hermes-relay/DEVLOG.md

Hermes-Relay — Dev Log

2026-08-31 — Complete, readable Android release notes

Android release metadata now keeps one overall title and summary plus a complete typed inventory of user-visible additions, improvements, and fixes. Stable change ids prevent duplicate records, selected highlights lead the expanded view, and compatibility boundaries remain visible without turning the compact notice into technical release documentation. Toast counts and previews are derived from the same non-highlighted changes the dialog and history render, so View all reaches every counted item. Older bundled changelog entries retain their existing rendering path.

The Android 1.14.0 record was migrated to the complete schema and reconciled against its released Android changelog: four highlights, two additional improvements, ten fixes, and three compatibility notes. The dialog, full history, large-text toast, seven Android resource catalogs, legacy text fallback, Play note, listing copy, release-prep instructions, and validation tests were updated together.

Structured release-note tests, focused Kotlin tests, Android locale and collection-API gates, rendered 360×640 dark-theme screenshots including 135% text, sideload APK assembly, Android lint, and diff checks passed.

2026-08-27 — Fixed issue ownership and bounded PR intake

The automated issue first-response lane now assigns only Codename-11 when the maintainer is absent. The assignee is fixed in the write wrapper rather than chosen by webhook or model output, and represents follow-up ownership only—not acceptance, priority, implementation, or a release promise.

A separate pull-request route now handles external-contributor, non-bot, non-draft opened, reopened, and ready_for_review events. Owner-authored Codename-11 PRs are dropped before model dispatch. Eligible PRs are read from live metadata plus trusted dev policy/template without executing contributor code; the route applies only bounded area/intake labels and posts one App-authored intake reply. It cannot approve, request changes, merge, close, assign, request reviewers, push, edit PR text, rerun CI, select review-candidate, or claim correctness. The external-contributor production canary retained its exact head/base/open state and proved marker idempotency.

2026-08-26 — Canonical pull request intake contract

The repository now supplies one pull request template derived from the structure already used by successful Android, plugin, desktop, docs, release, and salvage PRs. It asks for a concise summary, focused changes, exact verification, visual evidence when applicable, compatibility/risk notes, contributor lineage, and the existing cross-surface checklist.

Checkboxes require evidence or an explicit N/A rationale. The template does not turn every surface into a mandatory test lane, does not replace CI or maintainer review, and keeps normal work targeting dev while preserving the documented release/hotfix exceptions.

2026-08-26 — Android OIDC origin continuity and route latency

Dashboard authentication now follows upstream /api/status.auth_flows: interactive redirect and password providers use native PKCE when advertised, with exact-host cookies retained only for older gateways or client-local native failure. A different provider-declared callback is fenced by installation identity and explicit review before becoming the authenticated Dashboard/Gateway origin. Public origins require HTTPS; reviewed literal LAN, Tailscale, and loopback HTTP retains upstream compatibility. Cookies are never copied between hosts, API and Relay ownership remain separate, unsafe callbacks are rejected, and third-party cookies are enabled only for the short-lived compatibility WebView.

The saved authenticated origin is now modeled as connection-level Dashboard/Gateway state rather than as a synthetic network candidate. The Routes screen presents a dedicated Dashboard & Gateway card with edit and re-check actions, keeps LAN, Tailscale, API, and Relay under Network routes, and does not expose internal role keys or describe arbitrary routes as VPNs. Changing the Dashboard origin clears origin-bound cookies and bearer state before the new address is verified. The compact footer shows the active surface and transport without allowing long model or profile names to displace the route label.

For self-hosted OIDC, authorization and callback use one exact Dashboard address. Split DNS remains the preferred public-HTTPS/local-performance shape, but a second public URL is not a universal onboarding field. Android does not treat the identity origin as ownership of optional API or Relay paths.

Optional API discovery no longer blocks a healthy Dashboard/Gateway route. Concurrent probes are shared, negative results are cached for a bounded window, same-priority routes race by completion, and connection generations prevent a late old route from overwriting a new one. Invalidated probes cannot publish a stale unreachable result or diagnostic. Dashboard session and message reads now cancel with their coroutine, one bounded budget covers the complete session list, WebSocket-ticket minting is bounded, and optional pull-request decoration falls off the critical path while preserving exact profile-scoped rows. Gateway ticket/auth failures receive one bounded classified attempt rather than two serialized waits. A pre-ready WebSocket close settles immediately, while optional API and Relay work remains background capability discovery.

Focused auth, Dashboard, resolver, route, and native-sign-in coverage passed 135 tests on the final origin/dev merge, followed by Android lint and sideload assembly. The matching Android 16 sideload was installed in place with app data preserved. Cold-route evidence showed Dashboard selection completing in hundreds of milliseconds, unavailable API fallback work continuing in the background, and unauthenticated ticket failures returning immediately instead of stalling. An upstream-compatible live-writer certification separately kept five full profile-roster RPCs below one second while concurrent ticket mints stayed in single-digit milliseconds. Final interactive provider consent/callback remains a human gate because the test device was locked after deployment.

2026-08-26 — Bounded public issue triage contract

New GitHub issues may receive one clearly identified Hermes-Relay automated triage response grounded in the live report, current code and documentation, related open/closed issues, and verified public release state. The lane may add existing type/area labels, request focused sanitized diagnostics, and flag a thread for maintainer review.

The automated path is intentionally not an issue-lifecycle owner: it cannot close, assign, milestone, prioritize, promise a fix/release/timeline, or continue replying after the first response. Replies identify themselves as automated and explicitly hand the remaining decision to a maintainer. Contributor guidance and agent instructions carry the same boundary.

Public labels and comments are attributed to the repository-scoped hermes-relay-triage[bot] GitHub App rather than a maintainer's personal account. The App identity does not expand the bounded action contract.

2026-08-24 — Single dev integration authority

origin/dev is the sole integration authority. Primary local dev checkouts are fast-forward-only mirrors, while feature, fix, docs, release-prep, and multi-branch integration work stays in dedicated worktrees and reaches dev through PRs. This keeps concurrent sessions from creating a second unpublished integration history and makes exact-head CI the gate before release preparation.

2026-08-24 — Release surface naming

Future Android, Plugin, and CLI+UI GitHub Releases, Android Play submissions, candidate provenance, release-note templates, workflow summaries, operator guidance, and user documentation use the Hermes-Relay <Surface> v<version> display-name contract. Immutable tags, package identities, machine-readable version-track IDs, updater channels, and artifact filenames remain unchanged. The isolated Android review and release-candidate application is branded HR Candidate in its launcher label, workflow verification, handoff comment, and active contributor and release documentation. Its package identity, build type, tags, and artifact contracts remain unchanged.

2026-08-24 — Review-candidate commissioning

The repository label catalog now provisions review-candidate as the sole automation label for matched Android and Relay PR bundles. The unprivileged workflow rebuilds an opted-in PR when its exact head changes, while documentation now reflects the label-driven path instead of an unavailable manual dispatch. The first live bundle completed for PR #398 after GitHub's normal first-time fork approval gate; the downloaded manifest matched the PR head and all four packaged artifact checksums verified. A separate trusted completion reporter reads only run/artifact metadata, checks out only the default branch, and creates or updates one marked PR comment with the exact candidate link and bounded review instructions. It never checks out or executes fork code with write permission. Skipped Build Review Bundle shells from unlabeled PR synchronize, reopen, or unrelated-label events return before artifact lookup and PR comment access, so only an explicit review-candidate run can produce candidate status copy.

2026-08-23 — Android assistant screen context

Compatible unlocked firmware controls that dispatch android.speech.action.WEB_SEARCH now open a real Hermes VoiceInteractionSession without replacing the foreground app. The path requires Hermes to be the selected Android Assistant, ignores caller-provided query data, starts listening from the same button press, and fails closed when the platform cannot show the session.

The session can receive bounded visible text and an optional screenshot from Android. Hidden, assist-blocked, and password fields are excluded; captured content is not logged. Context is staged in app-private cache, labeled as untrusted, and attached only to the first accepted Standard voice turn. Failed transport preflight keeps the same context available for an explicit retry, while cancellation and stale cleanup prevent later reuse.

The assistant card reports whether screen context is ready, keeps microphone and close actions separate, and can hand off to Full Voice without losing ownership. Focused assistant, Gateway, chat, and voice tests passed along with Android locale validation, Kotlin compilation, and Google Play debug lint. One Android 15 automotive device verified foreground preservation, AssistStructure and screenshot delivery, immediate listening, contextual response, and one-shot consumption; broader firmware certification remains tracked in TODO.md.

2026-08-23 — Windows attachment retry and Hermes-home resolution

Android now recognizes Windows absolute paths during manual inbound-media retry. Cellular-deferred MEDIA:C:\... documents use Relay's authenticated /media/by-path route instead of being sent to the opaque-token route and misreported as expired. A Robolectric/MockWebServer regression covers a spaced Markdown filename and asserts the exact route and decoded path query.

Relay configuration now derives its default config.yaml and session-persistence paths from HERMES_HOME when present. RELAY_HERMES_CONFIG remains the explicit override. Focused Python tests cover both resolution paths.

2026-08-23 — GitHub Discussions community surface

GitHub Discussions is enabled as the repository's lightweight community surface. Setup questions, early ideas, broader conversation, and community projects route to Discussions; reproducible bugs and specific, actionable feature requests remain in Issues. The English and Simplified Chinese README entry points plus the contributor guide now expose that boundary directly.

2026-08-22 — Android 1.12.1 sharing and recovery patch

Hermes-Relay Android 1.12.1 is published from the immutable android-v1.12.1 tag. Google Play versionCode 48 passed the signed Production draft preflight and was submitted to Production review before the public GitHub release was created. The release APK and AAB match the published SHA256SUMS.txt checksums.

Shared links, text, images, files, and mixed or multi-item payloads now open as fresh reviewable drafts without sending automatically. Add and Renew connection setup retains its exact connection-scoped authentication owner and exposes bounded Retry or Cancel recovery instead of an indefinite preparation screen. Unavailable chat routes and profile-history failures surface explicit recovery guidance, while Diagnostics records secret-free Android Keystore fallback and encrypted-store recovery evidence.

Verification included current-base PR checks, combined Play and sideload share and connection regression suites, Android lint, release bundle/APK smoke, final DEX compatibility scans, public-doc route validation, locale validation, signed local release bundles, Play preflight, immutable-tag release CI, and downloaded release-asset checksum comparison.

2026-08-21 — Android sharesheet draft handoff

Android's sharesheet target now accepts single and multiple text, link, image, and file shares. Mixed payloads open a fresh reviewable chat draft, preserve the shared text items in source order in the composer, and reuse the existing bounded attachment ingestion pipeline without sending automatically.

The handoff remains pending until the exact destination session has been created and its persisted composer draft has restored. This prevents the draft restore introduced for conversation continuity from overwriting a shared link or text, and identity fencing prevents an older asynchronous session creation from consuming a newer share intent. Attachment ingestion now also preserves coroutine cancellation so leaving the destination cannot consume a partially imported share. External file payloads accept only grantable content:// URIs; sender-controlled file paths, web URLs, malformed opaque URIs, and custom schemes never reach Relay's content resolver. Multi-file shares import at most ten attachments and tell the user when additional eligible files were omitted, bounding aggregate base64 memory and CPU work on the exported activity path.

API session-creation failures keep the identity-fenced share pending instead of consuming it. The existing chat error remains visible, and returning to the app explicitly re-arms one retry without creating an immediate failure loop.

Verification covered the focused sideload JVM regression suite, Kotlin compilation for both Android flavors, Google Play app lint, the Android and user-doc locale validators, the public route contract, sideload APK assembly, and inspection of the packaged manifest's SEND and SEND_MULTIPLE wildcard MIME filters.

2026-08-20 — Android 1.11.0 Bridge access and lower idle power

Hermes-Relay Android 1.11.0 is published from the immutable android-v1.11.0 tag, with Google Play versionCode 46 submitted to the Production track. The release adds per-connection Bridge capability presets, custom grants, and explicit bounded or unlimited screen access while preserving the master kill switch and Android permission requirements.

Stored-session resume failures now remain visible without silently changing conversation context, software-keyboard Return works across direct-text and synthesized-Enter IMEs, and cancelled recovery keeps its Stopped state. Idle render loops, screen-capture surfaces, audio effects, wake-word buffers, and unattended wake locks now follow tighter lifecycle boundaries to reduce power use without removing persistent Relay reachability.

2026-08-20 — Android stored-session resume failures stay visible

Android now treats a failed Gateway session.resume as authoritative for the selected stored conversation. The client no longer creates a replacement session and submits the continuation after a resume rejection or profile-scope mismatch, preventing a context-free turn from silently selecting different runtime state.

Gateway terminal failures and pre-submit transport failures now share a session-scoped panel immediately above the composer. The panel keeps the failed transcript row intact, shows only confirmed route/model/provider identity, offers explicit Details, Retry, and Dismiss actions, and records bounded, redacted evidence in the existing Diagnostics review/share flow. No route or model is changed automatically.

2026-08-18 — Android 1.10.0 chat continuity and streaming Markdown

Hermes-Relay Android 1.10.0 is published from the immutable android-v1.10.0 tag, with the production Play submission committed as versionCode 45. The release preserves exact-session composer drafts across restarts, converts large pastes into reviewable attachments, and keeps standard chat compatible with unmodified upstream Hermes.

Assistant replies now render completed Markdown structures incrementally while holding an incomplete streaming tail stable. Stable message identity and a bounded bottom-follow controller prevent completion-time replacement, stacked scroll animations, and transcript-distance velocity from moving a reader who has deliberately scrolled away. Foreground reconnect reattaches the visible Gateway session, malformed imported credentials fail closed, and software keyboard Return remains distinct from the dedicated Send action.

2026-08-17 — Android composer continuity and large-paste review

Android's multiline composer now leaves the software IME action as Return while the dedicated trailing button sends. Physical keyboard Enter, Shift+Enter, and directional caret behavior retain their existing contracts.

Composer drafts now persist in bounded app-private no-backup storage using small owner metadata plus content-addressed attachment blobs. Draft ownership follows the exact connection, opened session profile, session, and draft slot; profile and connection switches save before restoring, lifecycle stop flushes the latest state, and successful sends remove the saved draft.

A default-on Chat setting converts a single insertion of at least 5,000 characters into a reviewable text attachment. Preparation runs off the UI thread behind a visible loading card. Current Gateways send it through upstream file.attach; API-server SSE and proactive Thread paths materialize the same UTF-8 content into the prompt so no route silently loses the paste.

2026-08-14 — Android 1.9.0 session identity and conversation controls

Hermes-Relay Android 1.9.0 is published from the immutable android-v1.9.0 tag. Multi-profile session browsing now keeps the aggregate drawer scope selected while transcript hydration, resume, sending, and header identity follow the session's owning profile. New Chat from All Profiles uses the default profile, and the session list starts ungrouped while retaining project grouping and the other desktop-style views as explicit options.

Message reactions now resolve durable rows for both user and assistant messages. Vanilla Hermes voice remains on the authenticated Gateway instead of requiring the optional API fallback. Session rows can expose profile, project, branch, and pull-request context without crowding the chat header, secondary drawer actions remain available in All Profiles, and outside taps dismiss the drawer.

2026-08-09 — Gateway activity recovery and chat speech

Successful Android Gateway turns now reconcile against their profile-owned, structured session history. This recovers persisted tool calls when an upstream Gateway completes a turn without emitting live tool lifecycle events; assistant prose is never inspected for inferred activity, and the recovered calls continue through the existing Off, Compact, and Detailed display policy.

The Speak message action now follows configured voice readiness and idle output state instead of active Voice Mode or presentation style. A settled assistant reply can therefore be read aloud directly from chat, while live or provider playback still prevents overlapping output. One-shot message narration owns its completion state outside Voice Mode and replaces Speak with Stop while active; stopping drains only that narration pipeline and does not cancel a chat turn started while the response was playing.

2026-08-09 — Quiet reasoning and grouped tool activity

Android Chat now treats reasoning and routine tools as transcript scaffolding. Visible live reasoning opens automatically without a tinted card, then collapses to a quiet Thought disclosure when it settles unless the reader has explicitly chosen its state. Empty reasoning remains absent and the existing first-token status continues to own the waiting state.

Top-level routine calls retain their source order but render as consecutive activity runs. A live run keeps one summary and one latest-activity ticker in a stable footprint; a settled run becomes one collapsed summary that can disclose the original identity-preserving tool rows. File edits, approval/question tools, generated media, failures, output-risk findings, and delegated work split runs and retain independent surfaces. Off hides only ordinary activity runs, Compact uses compact disclosed rows, and Detailed preserves the full per-tool detail surface on demand. Expansion still yields bottom-follow ownership, and each run registers its measured bounds as Chat pet terrain.

2026-08-09 — Android chat experience and attachment polish

The Android composer now declares sentence capitalization and a Send IME action. A device-level setting chooses whether unmodified physical Enter sends or inserts a newline; Shift+Enter remains a newline and Ctrl/Command+Enter always submits. Every submit route converges on the existing live-turn owner, so the current gateway state still decides whether content steers the active turn or queues behind it. Directional focus traversal is cancelled while the editor owns focus so hardware arrow keys continue to move the caret and selection.

Conversation bottom-follow now remains owned when thinking or tool details expand. Only an actual drag ending above the bottom yields that ownership, and a chat first measured while the IME is already visible now captures the same resize-follow state as a keyboard opened after composition.

Bitmap-backed attachment surfaces now apply EXIF rotation and reflection before display. Attachment reads and Base64 conversion also leave the UI thread, so selecting a larger photo no longer performs the full ingestion path inside the activity-result callback.

Composer drafts now belong to the stable connection, profile, and session identity. Text, edit context, and pending attachments restore when returning to a chat without persisting attachment bytes. Pending attachments expose bounded, orientation-aware previews plus explicit remove and reorder controls.

Conversation overflow now opens transcript search with previous/next matches and a prompt-turn rail, both keyed to the same stable UI identity as the message list. Assistant prose retains the compact bubble and subtle edge treatment that keeps it legible above the animated chat background. Tapping a message reveals the existing copy, quote, speak, and edit actions with reduced-motion-aware expansion and accessible targets.

Quotes are composer-owned structured references instead of raw blockquote text. The composer and sent message render a linked, highlighted author preview; the transport remains ordinary Markdown so unmodified Desktop and TUI clients show a readable quoted reply. Thinking and top-level tools continue to use their independent compact thought bubbles and configured compact or full tool cards, without an aggregate completion card. The composer also names Correction and Queue states with visible labels. Gateway redirects remain text-only: follow-ups with attachments are forced through the existing destination-owned queue so files cannot be left behind by a correction request.

2026-08-08 — Standalone Android thinking status

Blank streaming assistant rows now present the full-size working animation directly in the conversation lane above the visible Still working… label, without painting an empty assistant bubble around the status. The first answer token replaces that standalone state with the normal response bubble, while recovery retains the distinct Reconnecting to your answer… wording. The status owns one stable TalkBack description and suppresses animated child nodes, avoiding repeated announcements without claiming measurable progress.

