler, tests)
now import the canonical hermes_state.classify_persistence_error directly,
matching how is_disk_full_error is consumed. No behavior change; imports
stay lazy inside the exception handlers.
An enterprise deployment hit sustained SQLite write-lock contention on a
shared multi-gigabyte state.db (gateway + CLI processes writing
concurrently). Turns correctly failed closed with
session_persistence_failed, but the only user-facing wording claimed the
disk was full and the gateway rendered a generic failure.
The fast-fail semantics are deliberate and unchanged. This adds a pure
classifier (locked / disk / unknown) applied where the SQLite error is
still visible, threads the cause through the turn-completion explainer,
and stamps a machine-readable failure_reason
(session_persistence_failed:<cause>) plus a guaranteed non-empty error on
the result for downstream surfaces. The cron scheduler's explainer-text
suppression now matches every cause variant so refined wording cannot
leak into scheduled-job deliveries.
- Single source for the approval-derived bound: public human_wait_ceiling()
in tools/approval.py; the gate's lock-timeout helper delegates to it
instead of re-deriving timeout + margin (was duplicated in two modules
and reached for a private _get_approval_timeout).
- Shared _clamped_window_seconds() for the close-time accrual and the
open-window read, so the two clamps are identical by construction.
- Gate __init__ grows session_key kwarg; tests construct via the real
constructor instead of mutating privates post-hoc.
- Gateway test resolves its pending approval via resolve_gateway_approval()
(the production /deny path) instead of hand-rolling queue-entry internals.
- Docstring accuracy: human_wait_seconds monotonicity caveat under cap
eviction; s/pre_tool_block/pre_tool_call/ hook name.
Review-driven follow-up to the #79719 fix:
- Clamp the CLOSE-side accrual too: a wedged window that eventually closed
used to inject its full unclamped overstay into completed_seconds,
retroactively extending a running batch's deadline by hours. Both clamps
now share one ceiling helper (_human_wait_ceiling = approvals.timeout +
HUMAN_WAIT_MARGIN_S), and the gate's lock-timeout uses the same margin
constant so the bounds cannot drift apart.
- Evict idle sessions until the table is under the cap (was: at most one
per insert, so churn could outgrow _HUMAN_WAIT_MAX_SESSIONS). Entries
with an open window are still never evicted.
- Log (debug) instead of silently swallowing a failed session-key snapshot
in the gate constructor.
Tests: close-side clamp regression + table-cap assertion added; suite at
17 passed.
A tool wedged inside _ConcurrentToolAuthorizationGate hung the whole turn
forever (#79719): excluded_seconds() measured residency in gate.run() —
arbitrary code — so an open window grew 1:1 with wall clock and the batch
deadline's remaining was constant (remaining = deadline - window_started;
now cancels out). A hanging pre_tool_call plugin or an approval round-trip
to a dead client defeated the deadline entirely. The serialization lock was
also an unbounded acquire, so every other worker needing authorization
parked behind the wedged holder forever.
Fix, in two halves:
- tools/approval.py grows per-session human-wait accounting
(human_wait_window / human_wait_seconds). The two places that are
verifiably blocked on a HUMAN — the CLI approval prompt and the gateway
approval poll loop — mark their own windows. Both are intrinsically
bounded by approvals.timeout; the open-window read is additionally
clamped to that timeout plus a margin as belt-and-braces.
- _ConcurrentToolAuthorizationGate keeps only serialization, with a bounded
acquire (approvals.timeout + 60s; on expiry the prompt runs unserialized —
the same degradation the start-order gate accepted in #79705).
excluded_seconds() becomes a baseline-delta read of the session's
human-wait total.
A wedged plugin now contributes nothing to the exclusion, so the batch
times out at the normal deadline with correctly labeled results, while a
genuine approval wait — which can legitimately exceed any fixed bound —
still extends the deadline in full. E2E (real AIAgent, worktree imports):
wedged-plugin batch on main never ends (>30s observed, 3s deadline); with
the fix it ends at 3.0s. A 4s simulated approval over a 2s deadline
completes without a timeout label.
Closes#79719
Follow-up to the salvaged start-order gate bound. Two gaps remained, both
reachable through the same knob.
1. The gate bound ignored the batch deadline it sits under. With
HERMES_CONCURRENT_TOOL_TIMEOUT_S below 120s the deadline fired first, so
the parked tools were still reported as "timed out" without ever running --
the exact bug the bound exists to fix. The gate now clamps to
min(120s, batch_timeout / 2), matching the sibling constant's documented
habit of relating the two timeouts.
2. A gate-parked worker released purely by its own timeout could wake up after
the batch was abandoned and dispatch its tool anyway: wasted work whose
result nobody reads, a duplicate post_tool_call for a tool_call_id the turn
already closed as timeout, and agent._current_tool left pointing at a dead
tool for the rest of the session (the main thread's reset already ran).
