Last updated: 27 July 2026, 12:24 BST
Hermes was updated from v0.18.2 at b9b463f3 to v0.19.0 at d71033a4, a 3,145-commit mainline jump. A full 5.8 GB backup completed before mutation. The repo is clean, Camofox remains localhost-only, all seven role-skill links survived, Context7 and Linear MCP connect, Computer Use passes doctor, and Telegram plus Photon are running. The remaining maintenance item is the stale launchd service definition. It needs one separately approved gateway restart to install the new crash-loop and shutdown timing settings.
Hermes is current on main at d71033a4 and reports v0.19.0. The guarded update completed with a verified full backup and a clean source tree. Core local checks passed. Drift review found a broken reviewer ownership flow; orchestrator 2.1.1, reviewer 2.2.0, their linked guidance and the coder success exit now use an ownership-safe reviewer gate. Direct approve and revise mechanics passed against temporary real Kanban databases. A late audit also found two unresolved memory-gate defects: V4A multi-file patches can bypass protected-path inspection, and legitimate compressed or branched interactive sessions can be misclassified as subagents. The exact hook repair remains approval-gated and was not applied. The gateway needed two automatic recovery restarts during a cold-start skill scan, then stabilised at one PID with Telegram and Photon connected. Its launchd definition remains stale and needs a separately approved restart. The automatic cua-driver refresh failed due to an upstream archive packaging error, but installed 0.7.1 is healthy. Hindsight recall works even though the CLI status screen incorrectly reports its local setup unavailable.
Hermes is v0.19.0 at d71033a4 with a clean tree and 0 ahead / 0 behind origin/main.
Services passed and the review-flow P0 was repaired. Memory-gate still needs an approved V4A path and session-lineage fix.
The launchd plist is running but stale. One separately approved restart will install the new Node path, crash-loop throttle and graceful shutdown timeout.
No live paid provider, delegation or model-driven Kanban smoke tests were run. The review flow was tested directly through the real runtime against temporary databases. Claude and Anthropic were untouched by design. BB approved this report deploy during the update gate.
What changed: Ran hermes update --backup --yes from b9b463f3 to d71033a4. Hermes now reports v0.19.0 and up to date.
Validation: Repo clean; Camofox localhost-only and healthy; all seven role-skill symlinks intact; Context7 and Linear MCP connected; Computer Use doctor passed; Telegram and Photon reached ready state.
Open maintenance: The launchd plist is stale relative to v0.19.0. Updating it requires a separately approved gateway restart.
Problem: The reviewer skill instructed a dispatcher-spawned reviewer to complete or block the producer's task. v0.19.0 rejects foreign lifecycle mutations and has no reviewer exception.
Fix: Orchestrator 2.1.1, reviewer 2.2.0, linked role guidance and coder success exits now use cross-task comments for evidence and the reviewer's own task as the gate. Revise creates a correction card and blocks the reviewer's own gate.
Proof: Temporary real Kanban databases confirmed foreign complete/block are rejected, foreign comment succeeds, approve completes the reviewer gate, and revise creates a ready correction card while leaving the producer done.
Bypass: Patch mode embeds Add, Update, Delete and Move targets inside patch text. The hook currently checks only tool_input.path, so a protected basename can bypass inspection.
False block: The hook treats any non-null parent_session_id as a subagent. v0.19 also uses parent lineage for legitimate compression continuations and branches.
Proposed repair: Extract every V4A endpoint, fail closed on multiple protected targets, and use explicit session source to distinguish subagents. No hook or config change was applied because approval timed out.
What changed: Ran hermes update --backup from 449706cb to b9b463f3 after precheck found 183 upstream commits.
Validation: Repo clean, gateway launchd-supervised, Context7 and Linear MCP connected, Camofox health OK on 127.0.0.1, worker skill symlinks OK.
DB maintenance: hermes sessions optimize completed and SQLite PRAGMA quick_check returned ok; database stayed around 3.28 GB.
Evidence: Files appeared under apps/desktop/src and apps/shared/src around update time and matched generated JavaScript output.
Cleanup: Moved to ~/.Trash/hermes-generated-js-post-update-20260710-191358; git status is clean afterward.
Delivery protection: v0.19.0 adds a durable delivery-obligation ledger so finished replies can survive a gateway restart. This run did not perform a destructive crash test.