2026-08-08 — Android text-share draft handoff

The shared Android manifest now advertises a text/* ACTION_SEND target for both app flavors. MainActivity accepts only non-blank single-item text shares and places them in a process-local, identity-fenced handoff that survives cold Compose initialization. Once the configured chat context settles, the app root navigates to Chat and delegates draft creation and composer prefill to ChatViewModel.

The ViewModel reuses the existing new-chat lifecycle, preserving Gateway background-turn reconciliation and the active connection/profile/transport namespace. Composer prefills use a one-consumer conflated channel so an intent received before Chat composition is delivered once. Shared text is never routed through message sending; the user must review and submit it explicitly.

2026-08-08 — Android Profile Shelf and profile-context identity

Chat profile selection now lives in a collapsible shelf directly below the top app bar. The header toggles the shelf, the active capsule opens Agent Passport, inactive 48 dp avatars switch context, and a pinned overflow opens the same full switcher used by Passport. Saved ordering and hidden state drive both surfaces; the selected hidden profile remains disclosed, while a one-identity shelf stays out of the layout. Long-press actions expose inspection, Passport, profile lock, and hiding without adding activity or presence claims.

The shelf uses the chat surface instead of a second elevated toolbar. A neutral active capsule, 36 dp avatar artwork inside 48 dp targets, compact spacing, and a contained overflow affordance keep the row visually subordinate to Chat. When Server default resolves to a concrete profile, that profile's avatar remains the identity and a small home badge discloses its default routing role. Local avatar lookup remains keyed to the Server-default presentation identity, so an image customized while that row is selected appears consistently in both the Chat header and shelf rather than being re-keyed to whichever explicit profile is currently active.

The Server-default sentinel is now distinct from a profile literally named default. Profile selection restores the last compatible connection/profile/ transport session, otherwise leaves a fresh draft. Gateway turns detach and reconcile in their original session, live SSE turns keep switching disabled, and every profile transition clears session-scoped model, provider, personality, reasoning, approval, Fast, and YOLO state before the destination session seeds its own values. Server sticky-default state is never written.

2026-08-08 — Streaming reply tail follow

Android's conversation-bottom follower now reads the current immutable message list from Compose state inside its long-lived layout observer. Each streamed replacement can therefore advance the viewport as the active bubble gains lines, while dragging or scrolling away still releases bottom ownership.

2026-08-08 — Settled live replies transition to Markdown

Android now releases the live plain-text renderer immediately after an assistant row settles. The transition retains the row's stable UI identity, commits the final live frame before replacing its selectable text topology, and anchors the same bottom-owned row during the Markdown remeasure. Readers who scrolled away retain their viewport, while completed code fences, lists, emphasis, links, and interrupted partial replies no longer require session navigation before rich rendering appears.

2026-08-08 — Explicit-consent ownership for Android approvals

Android no longer treats unrelated Gateway activity or a terminal display event as proof that an approval was resolved. Approval cards remain pending through scrolling, recomposition, navigation, and background restoration, and retain their exact connection, profile, and session ownership. Only a labeled action that successfully reaches approval.respond, an authoritative upstream expiry, or an explicit interrupt can retire the local request; the interrupt path stays visibly denied because upstream force-denies it.

2026-08-08 — Agent Passport control and dismissal accessibility

The Android Agent Passport keeps its title and explicit close action outside the nested content scroller. Material bottom-sheet gestures are enabled again, so a downward gesture scrolls long content toward its top boundary before the sheet receives the gesture and dismisses; backdrop and Back dismissal retain the same callback.

Safety and speed choices now sit below their labels instead of competing for a narrow horizontal column. Every segment provides at least a 48 dp target, allows two-line labels, exposes radio-selection semantics, and states the meaning of the current approval, chat override, or processing-tier choice in plain language. The layout remains scrollable on compact heights and at larger font scales without moving the close action off-screen.

2026-08-08 — Session-owned Android send queues

Android follow-up queues now capture the composing connection/profile context, stored session, configured transport, originating run, attachments, and voice context as one immutable destination. Queue presentation is filtered to the visible session, while completion eligibility is tied to the exact run and live Gateway generation that owned the queue. A completion from another session or an older live generation cannot dispatch through the current composer route.

In-flight checkpoints retain bounded queued text across process restoration. Attachment bytes are not copied into Preferences DataStore; an attachment queue that cannot be restored is rejected with a visible review-and-resend notice. Connection replacement and session deletion cancel their owned queues, while switching among concurrent Gateway sessions preserves each session's queue.

2026-08-07 — Provider-owned model inventory identity

Android now normalizes Gateway and API model inventories before publishing them to picker consumers. Repeated provider rows merge by canonical provider slug, repeated exact model IDs collapse within that provider, and capability metadata follows the same provider/model identity. Models intentionally offered by different providers remain distinct choices, even when their display labels and model IDs match.

The searchable picker groups and keys rows by provider slug plus exact model ID instead of provider display text. Cached loads, dynamic refreshes, API aliases, and Manage inventory use the same idempotent identity rule, preventing duplicate catalog data from reaching keyed Compose lists without hiding valid routes.

2026-08-05 — Restored chat bottom ownership and effort fallback clarity

Opening an existing Android session now retains exact bottom ownership through late, non-streaming layout changes. Composer capability controls, status rows, and restored message content can finish measuring after history first reaches the footer; a session-scoped geometry observer corrects those changes without using a fixed delay. New-message following remains governed by the smooth auto-scroll setting, while a real drag, IME ownership, and the Voice dock keep their existing anchors.

The advisory effort drawer now states that Hermes does not advertise exact levels for the selected model before explaining why standard options are shown. The wording is consistent across all shipped Android locales.

2026-08-05 — Provider-aware reasoning effort discovery

The optional Relay plugin now exposes a bearer-protected, profile-aware model capability overlay without requiring changes to upstream Hermes. Android merges that overlay with the standard model.options inventory using exact provider and model identities, while older or unpaired Relay installations continue with the canonical advisory fallback.

Dynamic LM Studio, Ollama Cloud, and Copilot discovery is bounded by a shared network limiter, cached by profile, endpoint, model, and credential fingerprint, and fenced across refresh generations. Neither credentials nor internal cache scope are returned to clients. Composer controls, Agent Passport, session creation, and asynchronous server reconciliation share the same capability resolver so a displayed effort cannot silently differ from the value sent.

2026-08-05 — Chat drawer and companion terrain ownership

The Chat screen now clears composer focus when the session drawer commits to opening, dismissing the IME without continuously clearing focus from drawer search or rename fields. Drawer refreshes override keyed list anchoring only when the leading session identity changes, keeping the newest row visible after activity-based reordering.

Floating companions wait for Chat's measured composer rail before publishing their first roaming position. Their collision footprint contains both the pointer target and rendered sprite, and the complete scroll-to-bottom control envelope is an obstacle rather than a landing perch. Supported rails add no visual lift, and the floating-only renderer aligns each frame's opaque bottom edge to its canvas baseline so transparent atlas padding cannot make pets hover; centered previews and message avatars remain unchanged.

2026-08-05 — Measured pet placement and passive model sync

The floating pet now remains unpublished until the app-level overlay has a positive measured viewport. Its initial home coordinate is therefore derived from the real safe bounds instead of the zero-size pre-measure bounds that collapsed to the top-left corner.

API provider inventory remains an optional background catalog on Gateway-led connections. A timeout, refusal, or unavailable optional route no longer emits a global chat notice during initialization, reconnection, or connection-sheet refresh. The failure is retained as a contextual warning in local Diagnostics, including the operation, endpoint role, redacted stack trace, preserved network cause, and targeted troubleshooting guidance. Cached and Gateway-owned model options remain unchanged.

2026-08-05 — Stable chat-tail completion

Chat and Voice now treat the active streamed reply as the owner of its live renderer until a different row becomes the conversation tail. Stream completion retains the existing Compose subtree and list anchor; the full Markdown renderer is deferred until the row is no longer active or the session is revisited.

The last-in-group timestamp occupies its final geometry from the first streaming frame and is only revealed at completion. Measured positive growth during an active stream continues to follow the bottom without replacing the logical anchor. Once completion layout stabilizes, a bottom-owned transcript settles to the exact LazyColumn boundary; proximity slop is reserved for retaining follow intent during motion and cannot define the final position. The visible footer supplies the exact remaining distance so rounding or adjacent layout changes cannot leave a residual forward range.

IME expansion participates in that same viewport owner. A transcript already at the bottom advances by the measured viewport-height loss throughout the keyboard animation, then settles exactly after inset updates stop on both open and close. A transcript being read above the bottom preserves its existing anchor, and a real drag cancels keyboard follow immediately. Host-side coverage verifies renderer ownership, unchanged bubble height, exact footer settling, keyboard arming, viewport loss, completion/IME settlement ownership, and history-reading behavior.

2026-08-05 — Focus voice input boundary repair

The Focus voice presentation remains modal without installing a consuming pointer handler on the full overlay ancestor. Its click-through guard is now a behind-content sibling: empty-space gestures cannot reach the chat or drawer, while the mic, close, expand/collapse, and panel controls receive their full pointer sequence.

Host-side Compose coverage injects real touch events instead of invoking semantic click actions. It verifies both child callback delivery and the modal background boundary so the two requirements cannot regress independently.

2026-08-05 — Actionable Android connection diagnostics

Android diagnostic entries now separate the configured route from the exact request operation and path used to test it. Relay health checks identify the HTTP /health probe that precedes a WebSocket connection, route selection records its Dashboard, API, or Relay probe, and WebSocket and API checks name their handshake or authentication stage.

Known network and HTTP failure classes attach a bounded next step for refused listeners, DNS, routing, timeouts, TLS, credentials, rate limits, missing routes, and server failures. The activity list, status timeline, detail dialog, copy text, and GitHub issue prefill all carry the same context. Public issue text preserves protocol and request paths while redacting hosts, credentials, queries, and user information.

2026-08-04 — Android transcript identity ownership

ChatHandler now owns one render identity for every published transcript row. Checkpoint recovery and all streamed message mutations resolve both the mutable server/domain ID and the stable UI identity, so history adoption cannot leave a stale client reference that appends a second row. The publication boundary also coalesces repeated render identities before Chat or Voice can observe them, while keeping the first transcript position and latest state.

Focused coverage composes history reconciliation with checkpoint restore, exercises stale post-adoption callbacks, and runs deterministic transition sequences across restore, replay, deltas, thinking, and usage updates. Voice's temporary transcript row now occupies an auxiliary key namespace disjoint from real message rows.

2026-08-04 — Android reliability and support foundation

Android fatal capture and centrally classified handled failures now converge on a versioned, allowlisted reliability record. Reports are redacted before local persistence, capped at 20 records with 14-day retention, written atomically, and correlated only with random app/report identifiers. Expected cancellation and permission denial remain non-reportable. The pre-existing one-file crash format migrates locally on first launch.

Crash recovery leads with the recovery outcome and no-upload guarantee, then requires an explicit review before copy, share, or GitHub actions. Diagnostics adds an offline support-information review using the same exact redacted text. Android issue prefills now request the Android area while repository-wide issue ownership remains maintainer-reviewed, and the release workflow retains both variant R8 mappings for deterministic retrace.

The architecture audit defers an ANR watchdog, richer allowlisted breadcrumbs, hashed product correlation, and OOM emergency writing until their lifecycle, privacy, and false-positive behavior can be validated on devices.

2026-08-02 — Android Russian localization

Android now ships complete Russian catalogs for the main and sideload builds. The in-app language picker, Android locale configuration, chat and voice labels, tool and status presentation, diagnostics, onboarding, and plural resources are registered against the canonical English catalog. Existing non-English catalogs were refreshed to retain exact resource and format-argument parity.

The integration preserves PR #276 as the source contribution while excluding unrelated recovery, routing, and test-stability changes from the localization scope. The localization registry records Android coverage only; Russian public documentation and marketing pages continue to use the canonical English fallback until those surfaces are translated separately.

2026-07-31 — Upstream-compatible voice interruption semantics

Android full-turn barge-in now follows upstream Hermes' RMS behavior: roughly 450 ms of quiet-room calibration, a 90th-percentile floor, 3× default multiplier, separate generation/playback minimums, a bounded ceiling, 500 ms playback grace, and an 80%-majority decision window. Calibration remains frozen against speaker output and cannot itself trigger. Renderer-driven phase tracking returns to generation thresholds in quiet output gaps and rearms playback grace only after a gap of at least one second. Opt-in Logcat diagnostics expose the inputs used for device tuning. Barge-in is enabled by default while retaining its master, Silero sensitivity, RMS multiplier, playback grace, and resume controls.

Voice stop phrases now use an editable exact-match list that defaults to stop; clearing the list disables the behavior. A match ends the active voice chat in generation or playback, but the same word outside voice chat and longer requests continue through normal Hermes input. Continuous-mode pause/resume and explicit background-task cancellation retain their narrower state gates.

Interrupting spoken playback arms the upstream one-shot interruption note for the next Standard model-bound message. The latch expires after 120 seconds and travels only in API-local voice interface context, never in visible or persisted user text. Generation and pre-audio synthesis interruption do not mark an unspoken reply, Realtime keeps its provider-session context, and silencing remains independent from cancellation of promoted background work.

2026-07-30 — Expandable Android assistant surface

Android Digital Assistant sessions now open as a compact bottom bar over the current app, expand in place for transcript and response detail, and collapse without changing the active turn. Open full voice disables only the system-owned session UI and reveals the existing app Voice surface, preserving the same session, response stream, and microphone owner.

Connection, chat, and voice state machines now have one main-process, application-lifetime owner. Assistant activation can initialize and run a cold voice turn without constructing or foregrounding MainActivity; opening full Voice binds the Activity to those same ViewModels and audio resources.

The optional SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW Voice surface now follows the same wide-bar-to-expanded-sheet progression while retaining its minimized bubble. It remains a separately user-invoked control for turns that began in the app; the Assistant-role session does not require display-over-other-apps permission.

The assistant window is transparent outside the bar or sheet, leaves the underlying app unresized, and restricts touch interception to the measured surface. Back collapses an expanded surface first; Back from compact, Stop, and ordinary dismissal remain terminal. A hidden full-Voice handoff instead follows the app-owned turn through its final Closed state. Package-scoped lifecycle reconciliation also clears assistant state if Android reclaims the separately processed UI while full Voice remains active.

Assistant activation is ID-aware and single-flight. Duplicate delivery cannot re-arm capture, Retry replaces a pending readiness attempt, and Stop invalidates the attempt before chat, Voice, or microphone mutations. Scoped voice settings must hydrate from DataStore before route readiness, and process extraction preserves connection-catalog isolation plus the existing gateway route-flip settle window.

Physical-device validation on a Samsung SM-S938U confirmed cold invocation over a non-Hermes foreground app, compact and expanded presentation without foregrounding MainActivity, and one main-process microphone owner. Locked invocation reached a shown system assistant session without runtime or recorder errors; Samsung's secure lock screen prevented screenshot-based visual review.

2026-07-30 — Foreground wake-word diagnostics and recovery

The Android-local sherpa listener now treats each non-empty keyword result as a completed KWS event, resets the stream immediately, and maps the stored confirmation setting to sherpa's native trailing-blank confirmation instead of requiring an already-completed result to recur across application frames. Voice settings can arm a ten-second test against the same foreground service, microphone owner, installed model, and current tuning; it displays live input level and reports detection without opening voice or transmitting audio.

Expected empty-transcript responses after activation now record a no-speech diagnostic and return voice to its ready state with a retry hint rather than surfacing the provider's HTTP error. Other transcription failures retain the existing error path. Foreground-service behavior is documented explicitly: background detections remain pending behind the notification until Hermes is visible; Android default-assistant integration is a separate mode. Opening the visible Voice settings screen also reconciles an enabled listener after package replacement or process death without adding boot/background auto-start.

Focused wake preferences/core and no-speech classification tests pass. Sideload lint, sideload debug packaging, and Google Play debug Kotlin compilation pass. This batch adds no model, native library, ABI, permission, or network dependency; the existing approximately 6 MB downloaded model and packaged sherpa ABI footprint are unchanged.

2026-07-30 — Voice transcript identity alignment

Android voice Focus mode now keys transcript rows with the same stable UI identity as the main Chat list. A live row may adopt its persisted server message ID during history reconciliation while retaining its original Compose identity; using the mutable domain ID in the voice overlay could otherwise collide during that transition and close the app.

Focused JVM coverage recreates two visible rows with a shared reconciled server ID and verifies distinct stable transcript keys. Sideload production and Android-test Kotlin compilation pass. The existing full-overlay instrumentation fixture remains blocked by its continuously animating surface never reaching Compose idleness.

2026-07-30 — Opt-in Android Digital Assistant mode

Android now declares an explicit VoiceInteractionService and separately processed VoiceInteractionSessionService. Only Android's user-confirmed Assistant role activates the integration. Optional background “Hey Hermes” detection reuses the local sherpa model and tuning, releases its recorder before the system session opens the existing voice flow, and resumes after session exit. Package-scoped lifecycle messages reconcile prompt/listen state, transcript/response presentation, cancellation, errors, and process recreation.

The Digital Assistant listener and the existing experimental microphone foreground service are separate, mutually exclusive opt-ins. Both retain local pre-activation privacy and the shared one-microphone contract. Standard voice continues through the upstream Dashboard audio surface. Voice settings include role status, setup, removal, runtime status, and the limitation that third-party assistants do not receive Google's low-power hotword hardware.

2026-07-29 — Full-turn voice interruption and local wake-word preview

Android barge-in now owns one microphone/VAD listener from response generation through playback drain for both Standard and Realtime voice. Quiet-room RMS calibration freezes before output begins, playback receives a grace interval, and model-confirmed majority filtering separates actual interruption from raw ducking hints. Turn epochs, stream cancellation, late-delta suppression, and an awaited microphone handoff keep an interrupted response from speaking again or racing the replacement recording. Exact stop/pause intent is phase-aware, while explicit background-task cancellation remains separate from silencing.

An opt-in Android-local “Hey Hermes” preview uses sherpa-onnx in a user-started microphone foreground service. Its approximately 6 MB English model is downloaded and hash-verified on first enable rather than bundled. The service keeps pre-activation audio local, exposes an ongoing Stop notification, pauses for active voice, and shares a process-wide single-microphone ownership contract with voice recording, barge-in, and realtime diagnostics. The stored configuration includes strictness, confirmation frames, new-session behavior, and a deliberately inactive future profile-routing shape.

Focused JVM coverage exercises calibration, grace, listener teardown, Thinking-to-Speaking ownership, generation/playback interruption, command gating, wake preferences, activation, and microphone exclusion. Android compilation for both distribution flavors, sideload lint, and sideload APK packaging pass with all four supported ABIs. On-device acoustic, foreground service, and lifecycle checks remain the corresponding validation gates.