Abandonment is now a first-class wakeup: both abandon sites set an event and
notify the condition, and a released worker raises _BatchAbandoned instead
of dispatching. Parked threads are reclaimed in milliseconds rather than one
full gate timeout plus a tool runtime.
Also names the tool in the gate-timeout warning. The closure's function_name
binds the last-parsed tool, so logging it directly would have printed the wrong
name; it is threaded through _begin_in_order instead.
Measured, 3-tool batch with the first tool wedged during dispatch:
main PR as-is with this commit
dispatched in batch 0 0 tool_b, tool_c
dispatched after return 0 2 (ghost) 0
_current_tool leaked no "tool_b" no
Adds tests/run_agent/test_start_order_gate.py (3 tests). Mutation-checked
against the parent commit: the starvation guard passes there (it binds the
salvaged fix), while the deadline-clamp and abandonment guards both fail,
reproducing the ghost dispatch as
"tool(s) dispatched after the batch was abandoned: [tool_a, tool_b]".
_begin_in_order parks each concurrent tool worker on a timeout-less
Condition.wait_for until every earlier-ordered tool has advanced through
its dispatch. If one tool wedges during dispatch (observed in production:
a stuck skill_view; also reproducible via any blocking authorization),
three failures compound: every later-ordered worker is starved and never
starts; the batch deadline then falsely reports those never-started tools
as "timed out" (sub-second read_file/search_files calls get blamed while
having done zero work, and the model reasons against that false failure
info); and after the batch is abandoned the parked workers leak forever —
f.cancel() cannot cancel running threads, the per-thread interrupt flag
is never polled inside wait_for, and nothing notifies the condition
again. Confirmed with a faulthandler all-threads dump taken after batch
abandonment showing workers still parked at the gate.
Bound the wait at 120s; on expiry, log a warning and proceed out of
order (worst case: interleaved approval prompts — strictly better than
permanent starvation). The >= predicate lets one worker's timeout-jump
release every skipped worker immediately, and max() keeps the counter
monotonic for out-of-order advancement.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* feat(agent): read_preview — the desktop-gated tool that reads the in-app browser
The agent could open the preview pane (open_preview) and read the embedded
terminal (read_terminal), but the browser it had just opened was a black box —
'what does this page say?' had no answer. read_preview mirrors read_terminal
end to end: HERMES_DESKTOP-gated via check_fn (zero schema footprint outside
the GUI), dispatched through the same agent callback pattern, windowed with
start/count so a long page pages instead of flooding context.
* feat(gateway): preview.read blocking bridge
Same lifecycle as terminal.read: the tool blocks on preview.read.request, the
renderer answers preview.read.respond (allow_expired — a slow page extraction
losing the 45s race must not surface a raw 4009), and a timeout emits
preview.read.expire so late answers resolve quietly.
* feat(desktop): the renderer serializes the active preview tab for the agent
preview-reader.ts is the preview analog of the terminal's buffer registry: the
URL pane registers a page reader (webview executeJavaScript → title + visible
innerText) keyed by tab id; readActivePreview resolves the ACTIVE tab, windows
the text (24k cap per read), and answers file/artifact tabs with identity plus
a note pointing at the tool that reads that content directly. The gateway
event handler answers preview.read.request beside terminal.read.request.
Re-applied from #50508 onto current main: the executor moved from
tools/ to agent/ and the JSON-error site was refactored away into
_parse_tool_arguments, but these 8 f-string debug calls survived the
move verbatim. Lazy %s formatting skips string interpolation when
DEBUG is off — the Tool-result line interpolates the FULL tool output
(can be 100KB+) on every tool call otherwise.
The sequential executor's KeyboardInterrupt handlers emitted a cancelled
post-tool-call event for the current tool, called agent.interrupt(), then
re-raised — WITHOUT appending a tool result message for the interrupted call
or any remaining calls in the batch. The assistant tool-call turn was left
with no matching tool results, a message-role alternation violation that
malforms the next provider request (relying on downstream repair passes to
patch it, which don't run on every path).
The cooperative-interrupt block (_interrupt_requested) and the concurrent
executor already emit a result for every call_id; this brings the two hard-
interrupt handlers into line via a shared _append_cancelled_tool_results
helper that appends a cancelled result for the current + remaining calls
before re-raising.
Verified live before/after (0 tool results -> 3 for a 3-call batch
interrupted on the first tool) and with a sabotage-checked regression test.
52 interrupt/executor tests pass.
The 1.0s sleep between sequential tool calls has been present since the
initial commit with no documented rationale. It sleeps between local
tool executions — the next LLM request goes out only after the whole
batch — so it rate-limits nothing, and the parallel read-only path
already runs with no delay. Every multi-tool turn pays (N-1) seconds
of dead time. Remove the sleep, the internal tool_delay plumbing, and
dead test assignments. AIAgent.__init__ keeps tool_delay as a
deprecated no-op keyword for one release so existing programmatic
callers construct cleanly; passing it emits a DeprecationWarning.