Current model: Default model is now openai-codex gpt-5.6-sol. The configured fallback entries are blank, so Hermes reports no active fallback providers.
What changed: The update includes perf(skills): speed up snapshot prompt builds, dashboard/session query offloading, and state-query compact rows.
What this means: Less waiting around the parts of Hermes that build prompts, list sessions, and render dashboard/status surfaces.
Recommended use: No behaviour change. Treat it as background speed.
What changed: Fallback providers reload for live sessions, fallback-chain refresh hardening, delegation completion/session-boundary fixes, webhook route scripts off the event loop, and webhook payload filters.
Local check: Gateway is supervised by launchd at PID 4420. Fresh logs show Telegram connected, Photon sidecar listening on 127.0.0.1:8789, and gateway running with 2 platforms.
What changed: Compression now has a 75% trigger floor under 512K, no summary output cap, and reasoning-trace exclusion. Session message API pagination and offset handling were fixed.
What this means: Long chats should be less likely to churn or lose useful shape during compaction.
What happened: During lazy backend refresh, platform.matrix failed its pip install/build refresh. Hermes kept the previous installed version.
What this means: Not a blocker for Boyd’s active Telegram/Photon setup. It matters only if Matrix is used.
What changed: The update adds grok-4.5 GA to the model catalog, with context lengths and reasoning-effort allowlist.
What changed: Gateway gained webhook payload filters and docs coverage for filters plus route scripts.
v0.18.2 at b9b463f3; repo clean; origin/main 3,145 commits ahead.~/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-07-27-120649.zip, 5.8 GB. Restore with hermes import and the absolute zip path.d71033a4. Hermes reports v0.19.0, up to date, and source remains clean.v0.19.0 worker ownership enforcement.Context7 and Linear MCP passed live connection tests. Dropbox remains disabled by config. Stitch is not configured.3,145 commits installed across the Quicksilver release and 1,712 later mainline commits. Major areas include startup speed, durable delivery, delegation lifecycle, multi-profile gateways, provider routing, secret sources, approvals, security and desktop/TUI performance.
ImpactHermes is v0.19.0 at d71033a4 with a clean repo. Camofox, role-skill symlinks, Context7, Linear, Computer Use, Telegram and Photon passed. Orchestrator 2.1.1, reviewer 2.2.0 and linked guidance now match the v0.19 ownership guard; direct approve and revise runtime tests passed. Memory-gate still has an unpatched V4A bypass and session-lineage false block. The gateway service definition needs a quiet-window refresh.
v0.18.2 at b9b463f3, clean tree, 3,145 commits behind d71033a4.~/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-07-27-120649.zip, 5.8 GB.v0.19.0 at d71033a4 and up to date.Context7 and Linear MCP connected. Computer Use doctor passed.716 commits pulled. Notable changes include faster skill snapshot prompt builds, fallback-provider reload hardening, dashboard/session DB responsiveness, compression-thrash protection, webhook payload filters, session-message pagination fixes, Grok 4.5 catalog support, and broad gateway/MCP/runtime hardening.
ImpactLocal system is healthy after update: repo clean, gateway supervised and freshly restarted, Telegram and Photon connected, Camofox localhost-only and healthy, all worker profile symlinks intact, Context7 and Linear MCP enabled. Matrix backend refresh warning is the only watch item.
v0.18.0 at upstream 30e947e0; repo clean; update available.~/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-07-08-222918.zip (4.6 GB). Restore command: hermes import /Users/boydbowker/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-07-08-222918.zip.hermes-agent==0.18.2 at upstream 449706cb.v0.18.2 (2026.7.7.2), upstream 449706cb, up to date, repo clean.context7 and linear enabled; Dropbox MCP disabled by config.v0.18.0 is the Judgment Release: P0/P1 cleanup, first-class Mixture-of-Agents, completion contracts and verification evidence, /learn and /journey, background delegation fan-out, desktop coding Projects, gateway scale-to-zero and drain coordination, Vertex AI support, and a broad security hardening round.