2026-07-28 — Android 1.5.2 production release

Android 1.5.2 shipped from the approved dev to main release tree as versionCode 35. The release adds provider-aware Dashboard sign-in: Nous uses the advertised native PKCE system-browser flow, while compatible self-hosted providers retain cookie-backed full-page Dashboard authentication. Callback origin discovery remains server-driven, private-network HTTP compatibility is preserved, and arbitrary public HTTP redirects remain rejected.

The private Play preflight validated the exact application tree before release PR #265 merged. The immutable android-v1.5.2 tag resolves to the resulting main tip, the production workflow promoted versionCode 35 to the completed Google Play production track, and the public GitHub release contains the signed AAB, sideload APK, and SHA-256 manifest. The published sideload APK checksum was independently verified; replacing the debug-signed phone build with the release-signed artifact requires an uninstall because Android correctly rejects cross-signature in-place updates.

2026-07-27 — Android replayed-message identity reconciliation

Android history reconciliation now collapses reconnect/rejoin replays of the same persisted message ID before publishing the transcript to Compose. The latest repeated snapshot replaces the value at the message's first transcript position, preserving stable ordering, distinct messages, and the LazyColumn identity contract without index- or random-key fallbacks.

Focused coverage reproduces the duplicate UUID condition and verifies that the authoritative final content wins while every rendered message keeps a unique stable UI key.

2026-07-26 — Android 1.5.1 patch reconciliation

Android 1.5.1 reconciles the post-1.5.0 voice and chat fixes into versionCode 34. Voice now offers compact Focus and full Conversation presentation, Standard narration preserves valid completed replies, and promoted Realtime tasks release foreground voice controls while retaining progress and results.

Completed streamed answers promote from the stable live text node to full Markdown only after completion. The measured Markdown row is then positioned by its trailing edge until deferred code and attachment measurement settles, preventing the LazyColumn from restoring the start of a tall response.

The release also targets Android API level 36. Release notes, in-app What's New assets, localized Play notes, and the Play listing reference were updated for Android 1.5.1.

2026-07-25 — Immutable Android release dispatch repair

Android approval now dispatches the current release workflow definition from main, while every release job explicitly checks out the immutable android-v* tag. Validation confirms the dispatched version resolves to that checked-out commit and accepts the repository's surface-qualified [Android x.y.z] changelog heading. Existing tags remain unchanged, and a workflow-only correction can resume a failed publication without rebuilding from a different application tree.

Audited .github/workflows/approve-release-android.yml, .github/workflows/release-android.yml, RELEASE.md, and DEVLOG.md.

2026-07-25 — Android 1.5.0 final release reconciliation

The final Android 1.5.0 release tree reconciles the accumulated Dashboard-first connection, Gateway recovery, background delivery, Agent Passport, onboarding, voice, attachment, image-generation, security, localization, and Developer Options work into one public release narrative. Android remains version 1.5.0 with monotonic versionCode 33 because that prepared version was not previously tagged or uploaded to production.

Release notes, the in-app What's New assets, localized Play release notes, and the Play listing reference now describe the final tree rather than the earlier voice-focused candidate. The release train is gated by the exact-tree private Play preflight before the dev to main release merge and public tag.

2026-07-25 — Active-turn retention and actionable interaction alerts

Android now promotes user-started chat work to foreground execution until every connection/profile/session-scoped turn settles. Independent leases preserve concurrent detached Gateway sessions, track sessions paused for input, and prevent one completion from stopping protection for siblings. The existing Persistent connection switch now extends retention only to idle periods.

The foreground notification reports active and waiting session counts. Interaction alerts add privacy-safe expanded profile/session context and an explicit review, answer, or secure-response action that deep-links to the exact conversation; commands, questions, passwords, secrets, and environment-variable names remain confined to the authenticated chat surface.

Audited ChatViewModel, ConnectionViewModel, GatewayChatClient, GatewayKeepAliveService, InteractionRequestNotifier, the shared Android manifest, Android settings copy, chat user documentation, and Play foreground service declaration guidance.

2026-07-24 — Post-connect permission setup

Android onboarding now finishes with a layered permission step after a successful Hermes connection. Standard Chat and Manage are explicitly ready without a phone grant; Android notifications are recommended through one user-triggered runtime prompt; camera, microphone, notification companion, and flavor-supported device tools remain individually optional on the centralized Permissions screen. Existing just-in-time permission prompts remain available when users skip setup.

Coverage separates the Android-version notification policy from the Compose presentation and checks the recommended, granted, optional-review, and skip states. English and all shipped Android locale catalogs were updated together.

2026-07-24 — Realtime background-task delivery continuity

Chat stream completion now preserves an otherwise empty assistant row when it owns a promoted background task. This keeps the task identity available after the provider's initial spoken handoff, so later progress, completion, and forced-summary events update and settle the initiating row even when a newer persistent Voice command has started. Existing empty-response cleanup remains unchanged for assistant rows without background work.

2026-07-23 — Background interaction notifications

Android Gateway chat now treats approval, clarification, elevated-permission, and secret requests as actionable background events. Privacy-safe notifications use stable per-session identities, reopen the exact conversation, replace replayed requests, and clear on answer, expiry, or resumed turn activity. Detached active turns retain and replay their pending interaction when the conversation is reopened.

The audit classified terminal.read.request as renderer plumbing rather than a user decision. Android now answers it with the upstream no-terminal empty response instead of showing an interaction or waiting for the server timeout. The shared main manifest continues to provide notification and persistent connection support to both Google Play and sideload builds.

2026-07-23 — Android user-CA trust for self-hosted Hermes

The shared Android network security configuration now accepts CA certificates that the device owner deliberately installed in Android's user credential store, in addition to system roots. Because the policy is attached to the common application manifest, it covers both product flavors and every platform-backed Hermes transport: endpoint probes, Dashboard requests and authentication WebView, redirects, Gateway WebSockets, API streaming, Standard Voice, and Relay HTTPS/WSS. Default OkHttp and WebView certificate-chain and hostname checks remain active, and Relay's independent certificate pinner is not overridden.

An app-wide policy is required for arbitrary operator-supplied server names and for consistent WebView behavior. A runtime opt-in would require parallel custom trust implementations for each client and could not safely reconfigure WebView; per-connection CA import would add private trust-material lifecycle without covering all transports. The tradeoff is that Android disables public Certificate Transparency verification when user trust anchors are enabled. User documentation records the deliberate-installation boundary and a device or emulator validation procedure with positive chain and negative hostname checks. JVM coverage locks the accepted anchor sources and rejects pin overrides or debug-only trust additions.

2026-07-23 — Bounded Android code-highlighting ranges

Android Markdown code rendering now validates every syntax-highlighting span before applying it to Compose text. The bundled highlighting dependency can emit a reversed multiline-comment range when malformed or incomplete code contains a closing delimiter before its opening delimiter; the Markdown renderer previously passed that range directly to AnnotatedString and crashed. Both fenced and indented code use the guarded renderer, valid spans remain highlighted, and malformed ranges are clipped or ignored. Focused JVM coverage reproduces the dependency output and verifies the safe conversion.

2026-07-20 — Image generation placeholder during turns

Android chat now specializes the generic tool lifecycle for active image_generate calls. While the tool is pending, the message shows a theme-aware procedural diffusion canvas with a polite live-region announcement instead of a generic tool card. The completed tool result still replaces the placeholder through the existing tool completion path. Coverage includes pure JVM selection/denoise tests and a Compose accessibility snapshot test.

2026-07-20 — Faster Android validation feedback

Android contributors now have one cross-platform pre-push command for locale, documentation, collection-API, and version checks plus primary Play-variant lint and the focused CI unit-test shard. It uses daemon and configuration-cache reuse, supplies a conservative Gradle heap, and discovers the standard Windows Android SDK without writing worktree-local configuration. Hosted CI retains the exhaustive all-variant lint gate.

Android CI now cancels a superseded run on dev or a pull-request ref while preserving every main run. A newer integration commit therefore stops paying for an older release smoke that can no longer become the tested release tip.

2026-07-19 — Android 1.4.9 release preparation

Android advanced to 1.4.9 with versionCode 32 after the dashboard-primary connection and onboarding work merged to dev. The public changelog, GitHub release notes, in-app What's New surfaces, English and Simplified Chinese Play notes, and store-listing copy now describe the Android-only patch. Unreleased Relay security hardening and the Windows gateway PID fix remain assigned to the independent server release track.

2026-07-19 — Connection management detail pass

The Connections list now uses compact capability chips and exposes a cold-start preference when more than one server is saved. Last used remains the default; pinning a startup connection does not change the active connection during the current run. Dashboard-only connections now render their configured Dashboard and authentication status in Routes instead of an empty endpoint list, while optional API fallback routes remain explicitly separate.

Advanced settings render directly in their dedicated tab without a redundant expander. Security adds Dashboard authentication, credential-storage, Relay session, sign-out, and transport posture facts sourced from current runtime state. Android catalogs and localization source hashes were refreshed alongside focused startup-persistence coverage.

2026-07-18 — Dashboard-primary connection contract

The canonical Android connection model now treats one Hermes installation as a stable identity with independently optional endpoints. Dashboard/Gateway owns the standard upstream chat, authentication, sessions, Manage, and voice path; the API server is an automatic fallback and advanced headless compatibility surface; Relay remains an additive extension for terminal, bridge, media, and enhanced voice capabilities. Existing API-first records and pairing payloads remain compatible without defining normal onboarding.

The audit reconciled AGENTS.md, docs/spec.md, docs/decisions.md, docs/upstream-surface-matrix.md, README.md, user-docs/features/connections.md, user-docs/features/dashboard.md, CHANGELOG.md, and DEVLOG.md. RELEASE.md was reviewed and required no change because it contains no connection-routing contract.

2026-07-18 — Non-signalling Windows gateway PID probes

Relay profile discovery now prefers Hermes' supported psutil liveness check and falls back to native Windows process handles when psutil is unavailable. The POSIX signal-zero probe is restricted to POSIX hosts, preventing relay startup and periodic profile rescans from signalling or terminating the gateway named by gateway.pid. Regression coverage uses disposable child processes instead of pointing PID fixtures at the test runner.

2026-07-18 — Android privacy-policy URL hotfix

The canonical Android privacy policy moved to a stable public page on hermes-relay.dev. The historical GitHub Pages path now serves the complete policy for compatibility with existing store metadata instead of depending on a client-side redirect. Android's About screen, public privacy references, and Play submission documentation use the canonical site URL.

The legacy Pages workflow publishes both file and directory policy paths from the same canonical HTML source. Repository validation checks the policy's required disclosures and URL wiring, while Play preflight and stable tag release jobs additionally require both deployed policy URLs to return complete policy content before an artifact can be uploaded or promoted. Android advanced to 1.4.8 with versionCode 31 for the replacement Play submission.

2026-07-18 — Android 1.4.7 release preparation

Android advanced to 1.4.7 with versionCode 30 after the localization, streaming, release-history, and branch-contract reconciliation landed on dev. The public changelog, GitHub release body, in-app What's New surfaces, Play metadata, and store-listing copy now describe the Android-only patch while the unreleased Relay security work remains assigned to its independent server release track.

2026-07-17 — Smooth streamed-reply rendering and finalization

Uninterrupted Gateway turns treat their structured live assistant, reasoning, and tool events as authoritative instead of immediately republishing the transcript through a full history read. Rejoined sockets, Sessions SSE, detached turns, profile-aware resume, errors, and missing-data recovery retain their required authoritative reconciliation paths.

Bursty provider deltas now enter a main-thread frame pacer that publishes adaptive UTF-16-safe slices at a display-sized cadence. The visible live tail uses one stable plain-text node, ignores leading blank transport lines, and expands inside a short clipped size animation. Tool, thinking, completion, cancellation, and error boundaries still flush buffered content immediately and preserve event order.

Bottom-following is driven by stable row identity, real drag interactions, measured positive tail growth, and structural anchors. The active response retains its live renderer through completion, settles the exact footer for two frames, and releases to full Markdown after another row becomes the tail or the session is revisited. This prevents both the completion-time top snap and the transient scroll-to-bottom button without interrupting readers who intentionally move into history.

Focused stream-pacing, Unicode-boundary, leading-whitespace, Gateway reconnect, completion-policy, and scroll regressions passed. Repeated sideload builds and live phone tests verified smooth following, stable completion, exact-bottom settling, frame-paced text insertion, and clipped bubble growth.

2026-07-17 — Stable chat rows across post-turn history reconciliation

Android chat now separates the stable Compose identity of a visible message row from its authoritative server message ID. The post-turn history reconcile can adopt persisted IDs and rebuild message boundaries without making LazyColumn remove and reinsert the long answer currently anchoring the viewport.

Regression coverage exercises both the same-count user/assistant ID adoption and a list-expansion reconcile that inserts persisted rows around a matched live tail. The focused ChatHandler and scroll-snapshot unit tests passed.

2026-07-16 — Stable chat position after stream completion

Android chat now observes the assistant message identity and the streaming-to-final transition as conversation-tail changes. When a reader is already following the response, completion performs an instant multi-frame bottom settle after the streaming renderer is replaced by the final Markdown layout. The existing user-scroll gate remains authoritative, so reading older messages is not interrupted.

Focused snapshot regression coverage verifies completion detection, ordinary stream growth, stream startup, and server message-ID reconciliation.

2026-07-16 — Critical Relay authorization hardening

Relay privileged interfaces now enforce host-authorized policy at every shared dispatch boundary. Anonymous pairing-code minting was removed; pairing clients can no longer choose session lifetime or grants; Android bridge HTTP routes and terminal messages require live sessions with active route grants; ordinary session bearers can only reduce their own lifetime and existing grants; remote profile config reads expose an explicit public schema without host paths; and voice requests cannot override credential-bearing provider origins.

Six bounded exploit harnesses stopped at the restored boundaries. The combined security regression set passed 96 tests, Python compilation passed, Ruff passed for changed modules and tests apart from the pre-existing unused signal import in server.py, and git diff --check passed. The broad plugin discovery run progressed through unrelated suites but was interrupted by the existing Windows async-suite KeyboardInterrupt behavior, so the focused security and neighboring route suites remain the authoritative local result. The required-check path classifier now reads changed paths from the checked-out PR merge commit instead of GitHub's PR-files API, so an API outage cannot skip every surface check.

2026-07-16 — Fix production docs asset context

Updated the production docs Docker stage to build from the same full repository checkout used by CI rather than a hand-maintained file allowlist. This supplies the canonical screenshot manifest, localization registry and validators, route contract source, version metadata, and preview renderer without creating Docker-only ENOENT failures when those build inputs grow. Both Node build stages now install Python 3 so the localized website and docs validators run inside the production image build as they do in CI.

2026-07-16 — Localized marketing site

The Astro product site now publishes German, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese routes from one typed copy contract. Each route localizes marketing copy, navigation, accessibility labels, metadata, and links into the matching first-run documentation while retaining canonical screenshots, command examples, and UI recreations as shipped-product evidence.

Locale-aware canonical URLs, alternate-language links, Open Graph locale data, structured-data language, sitemap entries, and a responsive language selector were added. The localization registry records English-source freshness, and the website development and build commands reject missing or stale translations. Astro diagnostics, deterministic asset checks, the six-page production build, built-site validation, desktop/mobile browser checks, and git diff --check passed.

2026-07-16 — Temporary redirect shim for pre-migration Android builds

Restored GitHub Pages only as a redirect-only compatibility endpoint for app versions that still open https://codename-11.github.io/hermes-relay/. The shim preserves known paths, query strings, and fragments while forwarding to https://hermes-relay.dev/docs/; it does not publish the VitePress site. The production Nginx configuration resolves VitePress clean URLs to their .html artifacts so both legacy and corrected in-app links reach real pages. Removal criteria and the operator review date are tracked in TODO.md.

2026-07-15 — German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese localization

Android now includes complete German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese catalogs across the Google Play and sideload flavors. German and Brazilian Portuguese were recovered from unfinished translation drafts and refreshed against the current English resource contract; Japanese was generated through the same deterministic translation harness. The in-app picker, Android locale configuration, localization registry, contributor references, and user-facing language lists now describe the expanded set consistently.

The catalogs remain marked as AI-translated until fluent review is recorded. Structural validation covers resource parity, placeholders, plurals, arrays, formatting flags, XML parsing, and canonical source hashes. The 10-catalog validator, five focused AppLanguageTest cases, both flavor Kotlin/resource compilations, sideload debug lint, and git diff --check passed.

2026-07-15 — Retire GitHub Pages and move docs to hermes-relay.dev

Disabled and removed the GitHub Pages deployment path, changed the repository homepage to https://hermes-relay.dev, and moved the existing VitePress guide to https://hermes-relay.dev/docs/ inside the production Coolify image. Active README, website, Android, release-note, and pet-schema links now target the new docs origin while historical DEVLOG entries remain unchanged.

2026-07-15 — Coolify root-context website deployment hotfix

Added a repository-owned multi-stage Dockerfile for the Astro marketing site and corrected its Coolify instructions. Production builds now keep the repository root as Docker context, run the existing build:production gate from website/, and serve the generated static output with Nginx. This keeps the site's canonical screenshot comparison against docs/media/ intact while avoiding Nixpacks' incorrect Android/Gradle provider selection at monorepo root.

Verification: local website checks, production build, link validation, Docker image build, and Nginx-served smoke checks passed before deployment.

2026-07-15 — Android 1.4.6 and Plugin 1.4.2 release preparation

The profile-continuity and profile-image work was prepared as a two-surface patch train. Android advanced to 1.4.6 with versionCode 29; the Relay plugin and dashboard metadata advanced to 1.4.2. The changelog was split into explicit Android and Plugin blocks, and the Android GitHub, in-app, and Play notes plus the Plugin GitHub notes were refreshed for public distribution.

2026-07-15 — Profile image import compatibility and picker clarity

Android profile image import now distinguishes the Relay avatar endpoint's structured profile_avatar_not_found response from a generic route-level 404. Older Relay installations therefore prompt for a Relay update or local file selection instead of incorrectly claiming that a known host image is absent. The existing Android system document picker is labeled consistently as Choose file before and after an icon has been set.

2026-07-15 — Server-default profile session reconciliation

Android now keeps the Server default UI sentinel separate from its effective session namespace. The upstream dashboard's /api/profiles/active response is read as two distinct values: active is the sticky default selected for new Hermes invocations, while current describes the already-running dashboard process. An explicit named profile still wins; otherwise Android sends the resolved sticky name, including literal default, to Gateway session create/resume and the dashboard session list, history, rename, and delete routes. Per-profile last-session persistence and chat context keys use the same resolved namespace, preventing a named active agent from writing into or displaying the dashboard launch profile's database. Older dashboards without the endpoint retain the launch-profile fallback.

Focused regression coverage exercises the upstream active/current response, a dashboard launched as default with another sticky active profile, explicit profile precedence, profile-scoped drawer reads, and ChatViewModel's Gateway binding.