Port from nearai/ironclaw#5149 (the describe-first live-hardening fix in
their progressive tool disclosure work): when a model invokes a deferred
tool through the tool_call bridge without the schema-required arguments,
return the tool's parameter schema instead of dispatching blind.
Pre-fix, a blind call produced an opaque downstream failure
("[TOOL_ERROR] Tool execution failed: KeyError: 'document_id'") that
teaches the model nothing about what the tool expects — IronClaw observed
cheap models looping ~30 identical invalid calls until the iteration
budget died. Post-fix, the model repairs the call in one round-trip.
- tools/tool_search.py: new validate_deferred_call_args() — key-absence
check of schema 'required' fields only; no type checking (coerce_tool_args
already repairs types downstream); fails open on any validator error so
it can never block a legitimate dispatch.
- model_tools.py: probe after the scope gate in the bridge dispatch.
- agent/tool_executor.py: probe in both unwrap sites (concurrent +
sequential) before the underlying tool replaces the bridge; sequential
path flattens the payload to match its {"error": str} wrapping.
- tests: TestDeferredCallSchemaProbe — blind call returns schema (not
KeyError), valid/optional calls dispatch, unvalidatable tools fail open,
out-of-scope rejection unchanged.
Follow-ups to the salvaged #23768 commit, which targeted a pre-79559214
codebase:
- agent/tool_executor.py + agent/agent_runtime_helpers.py: pass
multi_select at both current clarify dispatch points (the PR's
run_agent.py edits landed on dead code paths).
- tools/clarify_tool.py: replace the broad TypeError-retry in
_invoke_callback with inspect.signature detection, so a compatible
callback that raises TypeError internally is not invoked twice
(addresses hermes-sweeper review feedback on #23768).
- tests: cover single-invocation on internal TypeError, legacy 2-arg
callbacks, **kwargs callbacks, and registry handler multi_select
pass-through (schema arg → handler → callback).
The last_activity field showed 'tool completed: read_file (120.7s)'
identically whether the tool succeeded or failed, making post-mortem
analysis of silent-hang reports (#69131) unnecessarily hard.
Append ' (error)' to the activity description when the tool result is
classified as a failure, in both the concurrent and sequential
execution paths.
(Salvaged from PR #69467; its conversation_loop.py activity-touch hunk
is the same fix as PR #69577 and lands in the preceding commit.)
_extract_parallel_scope_path used Path.cwd() (process cwd) instead of the
tool's actual execution cwd, and os.path.abspath() instead of os.path.realpath(),
so symlink aliases and relative/absolute path pairs that resolve to the same
physical file were treated as distinct targets and placed in the same parallel
segment. On case-insensitive platforms (Windows) os.path.normcase() was also
absent, allowing Foo.txt and foo.txt to race.
Changes:
- agent/tool_dispatch_helpers.py: introduce _canonical_path(raw_path,
execution_cwd) applying expanduser->abspath->realpath->normcase; thread
execution_cwd through _extract_parallel_scope_path and
_plan_tool_batch_segments
- agent/tool_executor.py: pass get_active_env(effective_task_id).cwd as
execution_cwd to _plan_tool_batch_segments; add pathlib.Path import
- run_agent.py: pass active env cwd to _plan_tool_batch_segments at the
second call site inside _execute_tool_calls
- tests/run_agent/test_tool_batch_segmentation.py: add 5 regression tests
covering relative/absolute same target, symlink alias, execution_cwd vs
process cwd, symlink parent + nonexistent write target, and Windows
case-insensitive alias (skipped on non-Windows)
Fixes a file-corruption / lost-update race introduced by the mixed
tool-batch segmentation feature (perf commit #64460).
A model response containing several parallel-safe reads plus one unsafe
tool used to lose ALL concurrency: _should_parallelize_tool_batch was
all-or-nothing, so a single barrier call (terminal, clarify, unknown
tool, malformed args) forced the entire batch onto the sequential path.
_plan_tool_batch_segments now splits the batch into ordered segments:
maximal contiguous runs of parallel-safe calls execute on the existing
concurrent path, barrier calls on the sequential path, strictly in the
model's emission order. Invariants preserved:
- one tool result per call, appended in emission order (segments are
contiguous, so no result reordering across a barrier)
- side-effect boundaries: no call starts before an earlier barrier ends
- overlapping file targets split into separate ordered parallel runs
- turn-end budget enforcement + /steer injection run exactly once per
batch (segment executors run with finalize=False; the segmented
dispatcher owns the whole-turn finalize)
- interrupt during segment k drains segments k+1..n with cancelled
results, keeping one result per tool_call_id
Homogeneous batches keep their original single-path dispatch (zero
behavior delta); _should_parallelize_tool_batch remains as a thin view
over the planner for existing callers and tests.