The local system is on v0.18.0 at upstream 30e947e0. Repo is clean. Gateway is supervised by launchd and Telegram is live. Camofox remains bound to 127.0.0.1. All seven worker profile skill symlinks survived. OpenAI Codex and Kimi smokes returned OK. The practical work now is to decide which new v0.18 capabilities are worth piloting, without turning the tool into the mission.
v0.18.0 (2026.7.1) at upstream 30e947e0.v0.17.0 at 2ecca1e7d.v2026.7.1 present.gpt-5.5 returned OK; kimi-coding / kimi-k2.6 returned OK.Upstream Kanban added typed block reasons and loop protection. Backups now include project databases, Kanban boards, sibling stores, response store, memory store, and verification evidence. Gateway model-switching no longer blocks the event loop. Security redaction expanded. CuaDriver upgraded from 0.6.5 to 0.6.8.
ImpactKanban patch kept and verified. Rollback coverage is now more complete. No other process changes.
Decisions and Actions3e99ec0ff to 2ecca1e7d. Public version remains v0.17.0.~/.hermes/backups/hermes-update-20260627-225918/local-kanban-diff.patch.~/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-06-27-225937.zip, 3.9 GB. Snapshot 20260627-220547-pre-update.v0.17.0 at upstream 2ecca1e7d, Camofox localhost bind intact, profile symlinks intact, gateway launchd supervision healthy, Telegram connected, Context7 MCP passed, Linear MCP passed, Kanban patch compiles and imports.361 commits pulled. Package-lock.json was dirty pre-update. Incoming changes touched the Anthropic adapter. CuaDriver upgraded to 0.6.5. Python dependencies refreshed, web UI and desktop app rebuilt.
ImpactNo local patches affected. Cron runs from before this update showed network timeouts. Reassessment scheduled after next cron runs.
Decisions and Actions5a53e0f0f to 5ecf3bf0e. Public version remains v0.17.0.~/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-06-23-160840.zip, 2.7 GB. Snapshot 20260623-151120-pre-update.v0.17.0 at upstream 5ecf3bf0, repo clean, Camofox localhost bind intact, Camofox health OK, profile symlinks intact, gateway restarted under launchd, Telegram connected, Context7 MCP lookup passed, local MCP list passed.Released hermes-agent==0.17.0. 509 commits pulled. Web UI rebuilt. Desktop packaged app rebuilt. CuaDriver upgraded to 0.5.7. SOP hook-table drift found and fixed. SOP updated to exclude Claude/Anthropic unless BB explicitly requests.
Major version jump. No breaking changes to Boyd's setup. OpenAI Codex and Kimi provider checks passed. Follow-up fixes completed in the same session.
Decisions and Actionsv2026.6.19.gpt-5.5. Manual snapshot 20260619-215158-pre-update.~/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-06-19-225453.zip.hermes-agent==0.17.0, web UI built, desktop packaged app rebuilt, CuaDriver upgraded to 0.5.7, gateway restarted.v0.17.0, repo clean, Camofox localhost bind intact, profile symlinks intact, gateway loaded and Telegram connected, delegation smoke passed, Context7 MCP lookup passed, Kanban schema scan clean.gpt-5.5 returned OK. Kimi kimi-k2.6 returned OK. OpenRouter smoke skipped (per-token, not required by SOP).416 commits, same version tag, fast-forward from 6110aed9b to 4e6d05c6a. Pre-update zip backup created.
Camofox localhost patch intact, 7 profile symlinks intact, gateway service loaded, Telegram connected. Stitch MCP was not configured at this point.
Decisions and Actions6110aed9b to 4e6d05c6a.~/.hermes/backups/pre-update-2026-06-14-202134.zip.Context7 passed. Stitch MCP was not configured.530 commits between 5af899c7c and 6110aed9b. Gateway fell back to background process because launchd bootstrap hit exit 5. Telegram reconnected and cron ticker ran.
Drift discovered: launchd plist stale, Telegram pause patch clobbered, degraded-send-path patch absorbed upstream. All resolved by the 2026-06-14 update session. SOP changed to make Claude smokes opt-in.
Decisions and Actions5af899c7c and 6110aed9b.20260610-191100-pre-update2 saved.227 commits, tag v2026.6.5. Claude OAuth expired, only env-var credential active. Dirty repo had prompt_caching.py and package-lock noise.
Interactive Claude login ran during update. SOP-001 rewritten to use interactive login path and drop setup-token. Kanban orchestrator drift found but resolved: stock playbook load was correct, no full merge needed.
v2026.6.5.SOP-001 rewritten to use that path and drop setup-token.40-Projects/claude-oauth-safety-guardrails/sops/update-gate.md. The stable URL is https://hermes-vault.pages.dev/briefs/hermes-update/.