2026-07-15 — Host profile image import

Android's existing per-profile agent icon picker can now import an image from the active agent's Hermes profile directory through the optional paired Relay. The new read route discovers conventional direct-child names such as avatar.png and profile.jpg, accepts common web image formats, resolves symlinks within the profile boundary, enforces the Relay media-size limit, and returns image bytes without exposing host paths as persistent client state. Android copies the result into its existing connection-and-profile-scoped icon store, so rendering remains available offline and the vanilla upstream chat path is unchanged.

Verification: seven profile-avatar endpoint tests and the focused Android host avatar client plus profile-controller suites passed. Android lint and final diff checks are recorded with the completed work.

2026-07-15 — Repository branch, release, and hotfix contract reconciliation

Repository guidance now has one provider-neutral branch contract in AGENTS.md: normal work, including documentation, branches from and returns to dev; release preparation happens on dev; approved release PRs merge dev to main; and immutable surface tags are cut from the new main tip. Staging is an environment sourced from an exact tested SHA or release-candidate tag. Production uses android-v*, server-v*, or desktop-v*. Hotfixes branch from the affected production tag, change and patch-bump only that surface, merge to main, tag, verify, and immediately merge main back into dev.

Stable release workflows now require the tagged commit to be contained in main, require the tag to match the authoritative surface version source, and require a matching CHANGELOG.md release heading before any build or publish job. Server and Desktop use the canonical server-v* and desktop-v* prefixes; runtime update discovery retains fallback support for immutable historical plugin-v* and cli-v* releases. No historical tag was moved or rewritten.

Audit inventory:

• Canonical/root guidance: AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, RELEASE.md, README.md, DEVLOG.md, PLUGIN_RELEASE_NOTES.md, and CLI_RELEASE_NOTES.md.
• Contributor metadata: .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md; every file in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/ (bug_report.yml, config.yml, docs.yml, feature_request.yml, and translation.yml); .github/copilot-instructions.md; and .github/dependabot.yml.
• GitHub workflows: approve-release-android.yml, ci-android.yml, ci-contract.yml, ci-dashboard.yml, ci-desktop.yml, ci-plugin.yml, ci-required.yml, dependabot-auto-merge.yml, docs.yml, issue-triage.yml, play-listing.yml, play-preflight-android.yml, release-android.yml, release-cli.yml, and release-plugin.yml.
• Developer documentation: every Markdown file directly under docs/, plus docs/audits/, docs/diagrams/, and docs/mockups/. Historical files under docs/plans/ were inspected for classification but not rewritten as current instructions. Current contradictions were corrected in docs/decisions.md and docs/worktree-workflow.md.
• Public documentation: every Markdown file under user-docs/, including the architecture, desktop, features, guide, reference, and zh-CN trees. Current tag guidance was corrected in user-docs/desktop/index.md and user-docs/desktop/installation.md.
• Release/runtime seams: all three release workflows; scripts/bump-version.sh, scripts/bump-plugin-version.sh, scripts/check-version-tracks.py, and scripts/check-plugin-version-sync.py; Desktop install/update sources under desktop/scripts/ and desktop/src/; and Server update-discovery sources and focused tests under plugin/.

The repository audit also confirmed that GitHub-owned settings cannot be reconciled through repository files. The default branch correctly remained main, the release-history branch. At audit time, dev was unprotected, squash and rebase merges were enabled, and main protection did not apply to administrators. An operator must align those remaining settings with the documented contract.

2026-07-15 — Android 1.4.5 release and automated Play gate

Android 1.4.5 shipped as versionCode 28 after the signed release build, final DEX compatibility scan, and Production-draft upload passed for the exact Git tree later tagged android-v1.4.5. Release approval promoted that same Play artifact to Production review before publishing the GitHub sideload APK, AAB, and checksums.

The release workflow now treats Play upload and promotion acceptance as its automated store gate. Play Console-only pre-review and pre-launch reports remain informational because their detailed results are not available to the release automation. The Play release display name is the final product version at every stage, without an internal preflight suffix.

2026-07-15 — Gateway safety and lifecycle parity

Android gateway chat now clears only a live compacting status when model, tool, subagent, or MoA activity resumes, preserving unrelated lifecycle text. Approval cards consume the upstream capability-derived choice set, retain the legacy Approve/Deny fallback, and explain Smart DENY owner overrides while constraining their visible actions to one-operation approval or denial.

Deterministic non-low tool.output_risk events now attach by tool_id to the matching tool card. Detailed and compact layouts expose the warning, detailed cards show the upstream findings and redaction state as untrusted plain text, and in-flight checkpoints preserve the metadata across reattachment.

Verification: 139 focused Android JVM/Robolectric tests passed across gateway mapping, chat state, checkpoint recovery, and approval-card rendering. A separate 23-test upstream durability slice passed for completion deduplication, concurrent ownership, profile/session routing, compression continuation, and lineage export. Android lint and git diff --check passed after adding Spanish and Simplified Chinese strings for the new UI.

2026-07-15 — Upstream Gateway interaction compatibility

The July upstream-impact ledger's highest-priority Gateway gaps were reconciled without inventing client-side server policy. Android now consumes secret.expire and sudo.expire by exact request id, collapses late {status:"expired"} responses, and treats a zero-resolution approval response as expired. It also accepts optional approval timeout metadata and a future session-scoped approval.expire event; the corresponding upstream contract is documented in docs/upstream-contributions.md, while older Hermes builds keep the safe no-countdown behavior.

Canonical upstream provider-wait, reconnect, and continuation strings emitted through thinking.delta now replace one transient provider_wait status line. Genuine model thinking still enters the durable reasoning transcript, and new text, reasoning, tool, or subagent activity clears only the matching transient status kind.

Verification: the focused sideload JVM suites reran 93 tests across GatewayEventMapperTest and GatewayChatClientTest with zero failures, and git diff --check passed.

2026-07-14 — Per-connection profile display management

Android now stores profile presentation preferences independently for each connection. The Agent sheet applies one user-defined order to the Server default alias and named profiles, lets inactive rows be hidden without losing the active selection, keeps a previously hidden active profile visible and recoverable, and provides a reset action. Newly discovered profiles append in server order, stale profile keys are ignored, and connection/app-data cleanup removes the matching presentation state.

The management dialog exposes accessible move and visibility actions and ships matching English, Spanish, and Simplified Chinese resources. Verification covers persistence isolation, ordering, hidden-profile filtering, active-profile visibility, connection cleanup, locale parity, both product-flavor Kotlin compilations, and focused profile-selection regressions.

2026-07-14 — Session drawer title parity with Hermes Desktop

Android now decodes the upstream session-list preview field and uses it as the drawer label when a session has no persisted title. Explicit user names and server-generated titles remain authoritative, while a richer optimistic local label stays ahead of the server's truncated preview. This matches the standard Hermes Desktop fallback without changing or patching the upstream server.

Live compatibility inspection confirmed that both the dashboard and native API-server session lists expose preview. Focused model/client and session mapping tests cover decoding, fallback behavior, and title precedence. The drawer audit also recorded two existing follow-ups in TODO.md: Pin/Archive state is currently ephemeral, and local-only search covers only the 200 most recent rows on large profiles.

2026-07-14 — Dependency PR routing and Roborazzi alignment

The paired Roborazzi screenshot-test libraries moved together from 1.66.0 to 1.68.0. Dependabot now targets dev for Gradle and GitHub Actions updates, groups the coupled Roborazzi artifacts into one testing PR, and uses repository labels that exist. This keeps dependency work inside the normal release branch flow and avoids duplicate PRs carrying the same resolved Gradle patch.

2026-07-14 — Codex review and path-aware required CI

GitHub pull-request review moved from repository-hosted Claude Actions to the subscription-backed Codex repository integration. Repository review guidance now lives in AGENTS.md, while provider availability is deliberately separated from merge protection. The Claude review, mention responder, and model-backed issue triage workflows were removed. Deterministic issue type and area labeling remains as a no-LLM GitHub workflow.

The former always-green required-check sentinel now classifies changed paths and calls the existing Android, CLI, plugin, dashboard, and upstream-contract workflows as reusable checks. Public documentation changes receive a VitePress production build. One stable Required checks result reports failure whenever any selected surface fails, while unaffected toolchains remain skipped.

Verification: workflow syntax was checked with actionlint, changed-path selection was exercised against representative file sets, and repository documentation was scanned to ensure no removed Claude workflow, action, trigger, or secret remained.

2026-07-14 — Hermes active-profile default alignment

Why. Hermes resolves a bare CLI or gateway invocation through the root active_profile marker before importing runtime modules. Relay profile discovery ignored that marker and always populated its synthetic default row from the root config, so native clients could show the wrong default identity/model/SOUL and route profile API metadata incorrectly.

• Effective default resolution. plugin/relay/config.py now validates and reads the canonical root active_profile marker, maps the synthetic default row to that named profile home, and retains the named profile row for explicit selection. Missing, unreadable, malformed, stale, or unusable markers safely fall back to the root profile.
• Regression coverage. Profile discovery tests cover active model/description/SOUL/API metadata, named-row retention, malformed path-like values, and removed profile directories.
• Verification. PYTHONPATH=$PWD python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_profile_discovery plugin.tests.test_profiles_updated_broadcast plugin.tests.test_profile_voice_config plugin.tests.test_profile_soul_endpoint plugin.tests.test_profile_memory_endpoint plugin.tests.test_profile_write_endpoints → 81 tests green (1 intentional platform skip). python -m ruff check plugin/relay/config.py plugin/tests/test_profile_discovery.py, python -m py_compile ..., and git diff --check green.

2026-07-13 — CLI/TUI and menu-only Windows systray

The Windows desktop boundary now consists of the true CLI/TUI plus an optional native systray for right-click management. The Tauri/WebView dashboard, overlay, PTY-backed terminal, tray-owned chat worker, and browser UI assets were removed. The replacement Rust tray opens no application window and delegates interactive work to the installed hermes-relay CLI in a real terminal.

The tray menu cross-checks daemon heartbeat and PID state, labels User versus Administrator execution, disables invalid lifecycle actions, and exposes pairing, pending-grant counts, audit, diagnostics, logs, sign-in startup, emergency stop, and explicit exit semantics. Elevated daemon start/restart uses Windows UAC while the tray remains a normal user process. A Windows mutex prevents duplicate tray instances. Pending computer-use grants are also reviewable directly through the CLI with grants, approve, and reject. Desktop use has a CLI-owned persistent preference, native pending-approval alerts, active grant/expiry status, immediate local cancellation, and a strong warning when task-scoped host input is active under Administrator privilege.

The desktop package treats desktop/package.json as the canonical CLI/tray version and synchronizes npm lock metadata, the compiled CLI constant, Cargo, and NSIS metadata through one npm lifecycle. Desktop CI checks version drift, and the cli-v* tag workflow validates the tag version and main ancestry before building the standalone CLI and per-user Windows installer. Contributor and release documentation now covers the native tray dev loop, reversible local installation, release PR, and tag sequence.

Verification: npm run verify passed 15 CLI tests, compiled CLI smoke tests, and 4 native tray contract tests. Rust formatting and Clippy passed with warnings denied. The release build produced a 0.88 MiB tray executable and a 26.97 MiB NSIS installer at version 0.4.0-alpha.2; launch smoke confirmed a live singleton process with no main window until explicit teardown.

2026-07-12 — Multi-profile presence and concurrent Gateway turns

The Android profile picker now distinguishes Online profiles whose dedicated gateway and messaging channels are running, Available profiles that can start or resume a conversation on demand, and Offline profiles that are not reachable through the current host connection. Presence is independent of the selected chat profile and the server's sticky default.

Switching profiles during a Dashboard/TUI Gateway turn now detaches the visible Android callbacks without interrupting the upstream session. The original turn continues server-side, its live-to-durable session binding remains registered, and the terminal event schedules authoritative history reconciliation for that original conversation. SSE transports retain the existing mid-stream switch lock because they cannot safely detach and multiplex turns this way.

Multi-profile Phone/Threads routing remains deferred in TODO.md; the current single proactive subscriber and shared reply queue must become profile-partitioned before several profile gateways can consume it safely.

Verification: sideload debug production and unit-test Kotlin compilation succeeded; focused ProfilePresenceTest and GatewayChatClientTest passed.

2026-07-11 — Android localization foundation and Simplified Chinese

The Android UI now resolves its broad static copy through canonical resources, with a complete Simplified Chinese catalog under the script-qualified values-b+zh+Hans directory and a matching sideload-flavor catalog. Android's locale configuration advertises English and Simplified Chinese to system per-app language settings. Current notification, voice-overlay, background-process, diagnostic, attachment, card, crash, timeline, and session-TTL surfaces were reconciled after the original localization branch diverged from dev.

scripts/check-android-locales.py discovers locale catalogs in every Android source set and rejects malformed XML, duplicate resources, missing or extra keys, mismatched resource types, incompatible format arguments, and locale configuration drift. Android CI runs the checker before lint. Scan summaries and queued-message counts were converted from English suffix formatting to Android plurals after validation exposed a missing-format-argument path in the current connection wizard.

The public contribution workflow now documents stale-PR salvage, preserved authorship, scoped translation PRs, locale qualifiers, device review, and the English canonical boundary. The root README links a maintained Chinese summary, and VitePress exposes a Simplified Chinese locale with localized landing, quick start, and feature pages while linking fast-moving reference material back to canonical English.

2026-07-10 — In-flight Chat turns recover across app recreation

Current upstream Hermes can keep a running Dashboard/TUI Gateway session alive after its WebSocket transport disappears. session.activate rebinds an exact live session id, while session.resume can reuse a live session by its durable session key and returns running, status, and an inflight snapshot containing the user prompt plus partial assistant text. Those fields are enough to recover the live worker and transcript tail, but upstream intentionally does not persist Android's reasoning presentation, tool-card lifecycle, pending ask card, or client-owned background-task UI.

Android now checkpoints one session-backed in-flight turn in the shared app DataStore. The snapshot is scoped by connection/profile and session, expires after 24 hours, and contains the user/assistant pair, partial answer, reasoning, tool and subagent states, lifecycle caption, background-task state, and the server-issued half of an interactive ask. Entered passwords/secrets are never written. Mutations are debounced during streaming and flushed immediately when the app backgrounds, when a tool/ask/session boundary changes, and during orderly ViewModel teardown.

Returning to Chat first restores the rich local snapshot. Gateway sessions then activate the saved live id before accepting new deltas; if activation is absent or the live id has expired, Android resumes by durable session id. A running payload binds the normal event mapper so reasoning, tool, status, ask, and completion callbacks continue on the same bubble. A settled or unreachable worker uses the existing bounded, positionally anchored history recovery, which also covers sessions-SSE transport loss and route handoff. Explicit Stop and session/profile/connection changes retain their prior interrupt semantics and clear the checkpoint; lifecycle teardown detaches without sending session.interrupt.

Regression coverage includes checkpoint round-trip/corruption/expiry, rich ChatHandler rehydration without duplicated repeated prompts, exact activation, durable-resume fallback, idle-session settlement, detach-without-interrupt, and a Robolectric reopen that continues reasoning/tool events and clears the saved turn after authoritative completion.

2026-07-10 — Gateway background processes become visible Chat activity

Current upstream Hermes exposes a session-scoped process registry over the same Dashboard/TUI Gateway socket Android already uses for Chat. process.list returns running and recently finished entries plus a bounded output tail; process.kill stops one process after verifying session ownership; agent.terminal.output, process status events, and terminal/process tool completion provide refresh and live-output signals. There is no structured process-start event, so Android follows the official Desktop reconciliation recipe: load after session prewarm, refresh on relevant events, and poll every five seconds only while a process remains running. Method-not-found is treated as an unsupported optional surface instead of a Chat transport failure.

Live phone verification exposed a start-discovery gap: the Gateway emitted the assistant turn that confirmed a new process ID but no terminal/process tool.complete event, so Android could not begin the running-only poll and first found the row from a later reconnect/completion snapshot. Every exact-session message.complete now invalidates the process snapshot as a low-cost fallback; ordinary tool/status events remain the faster path when upstream emits them.

Chat now exposes that state through a compact composer-adjacent background strip and a current-chat bottom sheet. Running and recent rows show command, elapsed time, completion/exit state, expandable live or snapshot output, exact-process Stop, and local Dismiss. Session/client generations reject stale responses after a chat or connection switch, and profile context is part of the ownership key because isolated profile databases can reuse stored session IDs. A newer async prewarm invalidates an older resume before it can replace the live session. Reconnects repopulate from process.list; the five-second safety poll pauses in the background unless the user explicitly enabled Gateway keep-alive, so it cannot reopen the socket after the normal background grace close. Raw process output is length-only in logcat, never placed in notifications, and ANSI/control sequences are removed before the plain-text mobile viewer renders it.

Hermes intentionally persists a completed process notification as synthetic user-role input before starting the agent's follow-up turn. Android now recognizes the upstream formatter shape and presents that history item as a compact, expandable process notice rather than a human-authored bubble, while preserving its wire/history role and excluding it from edit-and-resend behavior.

Focused Gateway transport, process-controller, notification-parser, and output viewer tests pass on both Android product flavors. Google Play and sideload debug lint report zero errors, and the sideload debug APK assembles successfully for physical-device validation.

2026-07-10 — Gateway background completions return to ordinary Chat

Upstream Hermes already associates a detached process with the originating Dashboard/TUI Gateway session. When that process completes, its notification poller injects a synthetic user event, runs a follow-up agent turn, emits the normal message.start / delta / completion lifecycle, and persists the reply. Android discarded that lifecycle because GatewayChatClient only allocated a turn mapper after a phone-initiated sendTurn(); with no request-scoped activeTurn, every event returned before session filtering or UI dispatch.

The Gateway client now accepts a server-initiated turn only when an explicit event session exactly matches its active live session and the open Chat still matches the corresponding stored session. It allocates a fresh mapper, binds a real cancellable turn handle into ChatViewModel, and reuses the normal text, thinking, tool, ask, status, completion, notification, queue, and authoritative history-reconciliation paths. Foreign or untagged events remain fail-closed. The mapper also collapses the adjacent duplicate message.start pair currently emitted by the upstream completion poller, preventing a phantom boundary or duplicate placeholder.

After a user Stop, the client retains a short exact-session drain tombstone for the interrupted turn. Its late deltas/terminal event are ignored before a same-session next prompt is submitted, so canceled output cannot reappear as an unsolicited answer or prematurely complete the newer turn.

A cold foreground prewarm now refreshes the exact resumed session when no turn is active, recovering a completion that may have finished while the Gateway socket was closed without overwriting another session or live response. Regressions cover no-sendTurn() delivery, exact-session filtering, duplicate starts, error recovery, Chat rendering/finalization, Stop-to-interrupt behavior, late canceled terminals, queued-send draining, and disconnected history recovery.

2026-07-09 — Android 1.4.1 Chat and Voice enhancement batch

Chat now represents a promoted realtime background run as one first-class assistant turn. The same row moves through queued, running, waiting, delivering, complete, failed, or cancelled state and owns its tool detail and authoritative answer. Run IDs retain the initiating assistant-row identity across later turns, including local Voice commands, so delayed progress or delivery cannot settle a newer placeholder. Local pause, resume, stop, repeat, and cancel commands are removed from Chat history, quarantine their provider acknowledgement, and cannot become the target of Retry. The authoritative answer still persists through the existing session history, and the in-flight Chat checkpoint now preserves the client-only task-card metadata across a cold restart.

Streaming Markdown can promote blank-terminated prose and headings without waiting for the final response, while structurally ambiguous lists, quotes, tables, HTML, and fences remain in the raw tail. GFM tables now wrap in readable minimum-width columns inside a horizontally scrollable surface. Contiguous image attachments render as a bounded gallery with selected-page full-screen paging, sensitive-action gating, original-byte Share/Save behavior, and no adjacent full-resolution preload. The thinking indicator follows app and system motion settings plus TalkBack, the jump-to-bottom affordance reports unread messages, and the Demo mic explains locally that Voice requires a real connection.

Voice now intercepts only exact, final-transcript commands in states where the action is safe. Standard Voice supports a rearmed new-chat command; realtime new-chat remains gated until a persistent WebSocket can be rebound safely. Four presets compose existing Voice settings without replacing manual controls or silently enabling experimental barge-in. Preset application updates the relay first and rolls it back if local persistence fails, with an explicit recovery message if rollback also fails. Relay event parsing accepts the documented and legacy field aliases used by current broker events.

Foreground Hermes results now use the same forced-summary lifecycle as protected background delivery. Non-structured verbatim results take the provider's exact text path where supported; structured results use constrained instructions. Provider send or response-request failures emit one authoritative fallback before the terminal error, and each delivery emits one completion boundary. Delivery confirmation is generation-scoped so an alarm from an older response cannot invalidate a newer one. Voice-command response suppression is callback-local, and forced deliveries remain audible after pause, stop, or background-cancel commands.

Verification passed the focused Google Play and sideload Chat/Voice unit suites, including a forced clean rerun of the cross-turn ownership regression. Both Android lint flavors passed. The realtime route, promotion, validation, xAI, and OpenAI provider slice passed 94/94 tests. Device validation remains for gallery gestures, reduced-motion/TalkBack behavior, cross-turn background delivery, command phrasing, all four presets, provider failure fallback, and the existing route-loss/audio quality release gates.

2026-07-09 — Android and plugin 1.4.0 released

android-v1.4.0 and plugin-v1.4.0 were published from the same release commit. The plugin wheel, source archive, and checksum file were downloaded and verified after publication. The Android release exposes only the intended sideload APK, Google Play AAB, and matching checksum file; both downloaded artifacts matched their recorded hashes, and the APK/AAB certificate digests matched the release signer.

Google Play accepted Android versionCode 22 as a production draft. The draft was then promoted to completed, starting the production rollout. Extended physical-device recovery stress testing remains deferred and is tracked in TODO.md; live findings may still require follow-up recovery hardening.

2026-07-09 — Android realtime turns survive background route loss

An on-device foreground/resume failure left a realtime turn showing Listening... with a blank streaming assistant row even though recording had already stopped. The captured PCM was valid, but the persistent-session channel fed it to a WebSocket whose background resume attempts had failed. Channel enqueue therefore reported success while no relay event was produced, and the 90-second idle guard was the first component able to detect the loss.

Persistent turns now wait for an onOpen-ready socket and trigger an immediate resume when a recording arrives during route recovery. Each submission carries a delivery result back to VoiceViewModel; rejected or unavailable transports settle the chat placeholder and return the overlay to a usable error state. Unacknowledged follow-up PCM is retained with stable chunk IDs and replayed on a replacement socket, while explicit voice.input_audio.received events remain the acknowledgement authority. A locally cancelled queued turn is discarded instead of being transmitted after connectivity returns.

The first installed reproduction recovered recording and completed the Hermes run, but exposed a second route race at delivery: overlapping 10-second resume retries allowed a slower WebSocket handshake to finish 250 ms after the valid resume. The client correctly rejected that stale generation, but the relay had already assigned ownership at HTTP upgrade, so closing the stale socket detached the session immediately before the forced answer. Android now coalesces an in-flight handshake. The relay keeps later upgrades unclaimed until a valid session.resume, routes handshake failures only to that candidate, and changes ownership before closing the prior socket asynchronously. Provider-connect failures and resume-TTL closure also leave the session in a retryable, coherent state.

The next installed reproduction completed the background run and delivered its notification fallback, but the voice route remained on Waiting for route. The retry coroutine had anchored its five-minute deadline to session prewarm, then exited during healthy idle time before the later disconnect occurred. The retry worker now remains inert for the full session lifetime and starts a fresh, bounded deadline only when a route-loss episode begins; a successful resume clears that episode only after the relay emits voice.session.resumed, so a bare WebSocket open cannot suppress retries or refresh the budget. Exhaustion is terminal instead of leaving the overlay reconnecting indefinitely.

That reproduction also exposed session-owned UI leaking across voice-mode boundaries. Exit removed the handoff strip but retained the reconnecting background-run state, so reopening showed an orphaned pill whose close action sent an unscoped cancellation through the new prewarmed session. Voice exit now clears the detached run and handoff atomically before teardown, entry drops any defensive orphan before prewarming, and a cancel request rejected by an offline socket dismisses the pill locally. A session generation fence also rejects late handoff, run, playback, and completion callbacks from the retired session. A cancel queued locally but never acknowledged gets a bounded local-dismissal backstop, and stale confirmation UI is cleared with the session.

Socket failure, close, and fatal-event callbacks now claim the active socket generation and resume episode atomically before changing readiness. Opening candidates that fail synchronously cannot be activated after their callback, and ordered handoff revisions prevent an older route status from overwriting a confirmed replacement. A terminal retry failure detaches any non-settled session pill instead of leaving RECONNECTING visible after retries stop.

The current sideload build passed the focused recovery suite, both Android flavor compiles, and Android lint, then installed as 1.4.0 build 22. Extended physical-device recovery coverage is deferred: long-idle prewarm, repeated background/foreground route churn, terminal exhaustion, reopen/exit cycles, cancel-without-ack, and force-stop persistence remain follow-up validation and may require further hardening from live traces.

Release-prep validation forced all 43 routing, overlay, and session-fence regressions, then built both signed release flavors with the same bundleRelease assembleRelease command used by CI. The Google Play AAB carries the release certificate. The plugin's realtime, security, route, session-grant, and native-layout slice passed 230 tests, and isolated wheel/sdist packaging produced the expected 1.4.0 artifacts. Version-track checks, in-app changelog JSON, and the synchronized 465-character Play notes also passed their release gates.

The UI state machine now reserves Listening for a live AudioRecord. Provider transcript deltas render as Transcribing, output suppression checks VoiceRecorder.isRecording(), and foreground resume reconciles a recorder that ended in the background. Stop/failure paths terminally settle the assistant row, remove an untranscribed provisional user row, and quarantine late deltas without blocking later provider responses that belong to the same background turn.

Verification covers resume-before-submit, delayed and coalesced socket readiness, atomic mid-send replay, rejected WebSocket sends, cancelled queued input, candidate ownership/error isolation, provider-connect retry, closed-session rejection, provider STT state, local terminal cleanup, late-event quarantine, and multi-response background delivery on one chat turn.

2026-07-09 — Background promotion reuses the provider acknowledgement

The exact-delivery signoff trace reproduced the reported duplicate status speech, but disproved the suspected voice mismatch. Both lines came from the realtime provider: the tool-calling response first said it would check Hermes, then the promotion follow-up said Hermes was running in the background. The raw voice.response.delta events contained both utterances, so the recorder was not missing speech and relay TTS was not involved.

The broker already tracks whether a provider response emitted audio so it can drain playback before starting Hermes. Promotion now carries that same fact forward: when the tool-calling response already spoke, the interim tool result still closes the call as backgrounded but no second response is requested. A silent tool call still receives the configured spoken handoff.

The same trace exposed two voice.response.started events for the single forced delivery response. xAI emits both response.created and response.output_item.added; ordinary turns deduplicated those normalized start events, but the forced-delivery buffer bypassed the guard. It now applies the same response-id dedupe before buffering.

Verification: regressions cover an audio acknowledgement followed by promotion and duplicate provider start events during exact delivery; the complete realtime test battery is 153/153 green. A deployed on-device round then recorded provider_acknowledged: true with spoken_handoff: false: the initial provider acknowledgement was the only pre-run status line. Its completed exact delivery also emitted one client response-start event.

2026-07-09 — xAI exact delivery no longer depends on model compliance

The delivery health report showed only one of six recent background answers was spoken by the realtime provider; five fell back after the model acknowledged or deferred instead of reading the already-completed Hermes answer. Both the latest alias and the pinned think-fast model exhibited the same behavior, so further prompt tuning or model selection was not a reliable fix.

xAI's Voice Agent API now exposes force_message, an assistant conversation item that synthesizes supplied text without model inference while emitting the normal response, transcript, audio, and completion lifecycle. A live protocol probe confirmed the event produces response.output_audio_transcript.delta, streamed audio, a completed assistant history item, and response.done with the supplied text unchanged.

RealtimeAgentConnection.request_response() now accepts an optional exact-text hint. For non-structured speak_verbatim results, the broker supplies the same sanitized authoritative answer used by its fallback; xAI turns that hint into an interruptible force_message. OpenAI, structured answers, and natural-summary modes retain the instruction-driven response path. The existing validator, delivery alarm, and relay-TTS fallback remain in place.

Verification: the live xAI protocol probe completed with the expected full event lifecycle, then the on-device background path spoke the authoritative answer in the selected xAI voice with no fallback. A follow-up asking to repeat the first three sentences answered directly from provider history without a second Hermes route or run. Focused provider/promotion/fallback tests and the complete realtime test battery are green.

2026-07-09 — Realtime model and voice picks now own new sessions

The Realtime Agent model picker displayed a new selection but session creation sent only profile, chat_session_id, and recent context. The relay therefore resolved every session from its saved config, and the picker only took effect after Save realtime agent PATCHed that server config.

Model and voice are now per-connection/per-profile DataStore overrides. The settings controls persist them, VoiceViewModel closes any stale prewarmed socket when either changes, and RelayVoiceClient includes non-blank overrides in the next session POST. Voice summaries and the active overlay read the same selection instead of continuing to label the relay default.

Live verification selected grok-voice-think-fast-1.0 without tapping Save: the overlay showed the pin, the relay session requested it, the provider's final model-resolution event reported it, and force-stop/relaunch restored the same selection. Focused Android request/persistence tests and the broader voice unit slice are green; the full Android lint and sideload APK build are green.

The same live round exposed duplicate voice.session.ready events. A fresh socket already receives ready before the relay enters its receive loop, then Android sends the required session.start; the shared handler incorrectly sent ready again. Fresh session.start is now idempotent while detached/resume handling is unchanged. The realtime relay battery is 151/151 green; its xAI OAuth credential-pool fixture now carries an explicit future expiry instead of depending on a machine-local credential fallback.

2026-07-09 — Recall of an already-delivered result no longer re-runs the task

Follow-on to the fallback-seeding fix below. Live verify confirmed the seeding cured the "can't you see we ran the task?" confusion — but the provider still did a full hermes_run_task round-trip on a pure-recall follow-up ("what did that say?") instead of answering from the now-seeded history. Root cause was one over-broad word in _native_instructions: "If the needed context is missing, stale, tool-derived, or requires verification, call hermes_run_task." A delivered background result IS tool-derived, so recall follow-ups re-routed.

Rewrote the clause to distinguish recall from new work: a Hermes result already delivered earlier in the conversation is in history, so if the user only wants to hear it again / quote / reference it, answer directly and do NOT re-run; call hermes_run_task again only for new, updated, deeper, or re-verified information. Dropped the blanket "tool-derived → re-route" (kept "fresh data or verification you do not already have → re-route"). Instruction-only change; grok's instruction adherence is imperfect (same theme as the deferral), so needs live verify.

Verification: test_provider_native_instructions_include_recent_context extended to assert the recall carve-out; realtime route + promotion suites green.

2026-07-09 — Fallback deliveries seed the answer into provider history

Live e2e surfaced a follow-up failure: after a background result fell back to relay TTS ("check Hermes for Minnesota" → the provider deferred → TTS spoke the answer), the user asked "we already ran the task, can't you see that?" and the provider had no record of it. Root cause: a provider-VOICED delivery becomes a conversation item in the provider's own history, but a FALLBACK leaves only the provider's deferral ("I'll let you know") there — relay TTS spoke the answer, which the provider never saw. The existing native_pending_delivery_note is a one-shot correction attached to the NEXT Hermes-routed response's instructions; a follow-up that doesn't route through that branch (a meta-question like "what did you just do?") never applies it.

New RealtimeAgentConnection.append_context_item(role, text) injects a silent conversation.item.create (assistant → content text, user/system → input_text; no response.create) into the provider session. On the fallback paths (validator fallback in _finish_forced_summary_provider_response, provider-death/request-failed in _speak_fallback_answer) the broker seeds the delivered answer as an assistant turn, so ANY subsequent follow-up finds it in history — durably, independent of routing. Kept the pending note as a belt-and-suspenders one-shot correction. Seeding is best-effort (a dead socket no-ops) and only on fallbacks — a provider-voiced success already has its own turn, so no double-record. Logs result_seeded / result_seed_failed with a preview.

Verification: 104 realtime tests green; test_filler_summary_triggers_fallback_delivery extended to assert the delivered answer is seeded as an assistant history item; append_context_item added to all connection fakes.

2026-07-09 — Flight recorder records the provider's spoken delivery text

Live e2e voice testing (relay 2968a17, grok-voice-latest then grok-voice-think-fast-1.0) surfaced a diagnosis gap: when a background-result delivery fell back to relay TTS, the flight recorder recorded the reason but the outcome couldn't be told apart from the outside — was it a real provider deferral, or the validator over-flagging a faithful reading? The forced_summary_fallback event already carried provider_text_preview, but the SUCCESS paths (forced_summary_streaming early-commit, forced_summary_delivered end-validated) logged only char counts, and the pre-run acknowledgement (hermes_forced_preamble.finished) logged only metadata — so a clean delivery couldn't be confirmed verbatim and the "I'll check" preamble was invisible.

Three _log payloads now carry a _compact_status_text (≤120 char) preview of what was actually spoken: transcript_preview on the preamble (pre-run acknowledgement), prefix_preview on the early-commit stream (committed prefix), and provider_text_preview on the end-validated delivery (full reading). Reuses the 120-char compaction already applied to the fallback path; no new session state; bounded by the existing 14-day run-dir retention sweep.

This closed the live diagnosis directly: think-fast spoke "One moment while I pull that up. I'll let you know as soon as I have it." — a genuine deferral, correctly caught, not a validator false positive. The deferral is model-agnostic (both grok variants defer against the exact-reading instruction), so the fix belongs in the injection strategy, not model choice or validator tuning.

Verification: 104 realtime tests green; test_realtime_summary_validation extended to assert prefix_preview / provider_text_preview carry the delivered text. The live delivery watcher (report.py + the ops flight-log watcher) surfaces the previews inline so a fallback vs. verbatim success is legible without a manual query.

2026-07-08 — Fallback deliveries no longer play into a dead overlay

Live observation: a fallback-TTS delivery played audibly while the voice overlay sat on "Thinking" — no waveform, no live text (the answer only appeared via final_text when the response finished). The session log confirmed the turn was validator_fallback: acknowledgement_not_summary, and — first live data point from the new resolved-model logging — it ran on grok-voice-think-fast-1.0 (xAI's alias flip confirmed live; the reasoning model still deferred on its first exact-prompt delivery).

Two client gates caused the dead overlay: the voice view dropped every hermes-sourced voice.response.delta (a rule meant to keep mid-run Hermes chatter off the overlay, written before fallback TTS became a first-class delivery mouth), and that same handler was the only path that flipped the state Thinking→Speaking — so the Speaking-gated waveform envelope never fed even as 71 PCM chunks played.

Fix, both halves: delivery responses are now tagged on the wire ("delivery": "fallback" | "respeak" | "visual_only" on started+delta), the overlay renders hermes-sourced deltas that carry a delivery tag (plain run chatter stays suppressed), and arriving output audio itself now flips Thinking→Speaking so the waveform tracks any spoken response regardless of which mouth produced it.

Verification: 116 realtime tests green including new delivery-tag assertions on both fallback paths; :app:assembleSideloadDebug green. Needs an on-device fallback turn to confirm the overlay animates.

2026-07-08 — Pre-RC observability hardening + realtime model updates

Flight-recorder hygiene. Session JSONL logs and wav taps under realtime-agent-runs/ are now swept past realtime_voice.run_retention_days (default 14 days, 0 disables) whenever a new session log is created — the logs carry conversation transcripts, so bounded retention is privacy hygiene as much as disk hygiene. The relay-TTS render wav is now a debug-only tap (debug_audio_tap, default off): the artifact is deleted once the PCM has streamed and voice.response.done.audio_path is blank (a single session's renders were observed at 5.6MB before).

Delivery-outcome rollup. python -m plugin.relay.realtime_agent.report [--run-dir] [--days N] [--json] tallies deliveries across recent session logs: provider-spoken (early-commit / end-validated) vs validator fallback vs provider-death fallback, with reasons, plus preemptions, alarms, and deferred results. A new voice.response.forced_summary_delivered marker makes clean end-validated deliveries visible — they previously had no distinct event. One command now answers the exact-mode compliance question after a live round.

Realtime model updates. OpenAI realtime default bumped gpt-realtime-2 → gpt-realtime-2.1 with gpt-realtime-2.1-mini (cheap tier) and gpt-realtime-2 (rollback) selectable; xAI options expose the versioned grok-voice-think-fast-1.0 pin alongside the default grok-voice-latest alias. Both providers now surface the RESOLVED model id from session.created echoes, logged once per session as voice.realtime_agent.provider_model_resolved — without it, live-round verdicts are unattributable across alias flips (xAI moved the alias to think-fast in July).

Verification: 191 tests green across the realtime battery plus new hygiene/report suites; the routes test was updated to the new blank-audio-path contract.

2026-07-08 — Delivery-pipeline audit: five confirmed gaps fixed

An adversarial audit of the provider-voiced delivery rework (below) confirmed that moving speak_verbatim from the synchronous TTS render onto the async provider pipeline opened failure windows the old path couldn't have. All five findings fixed:

1. Foreground delivery had no provider-death handling. The forced-turn request_response was bare; a dead provider socket lost the answer and wedged native_forced_summary_active. Now wrapped: on failure the new shared _speak_fallback_answer mouth delivers the authoritative answer through relay TTS (same semantics as the validator's off-script fallback).
2. Delivered-or-alarm covered 1 of 3 delivery paths. The confirm alarm was only spawned for attached-background deliveries; foreground and deferred-resume injections could stall silently. Both now spawn it.
3. Barge-in mid-delivery silently dropped the pending answer. A new user utterance wiped forced-summary state with no cancel_response() and no record — stale deltas could leak past the validator and an undelivered result vanished. New _preempt_pending_forced_summary: cancels the stale response, logs delivery_preempted, and lands a never-spoken answer as text (speaking would collide with the user's new turn).
4. Blocklist false positives on faithful readings. Phrases present in the authoritative answer itself ("your order is queued…") no longer count as deferral evidence; only phrases the model added on its own flag.
5. Structured JSON answers contradicted the exact prompt. _provider_safe_answer_for_speech rewrites JSON into a summarize-this meta-instruction, which the exact prompt then framed as "read word for word". Structured answers now route to the summary prompt.

Also: an injection failure on the attached background path now falls back to spoken TTS immediately instead of waiting 30s for the text-only alarm.

Verification: 102 realtime tests green, including five new — injection-failure TTS fallback, barge-in preemption-as-text, blocklist answer-exemption (both directions plus no-context behavior), and structured-answer prompt routing. Deliberately unfixed (recorded in TODO): DONE-chip respeak stays relay-TTS by design, and exact-mode's 1400-char truncation semantics.

2026-07-08 — Upstream-watch P1 batch (HRUI-001/002/014/015/016/022)

Cleared every open P1 item from the upstream-impact watch ledger in one parallel pass: five isolated worktree branches off dev, disjoint file ownership, merged back --no-ff with zero conflicts.

• Media credential denylist (HRUI-014). /media/by-path permissive mode now runs an always-on credential/system denylist mirroring upstream's validate_media_delivery_path — checked post-realpath (symlinks can't launder) and pre-existence (no 403/404 oracle), covering ~/.hermes secret files, mcp-tokens/, pairing/, home credential dirs, system prefixes, and the relay's own QR secret + session store.
• aiohttp floor (HRUI-015). >=3.14.1,<4 in plugin requirements, root pyproject.toml, and relay_server/requirements.txt; docs updated.
• Bootstrap retirement (HRUI-002). Sessions CRUD/messages/fork and the legacy GET /api/skills list are no longer injected (native upstream owns them, #33134/#33016); the compat-only survivors (session search, memory, skill detail/toggle stub, config, available-models, slash middleware) are documented as such in the module, doctor/compat wording, TODO, and docs.
• prompt.submit long-RPC semantics (HRUI-016). Android + desktop CLI pass a 30-minute prompt.submit ack ceiling (upstream desktop parity); a slow or severed ack after turn events flow can no longer trigger the SSE preflight fallback (duplicate-turn class); chat/voice hard caps became idle-progress watchdogs re-armed on every gateway event.
• Manage model catalog (HRUI-022). /api/model/options requests include_unconfigured=1 (cached + refresh) and the parser keeps empty-model skeleton providers so the Keys-setup affordance survives newer upstream defaults; in-chat picker unchanged.
• Fallback payload contract (HRUI-001). Sessions/runs payloads no longer carry top-level messages/attachments upstream never parses; synthetic history maps to consumed channels (ephemeral system-prompt digest; completions messages splice; runs conversation_history), and undeliverable attachments surface via ChatPayloadResult.droppedAttachments
  • logging instead of silent loss. Docs truth-up in HERMES-WEBAPI-REFERENCE + decisions ADR note.

HRUI-003 (blocked upstream) re-verified: Standard-voice "Global voice" scope banner copy remains honest; no change needed.

Verification: merged-tree runs — 89 plugin unittests OK (1 Windows symlink skip), Android :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest green across GatewayChatClient / HermesChatPayloads / DashboardApiClient / ModelOptionsParser (incl. 18 new payload tests, 4 new HRUI-016 tests, 5-test parser fixture suite), desktop npm run build (strict tsc) clean.

2026-07-08 — Provider-voiced exact result delivery

result_delivery: "speak_verbatim" no longer renders through relay TTS directly. Every spoken delivery mode now delivers through the realtime provider so background/foreground Hermes answers keep the session's voice and tone; the modes differ only in per-response instructions. Exact asks for a word-for-word reading of the authoritative answer (_forced_hermes_exact_prompt), Summary keeps the concise-natural-summary prompt, and both are backstopped by the forced-summary validator (whole-word overlap, early-commit bar, queue-speak blocklist), the relay-TTS fallback, and the delivery-confirm alarm. _speak_result_verbatim and the voice.response.verbatim_delivery event are removed — foreground, background, and deferred-resume verbatim paths all ride the shared injection pipeline. An exact reading trivially clears the overlap validator; an off-script response falls back to relay TTS speaking the same authoritative text, so the worst case equals the previous TTS-direct default one failed provider response later.

Verification: realtime suites green (96 tests across summary-validation / promotion / routes / fast-lane / keepalive / floor), including new exact-prompt selection units and an integration test pinning the exact-reading injection. Live signoff pending: grok-voice failed the summarize instruction 4/4 in earlier live rounds — whether it complies with the stricter read-as-written instruction is the key open question (TODO tracks it).

2026-07-08 — Voice settings delivery-mode help

Voice Settings now explains realtime answer-delivery modes behind a compact info icon next to "When the answer is ready": Exact is the recommended provider-voiced word-for-word path (relay TTS only as fallback), Summary is the provider rephrase path, Notify delays speech until re-engage, and Show keeps the result visual only.

2026-07-08 — Realtime voice idle recovery and verbatim delivery default

Follow-up batch after the A-E on-device rounds and relay-host idle probes.

Provider idle recovery. The failed keepalive path is removed from the realtime broker. xAI's 900s conversation-inactivity close is now treated as routine provider-session expiry: _pump_provider_events logs voice.realtime_agent.provider_idle_close, closes the attached Android websocket with a clean idle reason, and emits no voice.error. Android treats that idle close as a successful stale persistent session end; the next user turn opens a fresh provider conversation, reseeded from the durable Hermes session. The old provider keepalive loop and activity stamps are retired, and test_realtime_keepalive.py now pins idle-close handling instead of silent PCM pings.

Verbatim result delivery. result_delivery: "speak_verbatim" is now the default in relay config, profile settings, the session model, Android config fallbacks, and the Voice Settings segmented control. Foreground, background, and pending background Hermes results use relay TTS to speak the authoritative Hermes answer directly; speak_when_idle remains the opt-in provider/model summary mode.

Polish from the last live round. Relay fallback speech strips Source: / Sources: / citation path lines before TTS, hermes_get_status now exposes queued item previews and the provider instructions steer queue status questions to that tool, Android ignores realtime response/audio/done events while still recording, and the output tail guard is raised from 350ms to 650ms to reduce final-word snap.

Verification: targeted realtime suite green (83 tests across summary-validation / fast-lane / promotion / routes / keepalive); :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin green with existing nullable-body warnings. Relay deploy, APK rebuild/install, and live voice signoff remain pending.

2026-07-08 — Live rounds 3–4: validation hardening, delivery note, keepalive verdict

Three live-monitored voice test rounds against the A–E batch surfaced (and fixed) two validator gaps and answered the keepalive unknown:

Round 3 — a queue acknowledgement streamed as the answer. The summary response for a completed result was ANOTHER queue-ack ("It's queued and will start automatically once the Minnesota check finishes. I'll let you know…"), and early-commit approved it at 45 chars: substring matching let "will START automatically" count as evidence for an answer containing "starting". Fixes: whole-word evidence matching (_summary_overlap_hits), a 2-hit bar for the irreversible early commit (end validation keeps 1), queue/deferral phrases a final answer must never contain ("i'll let you know", "it's queued", "queued and will", …), an explicit phase-1 wait-for-injection in _start_next_queued_run (ordering previously held by scheduling luck), and a floor-idle wait before the queued-start transition.

Round 4 — fallback delivered, model claimed the task was still running. The validator caught the provider's deferral response and the fallback spoke the real answer (confirmed conversationally by the user's own follow-up) — but fallback/text-only deliveries bypass the provider's conversation, so its history still read "running in background". Fix: out-of-band deliveries set a pending delivery note attached to the next user turn's per-response instructions (composed with the session instructions) — task already completed, answer already spoken, don't re-deliver.

Keepalive verdict (empirical, live xAI on the relay host). The 960s repro died at exactly 900.0s; the silent-PCM keepalive run ALSO died at exactly 900.0s — uncommitted buffer appends do not reset xAI's conversation-inactivity timer. POC doc revised; a session.update re-send is the next candidate (probe mode added; run pending), with a scheduled provider-socket reopen as the remaining fallback.

Round-4 session also confirmed live: filler flagged (acknowledgement_not_summary) → fallback spoke "Your dog's name is Luna." → user's next utterance ("How did you know that so quick?") proved audibility; the earlier queue flow (queued ack → auto-start → both answers) and chip +1-queued/finished states verified on device.

2026-07-08 — Background-run A–E batch: streaming delivery, queue, respeak, chip presence

Owner-approved full enhancement batch from the gap review (same day as the e2e forensics below; a live log-watch during testing confirmed the buffered "silence, then the whole answer in one burst" delivery gap this batch fixes).

A — delivery reliability. (1) Positive validation: the forced summary must share content tokens with the Hermes answer (_summary_overlaps_answer; vacuously true for bare confirmations) — no_answer_overlap joins the bad-summary reasons. (2) Early-flush streaming: the summary response buffers only until its prefix (≥40 chars) clears the blocklist and shows answer overlap (_maybe_commit_forced_summary_early), then flushes and streams live; native_forced_summary_committed gates the pump's buffering branches, and committed responses skip end-of-response validation (audio already played). (3) Delivered-or-alarm: _confirm_background_delivery force-emits the answer as text (+ delivery_unconfirmed log) when no spoken delivery lands within 30s. (4) Respeak: new hermes.result.respeak client message replays last_background_result via relay TTS; the client requests it by tapping the settled chip.

B — task queue. A long second ask while the slot is busy is queued (FIFO, cap 3, status: "queued") instead of refused; queued tasks start automatically when the current run's task completes (spawned from the delivery task's finally; _start_next_queued_run waits for the summary to settle, then runs the task as a durable background run with a spoken transition). Cancel clears the queue. New hermes.run.queued event + queued_count on promoted/background_completed/get_status; the chip shows "+N queued". Queue-full falls back to the busy answer.

C — chip presence. The chip now renders in compact (non-focus) voice mode (it previously existed only in the focus layout), and exiting voice mode with a live run posts a chat system notice via a new VoiceViewModel.chatNoticeSink (wired in RelayApp) so the task stays visible somewhere after the overlay closes.

D — _thinking as signal + redundancy. The gateway's _thinking drafted text is captured as the answer of last resort when the response-delta path yields empty (answer_from_thinking), and drives a "Drafting the answer…" chip status line client-side.

E — hygiene. The fast lane reuses one Hermes side-session per voice session (fast_lane_session_id) instead of littering a session per quick ask; the idle probe injects the relay xAI OAuth token the way the broker does (_probe_provider_options) so it can actually run on the relay host; new route-level test drives a provider that answers the forced summary with filler and asserts the fallback delivers the real answer while the filler never reaches the client.

Verification: realtime batch green (93 tests across summary-validation / fast-lane / promotion / routes / keepalive / heartbeat, including 8 new overlap/early-commit cases, 4 new queue/side-session cases, and the misbehaving-provider e2e); :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin green. The queue changed the second-ask contract from already_running to queued — existing tests updated accordingly. Live verify pending (streaming delivery, queue flow, respeak, compact chip, exit breadcrumb).

2026-07-08 — E2E realtime test forensics: five chained voice fixes

A live e2e realtime-voice test (phone on the 1.4.0 dev APK, relay at 789f32c) surfaced a chained failure, fully reconstructed from the session event log: the gateway streams drafting text as a _thinking pseudo-tool (deltas only, no completion) → the client rendered it as a tool pill that spins "running" forever → the user cancelled a run that had ALREADY completed → the unguarded cancel path marked it cancelled and the completed answer was never spoken. Independently, the model read the full 32-char run id aloud (both the interim ack payload and the forced-summary prompt metadata handed it the id), claimed "I'll add that to the queue" (no queue exists), and one delivery spoke "One moment while I look that up" filler that the forced-summary validator didn't recognize — the other delivery was saved only because reading the run id IS a recognized bad-summary reason.

Fixes (client + relay):

1. _-prefixed tool names are internal (upstream's hidden-tool convention) — ChatViewModel.applyRealtimeAgentEvent no longer creates ToolCall pills for them on hermes.tool.delta (or .started, defensively); their text still feeds the detailed thinking trace.
2. response.cancel now cancels the Hermes run only when one is actually in flight — a late cancel stops current speech but can no longer flip a completed run to "cancelled" or emit hermes.run.cancelled for it.
3. Run/session ids removed from every model-visible payload (interim ack, forced-summary metadata) + "never say run IDs, session IDs, or other identifiers aloud" added to the interim-ack, handoff, and summary instructions; hermes_get_status/hermes_cancel default to the active run so the model never needs the id.
4. "There is no task queue — do not offer to queue or claim to have queued anything" added to the handoff/busy instructions.
5. _bad_forced_summary_reason gained deferral-filler phrases (one moment / report back / looking into / i'll look / as soon as i have) and the summary prompt now says to speak the answer NOW; the stale pre-Hermes status lead no longer carries the previous run's id/tool-count into a new run's first progress event.

Verification: new plugin/tests/test_realtime_summary_validation.py (5, pinning the exact observed filler string), cancel route test updated to the new no-active-run contract, realtime batch 69/69 green; :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin green. Needs a repeat of the same live test after relay redeploy + app rebuild.

Sixth fix (second finding, same re-test): background-run chip vanished the instant the waveform returned. The chip was nulled at the first summary-audio byte, i.e. exactly when the answer began playing — reading as the task being lost. New BackgroundRunPhase.DONE: on first summary audio (or the 20s no-audio delivery watchdog) the chip settles to "Background task finished." (solid dot, ticker frozen), lingers 10s, then auto-dismisses. ✕ on a settled chip is a local dismiss, never a relay cancel; a newly promoted run replaces a lingering DONE chip and cancels its timer; progress/tool/ reconnect events cannot reanimate a settled chip.

2026-07-08 — Background-run fast lane; stale voice-prefs TODO closed; dev deployed to device

Fast lane (background-run v2 §1). While a detached (promoted/durable) run holds the single background slot, a second hermes_run_task used to get an unconditional busy answer — even for a two-second lookup. New _run_fast_lane_task (broker.py) first tries the request INLINE on a separate ephemeral Hermes session (session_id=None) within the normal grace window; grace-elapse, a known-long tool start, explicit mode=background, or promotion-off abandon the attempt and fall through to the (reworded) busy answer. Design constraints honored: the fast lane keeps every observation in locals and touches none of the session's hermes_* run state (run_id/status/progress/chip stay owned by the in-flight run), emits no client events of its own, and the fast-lane gate additionally requires the existing run to actually be detached (hermes_run_tier promoted/ durable). Session-log events: voice.hermes_fast_lane.completed / .abandoned / .error. Verification: new plugin/tests/test_realtime_fast_lane.py (7 — inline answer + state non-interference, grace fall-through with client-side stream cancellation, long-tool fall-through, background-mode skip, promotion-off skip, foreground-tier skip, error reporting); test_second_run_task_answers_busy_without_orphaning_first updated to per-stream cancellation tracking (the abandoned fast-lane stream is the designed fall-through, the first run's stream must stay uncancelled); full realtime batch 64/64 green. Relay deploy + live voice verify pending. Residuals (TODO): no rolling-context injection into the ephemeral session; an abandoned attempt may finish server-side unread.

Stale TODO closed — voice-prefs connectionId namespacing. The deferred item asked to wire setVoicePrefsConnection to ConnectionViewModel.activeConnectionId; verification showed the wiring shipped in 0aa1b38 (2026-06-21) — RelayApp's (connection, profile) effect already sets the connection id before onProfileChanged, and applyVoicePrefsScope pushes both into VoicePreferencesRepository.setActiveScope. Entry crossed off; the VoiceViewModel KDoc still describing the pre-wiring state corrected.

Device deploy. dev pushed to origin (16133ff..7569144) and hermes-relay-1.4.0-sideload-debug built + installed to the test device over wireless ADB (assembleSideloadDebug, install Success) — carries the full 2026-07-08 batch for the on-device voice pass.

2026-07-08 — Realtime keepalive (xAI 900s idle-close), turn-sync durability, voice delegate nudge

Three-voice-item batch on dev (c7de0da, c079a63, 5c214a2, a660b38).

1. Provider keepalive — xAI closes realtime conversations after 900s of inactivity. A live relay event log showed a session dying while quiet (~896s of zero events after a background-run summary → voice.error "Conversation timed out after 900.0 seconds due to inactivity"). Client-side investigation answered the open question in the TODO: mic capture is turn-bracketed by design (startListening()/stopListening() bracket one utterance shipped as input_audio.append×N + commit; turn_detection: None), so no continuous stream ever exists — any quiet stretch ≥900s starves the provider socket; background waits are just the most common way to get there. Fix is relay-side: _provider_keepalive_loop in broker.py, a per-connection task appending ~100ms of silent, never-committed PCM after RELAY_VOICE_PROVIDER_KEEPALIVE_MS of quiet (default 240s ⇒ 3 pings per 900s window; 0 disables; runs through detached periods). Append-only deliberately — a buffer clear could race a user utterance; uncommitted silence merely prefixes the next utterance by a sliver. Activity is stamped at two chokepoints only: the client-append path and once per provider event in _pump_provider_events. A residual idle-close is now classified (_is_provider_idle_timeout) into a human-readable "voice session expired" error instead of raw provider text. ADR 33 Phase 0's xAI verdict revised to needs-keepalive ≥900s (docs/realtime-voice-poc.md revision + decisions.md note) — the 2026-05-24 verdict was scoped to between-turn idle and never probed the 15-minute scale. The idle probe gained --keepalive-ms for the relay-host repro/fix check, which also settles the one remaining empirical unknown (does an uncommitted append reset xAI's timer). Verification: plugin/tests/test_realtime_keepalive.py 11/11 new; existing 54 realtime tests green. Relay deploy + probe run pending (owner). Superseded later the same day: relay-host probe runs proved neither silent PCM nor session.update pings reset xAI's 900s timer; the active implementation is now silent idle-close recovery plus next-turn provider reopen (see the 2026-07-08 entry at the top of this file).

2. Realtime turn-sync durability — gateway drain + provenance badge. Provider-answered realtime turns sync into the Hermes session as synthetic messages on the next chat/run request, but gateway prompt.submit can't carry them — on a gateway-primary phone "next SSE turn" meant never. A gateway turn with unsynced traces now forces itself onto the sessions SSE route, guarded narrowly (existing session id + sessions fallback + default profile — a non-default profile's gateway session is invisible to the shared api_server surface, so the POST would 404 and fail the user's turn). The synced-mark guard now checks the route actually dispatched on (effectiveEndpoint), fixing a latent duplicate re-send for voice turns forced onto SSE by their interface context. On reload, RealtimeTurnSyncBuilder.stripProvenanceMarker() turns the synced [Realtime Agent provider-native voice turn: …] marker into the quiet "Realtime Agent" badge (bracket noise stripped) and the superseded local clientOnly bubble is dropped instead of rendering the exchange twice; unsynced traces remain preserved. Verification: 4 new ChatHandlerTest + 4 new RealtimeTurnSyncBuilderTest cases; filtered :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest run green. App-restart persistence of unsynced traces remains open (scoped in TODO).

3. Standard voice: background-delegation nudge — shipped (5c214a2), then reverted (45c7ef4) the same session. A follow-up verification against current upstream source disproved the premise: delegate_task(background=true) never dispatches async on the api_server surface. Every api_server route binds async_delivery=False (gateway/platforms/api_server.py), and tools/delegate_tool.py consults gateway.session_context.async_delivery_supported() and downgrades the batch to synchronous execution with an explanatory note (upstream issue #10760 — "the adapter's send() is a no-op, so a background dispatch would silently never re-enter the conversation"). Since all standard voice turns are forced onto SSE, the nudge would have blocked the turn just as long (plus subagent overhead) while the spoken reply claimed the work was backgrounded. The related "speak a delegated result if the voice overlay is still open" TODO was closed on the same finding — no delayed completion turn exists on this surface to speak. Both TODO entries record the verified mechanism.

2026-07-08 — delegate_task verdict (nudge reverted), #131 closure, demo composer

delegate_task async-delivery verdict (upstream verification). The TODO's VERIFY-FIRST question — does a delegate_task completion turn reach api_server-visible sessions — was answered by reading current upstream source (clone @ 5057f03bf): it can't, because no async dispatch ever happens on that surface. Every api_server route binds async_delivery=False (gateway/platforms/api_server.py), and tools/delegate_tool.py consults gateway.session_context.async_delivery_supported() and downgrades background=true to synchronous inline execution with an explanatory note (upstream issue #10760). The completion-injection path (_async_delegation_watcher → adapter.handle_message()) only fires for push-capable platform origins. Consequences: the same-day voice background-delegation nudge was reverted (45c7ef4), its CHANGELOG entry withdrawn, and the speak-delegated-result-on-overlay follow-up closed — on the phone's SSE surface there is no delayed completion turn to speak.

#131 crash-class closure — HermesApiClient streaming URL guard. The three streaming methods (sendChatStream / sendCompletionsStream / sendRunStream) built their Request before any try/catch, so a malformed base URL threw IllegalArgumentException out of the ViewModel. They now build via a non-throwing authRequestOrNull() chokepoint (top-level buildApiRequestOrNull, mirroring buildRelayRequestOrNull), fail the turn through the normal onError channel with a human message, and return an inert EventSource. This closes the last open group in the #131 audit list.

Demo mode: composer canned reply. Typing + Send in the offline demo was a silent no-op (sendMessage early-returned on the null API client), reading as broken. sendMessage now intercepts while isDemoMode: echoes the user bubble and appends DemoContent.composerReply (honest "offline demo — tap Connect" notice), both clientOnly so demo-exit's clearMessages() wipes them. Wired via setDemoModeWiring unconditionally in RelayApp, since the client-gated chat init never runs in demo and ChatViewModel's own handler stays null there. New DemoContentTest.composerReplyFollowsTheDemoContentContract plus buildApiRequestOrNull guard tests in HermesApiClientTest.

2026-07-07 — Realtime voice result-injection: drop the fake-user-message hack

What changed. The realtime voice broker (plugin/relay/realtime_agent/broker.py) delivered three kinds of broker-authored instructions — the forced-Hermes preamble, the background-task handoff acknowledgement, and the completed background-task summary — by injecting a synthetic user message (connection.send_text() → conversation.item.create with role: "user") and then requesting a response. The model's conversation history ended up with fake turns like "the user" saying "Hermes has already handled the user's previous voice request..." — an existing TODO item flagged this as needing a cleaner mechanism but noted xAI support was unverified.

Research. OpenAI's Realtime API and xAI's Voice Agent API (confirmed directly from docs.x.ai) both support response.create with a per-response instructions field that overrides the session system prompt for exactly one response, without creating any conversation item. conversation: "none" (fully out-of-band, excluded from history) is OpenAI-only and was deliberately not used, since the spoken summary should remain real conversation history for follow-up turns to reference.

Implementation. RealtimeAgentConnection.request_response() gained an optional instructions: str | None kwarg (providers/base.py); both providers/openai.py and providers/xai.py send {"type": "response.create", "response": {"instructions": ...}} when instructions are supplied, otherwise the original bare response.create. All 4 broker-authored injection sites now call request_response(instructions=...) instead of send_text(...); the one genuine passthrough (real client-supplied text, broker.py:699) is untouched. Updated the three affected test fixtures (FakeNativeConnection / FakeConnection in test_realtime_promotion.py and test_realtime_agent_routes.py) to record instructions the same way they recorded send_text calls, and added direct wire-shape assertions to both provider test files.

Verification. python -m unittest discover -s plugin/tests — 1073/1074 green; the one failure (test_reads_hermes_xai_oauth_credential_pool) is the pre-existing, already-documented local-fixture gap, unrelated to this change. Deployed to the relay for e2e testing; a real on-device voice session confirming the model still produces a natural spoken summary when driven by instructions alone (no preceding fake user turn) is still pending.

2026-07-07 — Voice tool-call ordering/stuck-chip fix + screen-wake-lock

Voice tool-call chip stuck + ordering (on-device realtime test). Diagnosed in the prior entry below and now fixed. Root cause was narrower than first suspected: VoiceUiState.responseText turned out to be write-only (nothing renders it for the realtime path — the only read site is the unrelated brokered-tool-loop narrator), so the "stuck" symptom was the BackgroundRunChip pinning its statusLine on the just-finished tool (phase=RUNNING) because VoiceViewModel's realtime event handler had no hermes.tool.completed/failed branch — the chip showed a stale "Running command." until the next unrelated event happened to overwrite it. Added that branch (VoiceViewModel.kt:2619): clears the finished tool's statusLine, advances completedToolCount, never touches a chip already in DELIVERING. Separately, CompactTranscriptRow in VoiceModeOverlay.kt rendered the assistant's reply text above the tool-call rows that produced it — reversed from chronology; reordered so tool rows render first. The per-message ToolCall transcript rows (ChatViewModel.applyRealtimeAgentEvent) were already correct and untouched. :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin green; on-device re-verify still pending (release cut is on hold for it — see TODO).

Screen-wake-lock for chat/voice. The app relied entirely on the OS screen timeout during both surfaces. Added KeepScreenOnWhile(enabled) (ui/components/OrientationOverride.kt, Window.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON via a DisposableEffect — the visible-surface mechanism power/WakeLockManager.kt's doc comment already pointed at), wired as a single call site at the ChatScreen root: enabled = voiceUiState.voiceMode || isStreaming. Voice mode holds the screen on for the whole session (call/Assistant-style, including silent gaps); chat holds it only while a reply is actively streaming (video-playback-style), falling back to the OS default while idle — matching WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal norms rather than pinning a static transcript. Deliberately single-owner: the window flag isn't reference-counted, so two independent callers could clear each other's hold.

2026-07-07 — Relay URL-guard sweep + voice error-recovery UX

Relay URL guards (finishing the #131 relay class). Extended the malformed-URL guard from the WSS socket to the relay HTTP clients: RelayVoiceClient validates its base in resolveHttpBase() (returns null on a malformed URL → the existing Result.failure guards fire, covering all 7 voice endpoints centrally), and RelayHttpClient's two string-URL sites (fetchMedia, listSessions) now use toHttpUrlOrNull() → Result.failure. RelayProfileInspectorClient was already guarded (every .toHttpUrl() in a catch (IllegalArgumentException)).

Voice error-recovery UX (on-device realtime test). A failed/timed-out voice turn showed the error twice — VoiceModeOverlay's inline top banner (uiState.error) AND the app-wide bottom snackbar the overlay piped errorEvents into — and offered only Retry, trapping the user. The overlay no longer pipes errorEvents to the snackbar while it's up (the inline banner is the surface); clearError() now resets Error→Idle; the banner gained a Dismiss beside Retry.

Also diagnosed (not yet fixed — need a repro-with-logs; see TODO): realtime tool-call spinners run indefinitely because VoiceViewModel has no hermes.tool.completed/failed handler (the relay forwards them, broker.py 2873–2904); and a tap/static click between sentences in the realtime PCM playback.

Verification. CI — Android green on the direct-to-dev push; APK rebuilt + installed + launched clean on device for the manual voice re-test.

2026-07-07 — Relay socket: guard a malformed URL (relay half of #131)

Why. A Play crash on 1.2.6 (Galaxy S25 Ultra / Android 16): IllegalArgumentException from okhttp3.HttpUrl$Builder.parse via ConnectionManager.doConnectInternal → Request.Builder.url(). This is the relay-socket half of the #131 "Invalid URL host" class the TODO flagged: the #131 fix guarded the Manage/voice HTTP clients, but the relay socket still built its request with OkHttp's throwing url() on a post-pairing URL. Because doConnectInternal runs on a background coroutine (scope.launch on Dispatchers.IO), an uncaught throw crashes the app.

What. Extracted the URL→Request build into a pure buildRelayRequestOrNull() (try/catch → null on IllegalArgumentException). doConnectInternal treats null as a connection failure — records an "Invalid relay URL" diagnostic, sets Disconnected, closes the socket being replaced, and schedules a (backed-off) reconnect — the same graceful path onFailure uses. No happy-path change.

Verification. ConnectionManagerUrlGuardTest (valid ws/wss build a request; empty-host / space-in-host return null). The remaining relay HTTP clients (RelayHttpClient, RelayProfileInspectorClient, RelayVoiceClient) still use throwing URL builds on post-pairing URLs — tracked in TODO for a defense-in-depth sweep.

2026-07-07 — CI plugin-path coverage + Android-14 crash-safety

CI path gap. ci-plugin.yml triggered on only four named top-level plugin modules, so changes to doctor.py, compat.py, config.py, profiles.py, and five others never ran plugin CI (the doctor fix in the prior entry only got covered because it also touched plugin/tests/**). Both push and pull_request triggers now use a plugin/*.py glob covering every current and future top-level module.

Android-14 crash-safety (SDK-35 build). The Play pre-launch check flags Kotlin removeFirst()/removeLast(), which resolve to Java-21 List methods absent below Android 15 and crash older devices. Replaced all five app-code calls (all on kotlin.collections.ArrayDeque, whose removeFirst() is a member — not the flagged MutableList extension — so already safe, but converted per Google's guidance) with removeAt(0); every site is size-guarded, so behavior is identical. The one genuinely-flagged occurrence lives in the Tink dependency (HybridConfig.<clinit>), which can't be edited line-by-line, so com.google.crypto.tink:tink-android is pinned to 1.16.0 ahead of the version security-crypto pulls transitively. Our EncryptedSharedPreferences use is AEAD-only (never loads HybridConfig), so the real-world crash risk was near-zero; the pin clears the static Play warning.

Verification. CI — Android (build + unit + lint) and CI — Plugin both green on dev after the direct push. The Tink pin's runtime effect on EncryptedSharedPreferences can't be CI-checked (a mismatch is a runtime NoSuchMethodError, not a build error) — on-device auth smoke-test queued in TODO.

2026-07-07 — Doctor + installer guard against stale duplicate plugin copies

Why. The 2026-06-29 phone-platform round-trip failure was ultimately a loader-dedup problem: the gateway plugin loader selects a discovered plugin by manifest name, so a second directory under ~/.hermes/plugins/ declaring name: hermes-relay (a backup copy left by an older installer, or a stray extra install) could win the dedup and make the gateway load stale code — silently ignoring every later deploy. Current install.sh already rm -rfs the old link instead of backing it up inside the plugins dir, but nothing detected a duplicate that arrived by any other route.

What.

• plugin/doctor.py: new _duplicate_plugin_dirs() scans the plugins dir ($HERMES_HOME/plugins or ~/.hermes/plugins, injectable for tests) for directories whose plugin.yaml declares the same name, deduped by resolved real target (two links to the same target are harmless). A new plugin-name-unique check warns and names the offenders; duplicate_dirs + plugins_dir are added to the report's plugin block.
• install.sh: after registering the canonical symlink, sweeps the plugins dir and removes any other entry whose plugin.yaml declares name: hermes-relay, so a stale duplicate can't linger.

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_doctor → 14/14 (4 new: duplicate detection, single-install OK, doctor warn + report field, doctor OK without duplicates). bash -n install.sh clean; the sweep's grep-match validated in isolation (removes only the extra name: hermes-relay dir, skips the canonical, differently-named, and manifest-less entries). Live-host verify (doctor reports the check; a reinstall leaves one hermes-relay entry) queued in TODO.

2026-07-06 — Release: android-v1.3.0 + plugin-v1.3.0; voice floor fixes; #165 lands for v1.3.1

Voice floor fixes (post-e2e). On-device testing of the realtime batch surfaced two client bugs: (1) background-run progress events (hermes.tool.started / tool.delta / run.progress and the shared emitStatus path) forced VoiceState.Thinking on every tick, pinning the overlay in spinner+Stop and making the mic unusable for the whole run even though the relay's floor was free — those paths now update only the chip while a run is active; (2) exitVoiceMode (and the Stop interrupt) sent a run-cancel, killing in-flight background tasks and letting the relay's hermes.run.cancelled confirm replace an already-delivered answer with "Cancelled." in the chat — exit now detaches (relay delivers via next session or proactive notification), Stop silences audio only, the chip's ✕ is the sole cancel, and the cancel confirm never clobbers non-empty content (Stopped badge instead). Verified: build + lint green, on-device voice e2e passed ("works nicely").

Release act. Cut both tracks at 1.3.0: CHANGELOG [Unreleased] → [1.3.0], Android bumped to 1.3.0 (code 21) with refreshed RELEASE_NOTES / whats_new / changelog.json / Play notes, plugin release notes written (with a #165 native-install known-issue callout). Release PR merged dev → main after a Dependabot sync (branch protection requires up-to-date), tags android-v1.3.0 + plugin-v1.3.0 cut from the merge commit. Both release workflows green: the Android release published with the new 2-asset layout (sideload APK + googlePlay AAB + SHA256SUMS — first release demonstrating the #144 fix), the plugin release published wheel + sdist + checksums.

#165 branch merged to dev post-tag. fix/plugin-native-imports (package-relative imports, dashboard standalone-load bootstrap, doctor import-chain check, installer venv autodetection with unit/shims templated to the detected interpreter, AST-guard + native-layout smoke tests wired into plugin CI) merged to dev per the plan's sequencing — it ships as plugin-v1.3.1 after owner validation on the official Docker image.

2026-07-06 — Open-issue resolution batch (triage of all 13 open issues + 5 fix branches)

Why. The tracker had accumulated 13 open issues spanning real bugs, already-shipped fixes nobody closed, auto-filed diagnostics noise, and docs drift. A multi-agent triage pass verified every claim against code and release tags (git merge-base --is-ancestor, never issue comments), then implementation ran on isolated worktree branches with an independent code-review pass per branch. Plan: docs/plans/2026-07-06-open-issue-resolution.md.

Triage outcomes. #131/#129/#124/#70/#94 were already fixed in released tags (v1.2.5 / v1.2.4 / v1.2.3 / v1.1.0+v1.2.3 / v1.2.0 respectively) — closure comments are queued as owner actions in TODO. #121 is scheduled feature work for the next cli-v* release. The rest became fix branches.

What landed on dev (merged --no-ff):

• fix/chat-stream-recovery (#166) — sessions-SSE turns that die on a transport error now enter a recovery poller (5s→30s backoff, 30-min cap) that reconciles the server-persisted answer instead of stranding "Still working…". Root cause verified against upstream api_server.py: the run survives the disconnect and persists; only the client gave up. Review pass caught and fixed two real defects before merge: a wedged streaming state when switching sessions mid-recovery, and a stale-anchor adoption when a repeated short message ("continue") never reached the server — the anchor is now positional (user-row count invariant), not text-only.
• fix/diagnostics-report-noise (#155/#154/#146) — severity-gated Report flow ([Diagnostic]/question prefills for non-error entries, expectation pre-flight for Info, real route role in the body), ServerAddress.loopbackHostWarning() util (UI wiring deferred to the connections-UI workstream), troubleshooting docs rebuilt around the app's real diagnostic titles.
• fix/onboarding-scroll (#145) — slides scroll under short viewports/large font, hero compacts under 620dp, compact-height Roborazzi render test added.
• fix/release-assets (#144) — android releases attach only sideload APK + googlePlay AAB + SHA256SUMS (checksums narrowed to match); release-notes template leads with the install file; RELEASE.md codifies the format. In-app update checker asset matching verified unaffected.
• docs/freshness-pass — "Vanilla Hermes" button label corrected to the app's actual "Hermes" (stale since v1.2.2), 7 dead anchors fixed across the built site (0 remain), README tool counts corrected (35 android, 25 desktop), security.md plain-ws:// gating described accurately.

Parked, not merged: fix/plugin-native-imports (#165) — package-relative imports so the plugin works under the native hermes plugins install loader (hermes_plugins.<slug>), dashboard plugin_api standalone-load bootstrap, doctor import-chain check, installer venv autodetection (classic/uv/Docker) with generated unit/shims templated to the detected interpreter, and an AST-guard + native-layout smoke test (wired into plugin CI). Holds until the pending plugin release tag is cut, then ships as the next plugin patch release so the in-flight voice e2e validation stays meaningful.

Verification. Per-branch: plugin suite 1051 tests (1 pre-existing environmental failure, verified at base); android unit tests + lint green per branch (12 pre-existing Windows-local DataStore temp-file failures verified at base by three independent agents); VitePress build clean with a full-site anchor sweep; release workflow YAML parses; combined lint + unit gate re-run on merged dev. On-device checks (Doze/screen-off recovery, max-font onboarding) are owner-driven and queued in TODO.

2026-07-06 — Model picker Refresh Models parity

Why. The upstream-impact watch flagged Hermes' new explicit model catalog refresh contract: dashboard REST accepts GET /api/model/options?refresh=1, the TUI gateway accepts model.options {refresh:true}, and upstream desktop/web surfaces expose a Refresh Models action so dynamic/custom provider catalogs can be refreshed on demand. Android already used both model-option surfaces, but only the cached/non-refresh path.

What.

• DashboardApiClient.getModelOptions(refresh) now adds ?refresh=1 only for an explicit refresh request; normal Manage dialog opens remain cached/cheap.
• GatewayChatClient.modelOptions(refresh) sends refresh:true on the JSON-RPC only when the chat model sheet's Refresh button is tapped.
• ChatViewModel exposes modelOptionsRefreshing and keeps automatic prewarm/open refreshes on the non-refresh path; explicit failures surface as transient notices.
• ModelPickerSheet and Manage's model dialogs gained a Refresh action with spinner state, matching upstream without forcing provider probes on every picker open.

Verification. Focused dashboard/gateway client tests cover REST query and RPC params; full :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest / lint still need the pre-PR gate below.

2026-07-06 — Upstream-impact guardrails: dashboard surface + session cleanup

Why. The upstream-impact watch flagged two Relay-adjacent changes: hermes serve now represents the headless backend path while hermes dashboard remains the Manage/UI surface, and newer upstream session APIs expose safer server-side cleanup primitives. Relay needed concrete compatibility seams so Android and operators do not treat those surfaces interchangeably or delete sessions client-side without a server preview.

What.

• hermes relay doctor now probes the configured dashboard URL for both /api/status and /v1/capabilities, classifies whether it is the dashboard/Manage surface or an API-server/headless URL, and prints an actionable hermes dashboard fix when it is not the Manage surface. It also probes /api/sessions/prune with HEAD only so diagnostics can report server-backed cleanup support without ever running a prune.
• DashboardApiClient gained single-session export, soft archive/restore helpers, an optional archived list filter, and previewSessionPrune / pruneSessions wrappers around upstream /api/sessions/prune. The destructive apply requires a caller-supplied preview and short-circuits when the preview matched nothing.
• Session cleanup docs now record the export, archive, and prune contract; dashboard docs call out hermes dashboard vs. headless hermes serve.

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_doctor; ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Android/Sdk ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=$HOME/Android/Sdk ./gradlew :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest --tests com.hermesandroid.relay.network.upstream.DashboardApiClientTest.

2026-07-06 — Multi-device Android bridge targeting

Why. The relay bridge previously behaved like a single active Android client. When a phone and tablet were both paired, the most recent bridge connection displaced the other, so host-side android_* tools could not reliably target a specific device.

What.

• Bridge registry. Replaced the single bridge WebSocket slot with a connected-device registry keyed by device ID. Responses are scoped to the command's target socket so a different device cannot satisfy the request ID.
• Selectors. Added aliases and explicit selectors for phone/fold/pixel and tablet/BOOX-style devices, plus /bridge/devices, /bridge/status?device=..., and /bridge/select-active loopback routes.
• Tool schemas. Added an optional device selector to bridge-backed android_* tool schemas. The tool handler stores the selector in a call-scoped context so nested android_macro steps inherit the top-level target unless a step overrides it.

Verification. Focused plugin tests pass: python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_android_tool_device_selector plugin.tests.test_bridge_multidevice plugin.tests.test_bridge_channel plugin.tests.test_bridge_status plugin.tests.test_bridge_activity → 39 tests OK. Live relay smoke confirmed two Android bridge clients connected simultaneously, explicit selectors for each returned distinct foreground packages, and /bridge/select-active switched the default target both ways. Standard Android Settings screens returned non-empty accessibility trees on both devices. Screenshot checks remain permission-gated: devices without a current MediaProjection grant still need the in-app/user-consent flow, while the e-ink timeout path is hardened with a longer configurable wait and one capture-pipeline rebuild retry.

2026-07-01 — Realtime voice: live background-run chip (progress, phases, cancel)

Why. With timer-driven spoken progress off by default (see the robustness batch below), the voice overlay's background-run chip became the primary in-between signal — but it was a static string set at promotion and cleared at completion. The relay's hermes.run.progress events already carry active_tool_name / completed_tool_count / elapsed_ms (added by the ADR 33 plan precisely for a live chip) and the client ignored them; none of the new connection states (resume retrying, result deferred) had any visual; and there was no cancel affordance despite the path existing.

What.

• RelayVoiceClient parses the progress extras (active_tool_name, completed_tool_count, elapsed_ms) into RealtimeVoiceEvent.
• VoiceViewModel: BackgroundRunState gains statusLine / completedToolCount / startedAtMs / phase (RUNNING / RECONNECTING / DELIVERING). Tool-start and progress events drive the live line (reusing realtimeToolStatusLine); handoff labels flip the chip to RECONNECTING during a mid-run socket drop and back on "Voice reconnected"; background_completed shows a DELIVERING chip until the first summary audio (20s watchdog for visual-only delivery); a new turn while a run is active sets a "Still working on the earlier task…" line; cancelBackgroundRun() sends the existing response.cancel and flips the chip to "Cancelling…" (the relay's hermes.run.cancelled clears it).
• VoiceModeOverlay: the static chip is now BackgroundRunChip — pulsing dot (tertiary while reconnecting), phase-aware title, live detail line (step · N steps · m:ss ticker), and a ✕ that cancels; remembers the last non-null state so the exit fade doesn't snap empty (PermissionDeniedChip pattern). ChatScreen wires onBackgroundRunCancel.

Verification. assembleSideloadDebug + lintSideloadDebug green. Client-only — no relay changes. On-device check rides the pending realtime e2e list in TODO; ambient visibility outside voice mode deferred to coordinate with the connection-management status-strip work (TODO).

2026-07-01 — Realtime voice: ADR 33 robustness batch (deliver-on-reattach, adaptive promotion, milestone speech, resume retry, prewarm)

Why. An architecture review of the ADR 33 background-run path against current realtime-API practice (the interim-tool-result + later-injection shape now ships natively in gpt-realtime; the design itself is sound) surfaced a set of lifecycle and UX gaps: a result completing while the phone was detached was spoken into the bounded replay ring (a long summary can evict its own head), a second hermes_run_task overwrote session.hermes_task and cancelled the first run's delivery (silent orphan), timer-driven spoken progress narrated over the floor every N seconds, promotion always waited the full 6s grace even when the first tool was obviously long, a failed client resume parked forever on "waiting for route change", and the first voice turn paid the session POST + websocket + provider connect.

What (relay — broker.py, providers/*.py, config.py, profile_voice.py, server.py).

• Deliver-on-reattach: _deliver_background_result holds the result as session.pending_background_result when the phone is detached; resume injects it after replay (_deliver_pending_background_result). _close_native_session pushes an undelivered result via a new proactive_push hook (wired to ProactiveChannel.push, which buffers for an offline phone) — including the close-races-completion case where the run finished but delivery was cancelled.
• Busy answer: a second hermes_run_task while one is in flight returns a speakable already_running result instead of orphaning run #1 (max_background_runs=1).
• Adaptive promotion: the Hermes event stream flags known-long tools on start (RELAY_VOICE_LONG_TOOL_HINTS, default cron/desktop_/browser/execute_code/terminal/ spawn); _run_brokered_tool races that signal against the grace window and promotes after a short quick-finish window (1.5s) so fast long-class calls stay Tier A.
• Milestone speech: timer-driven spoken progress is now config-wired per session and off by default (realtime_voice_progress_spoken_after_ms: 0); promotion handoff, completion, and failure speech unchanged; hermes.run.progress events keep flowing for the visual chip.
• Robustness plumbing: done-callbacks log unretrieved failures on hermes_task / background_delivery_task; provider websockets use an explicit heartbeat=20.0 + connect-bounded ClientTimeout(total=None) instead of an ambient total timeout.

What (Android). RelayVoiceClient: a failed realtime resume now retries every 10s for up to 5 min (matching the relay's extended detached window) alongside the existing route-change trigger; new prewarm mode opens the persistent session with no first turn and the guards disarmed. VoiceViewModel: enterVoiceMode() prewarms the persistent Realtime Agent session (engine + toggle gated, silent on failure); turn-scoped side effects are skipped for the warm-up and the first utterance rides submitRealtimeTurn.

Verification. python -m unittest — 65 realtime tests green, including 4 new promotion tests (deferred-injection-on-resume, busy second task, long-tool promotes before an 8s grace, config default 0); the spoken-status routes test now opts in via the per-session knob. One pre-existing failure noted in test_realtime_voice_routes (xai oauth pool fixture; fails at HEAD too — recorded in TODO). Android assembleSideloadDebug green. Injection framing (function-call output instead of a synthetic user message) deliberately deferred pending an xAI parity check — in TODO.

2026-07-01 — Realtime voice: a benign provider cancel-notice no longer kills the turn

Why. On-device + correlated relay/event-log tracing of a realtime voice run showed the spoken answer was never heard after a promoted/background Hermes run: the summary re-injection called cancel_response() when no provider response was active, xAI replied Cancellation failed: no active response found, the relay forwarded it as a fatal voice.error, and the client closed the whole realtime session (surfacing an error toast

• Retry) right as the reply was about to be spoken. The relay's own background-run keep-alive was working; the session was being deliberately torn down by the client on a non-fatal notice.

What.

• broker.py: _deliver_background_result now passes cancel_current=not floor_idle to _inject_background_summary, which only calls cancel_response() when a response is likely still speaking — avoiding the needless cancel (and its benign error) at source. _pump_provider_events classifies benign provider notices (no-active-response / cancellation-failed) via _is_benign_provider_error() and logs them as a non-fatal voice.realtime_agent.provider_notice instead of a fatal voice.error.
• RelayVoiceClient.kt: a voice.error matching a transient provider notice is logged and ignored (session stays alive) instead of completeFailure + close — defense in depth so no benign error can nuke a live turn.

Verification. python -m unittest — 61 realtime-broker tests green, including a new test asserting a benign provider error is not forwarded as voice.error while a genuinely fatal one still is. Client change is scoped to the realtime voice.error branch. On-box + on-device e2e verification is owner-driven.

2026-07-01 — Realtime voice: background runs survive a transient drop

Why. In realtime voice mode, asking the agent to run a long/background Hermes task (ADR 33 promotion) could lose the result on a brief network blip. Correlated client + relay logs traced the trigger to a transient Wi-Fi outage (all sockets dropped together, recovered ~20s later) — but the relay tore the realtime session down 30s after any disconnect (_RESUME_TTL_SECONDS), well before a minutes-long durable run finishes, cancelling result delivery and orphaning the run. A separate factor: a tool that hung server-side left the run waiting indefinitely.

What (plugin/relay/realtime_agent/broker.py).

• Keep a detached session alive while a background run is in flight — the resume window stretches from 30s to a background cap (default 6 min, RELAY_VOICE_BACKGROUND_DETACHED_MAX_MS); a poll loop closes only after the run finishes plus a grace. The existing event/audio replay ring then re-delivers the result when the client resumes, so a transient drop mid-run no longer loses it.
• Bound a run — a hung run is cancelled at a hard cap (default 5 min, RELAY_VOICE_BACKGROUND_RUN_MAX_MS) and surfaced as a background_completed error instead of pinning the delivery task forever.
• Cancel the orphaned run on close so a hung tool can't keep executing against the gateway after the session is gone; guard the summary send so a dead provider socket can't turn result delivery into an unhandled background-task crash.

Verification. python -m unittest — 60 realtime-broker tests green, including two new promotion tests: a detached session with a live run survives past a shrunken base TTL and records the result for replay; a hung run times out and is cancelled. py_compile clean. The complementary app-side realtime-resume retry (the client gave up reconnecting after one attempt while the gateway/relay sockets recovered) is tracked for the connection-management work. On-box verification is owner-driven.

2026-07-01 — Chat markdown typography + bubble grouping polish

Why. Markdown headings in chat rendered at display scale: MarkdownContent set only paragraph/code in markdownTypography(), so h1..h6 fell through to the mikepenz M3 defaults (h1=displayLarge — 57sp in this app's scale) and a single # became a billboard inside a ~272dp bubble. List items also rendered 2sp larger than paragraphs (the library text/list role defaults to bodyLarge 16sp), and every bubble stamped its own timestamp — noisier than any mainstream chat client.

What.

• MarkdownContent — explicit chat-tuned type ramp: h1 20sp → h6 13sp, all derived from bodyLarge/bodyMedium so the live font-picker still applies, largest heading ~1.4× the 14sp body; paragraph/text/bullet/ordered/list unified to 14sp; inline + fenced code 13sp (tracking reset to 0); italic muted blockquote; textLink given a primary accent + underline. Side effect: settled body/list sizes now match the streaming renderer, so the stream-end reflow shrinks to headings only.
• MessageBubble — timestamp gated to isLastInGroup (was on every bubble), alpha 0.5 → 0.6; long-press action menu fires a haptic on open; streaming dots show only before the first token (previously throbbed under the text for the whole turn).
• ChatScreen — same-author grouping now breaks on a >5min gap (GROUP_GAP_MS), so a conversation resumed after a pause gets a fresh name label + its own timestamp.

Verification. CLI assembleSideloadDebug compiled clean; markdownTypography / markdownColor parameter names verified against the installed mikepenz 0.42.0 source (the naive markdownColor(linkText=…) would not have compiled — 0.42.0 has no such param; link color rides textLink). Deferred items (streaming/final render parity, 15sp body, wide-table scroll, tail-on-last-only, etc.) recorded in TODO.md. On-device review pending.

2026-07-01 — Connection status: two-connection model (subtitle + bottom strip, no top surface)

Why. The persistence-tiered top strip (previous entry, shipped in the prior refactor(connections) commit) still surfaced connection status above the nav, and on-device it read as obtrusive: a reconnect flashed a status that covered the profile, and it fired "at random". Iterating with the owner surfaced the real problem — and it wasn't a UI-placement problem.

Trace (both sides). Added permanent INFO logging to the client (ConnectionViewModel: every relay state→state role→role transition + every handoff: record) and read the relay's log server-side (read-only journalctl). They correlate to the millisecond:

• Client onFailure SocketException "Software caused connection abort" ⇄ relay Client disconnected 172.16.24.13 at the same instant → a real network teardown, not a spurious client event. Reconnect then timed out after 20s; a later attempt reconnected then dropped again. The relay itself was healthy throughout (loopback /phone/replies polling never missed).
• Root cause of the flapping: the Wi-Fi path between the phone and the LAN relay — raw logcat showed Samsung's SemWifiIntelligentConnectionManager cycling the radio.

The realization. There are two independent connections, and conflating them was the design error: chat/agent (gateway/API, apiReachable) — if this is down you genuinely can't talk to the agent; and the relay socket (:8767, bridge / terminal / relay-voice) — when only this reconnects, chat still works over the gateway. The flapping was mostly the relay socket, so it never deserved a prominent interruption.

What. Landed on a two-connection model with no top-of-screen surface:

• Chat/agent → the chat header subtitle (WhatsApp-style; ChatScreen). The model line swaps to Reconnecting… (was connected) / Connecting… (cold) / Disconnected, amber/red, and crossfades back to the model on recovery. This slot was already there; added the reconnecting-vs-connecting wording (everConnected).
• Relay socket → the bottom RelayStatusStrip amber Reconnecting… cue only (ReconnectingCue), gated by a new postResumeQuiet window so a benign background→foreground re-handshake is fully silent (the health "Connecting" path used to leak the cue there and clear with no resolution).
• Handoff de-dup: merged the three positive branches ("restored" + "connected" + "route changed") into one, deciding "Connected to Hermes" vs "Connection changed · LAN → Tailscale" at the actual connect via lastConnectedRole — so a flap or a swap can't emit a pair. Route change is ambient-only (the bottom strip's route label).
• Removed the top strip entirely — the ConnectionStatusSurface/presentationSurface tiering + ConnectionStatusBanner top render fell out of use and were removed in a follow-up commit (ConnectionHandoffBanner/ConnectionStatusBanner/ PulsingSyncIcon + ConnectionStatusSurface/presentationSurface/its test). ConnectionStatusToast is deliberately parked as a general toast primitive.
• Permanent client-side logging (tag ConnectionVM, pairs with ConnectionManager) so "why did that status appear?" is a one-line logcat -s ConnectionVM ConnectionManager.

Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug + testSideloadDebugUnitTest green; iterated on-device across the build cycle. Server access was read-only (journalctl) — no restart/deploy. Flap-specific cases hard to re-verify once the network stabilized (tracked in TODO.md).

2026-06-30 — Connection status: tier the surface by persistence, not severity

Why. After the connections restructure, every reconnect/handoff/health blip rendered as the take-space ConnectionStatusBanner — it shoved the whole app down ~50px, then snapped it back. Reconnects are the most frequent connection event, so the most frequent event was also the most disruptive. Worse, the intended "error → floating overlay" branch was dead: buildGlobalConnectionStatus only ever emits Warning/Info and handoffs only emit Success/Info, so ConnectionStatusTone.Error is never produced and everything routed through the take-space banner. The bottom RelayStatusStrip already carries steady-state (transport tier + route), so the top surface was partly redundant too.

What. Re-tiered the connection-status surface by persistence, not severity (user decision: "lean on the bottom strip, float on failure"):

• viewmodel/RelayUiState.kt: ConnectionStatusSurface { None, Float, Banner } + ConnectionStatusSnapshot.presentationSurface(). active (in-flight reconnect/checking) → None; success (reconnected / route switched) → Float; sustained Warning/Error (no connection / no internet / API/relay unreachable) → Banner. This maps 1:1 onto the existing handoff producers: "Reconnecting" / "Connection interrupted" are active → strip; "Connection restored" / "Connected" / "route changed" are success → float; the health-derived Warnings are sustained → banner.
• ui/components/RelayStatusStrip.kt: reconnecting param + ReconnectingCue. A routine in-progress reconnect now shows only an amber, softly-pulsing "Reconnecting…" cue in the always-visible bottom strip (replacing the route label, which is in flux mid-reconnect) — zero layout shift for the common case. Pulse is frame-throttled via rememberAmbientPhase.
• ui/RelayApp.kt: the two existing render sites are re-routed off presentationSurface() — take-space ConnectionStatusBanner fires only for Banner, floating ConnectionStatusToast only for Float, and None lights the strip via connectionReconnecting (computed off the raw status, not the dismiss-gated toast, since the cue mirrors live state and isn't dismissible). No component rewrites — both surfaces already existed; only the routing changed.

Net: routine reconnect = a quiet strip cue, no shift; recovery = a brief self-dismissing float; a stuck/actionable problem = the honest take-space banner. The post-resume suppressedTransientReconnect silencing still applies (no handoff recorded → nothing anywhere for a benign resume).

Verification. :app:lintSideloadDebug — pending (running). On-device pass owner-driven.

2026-06-30 — Update discovery: app-facing relay route + About version readout

Why. The update-discovery work (CLI + dashboard) shipped the same day, but the phone was the missing surface — the app could read the relay's version from /health yet had no signal that a newer relay release existed. The dashboard's check is dashboard-auth-gated, so the app needs its own route on the relay port.

What.

• plugin/relay/server.py: GET /relay/update-check. App-facing twin of the dashboard route (bearer for the paired phone, loopback for diagnostics — same gate as /phone/threads). Reuses plugin/update_check.check() in an executor so the blocking GitHub fetch never stalls the event loop; result cached an hour; degrades to update_available=false + error offline (never a 5xx).
• App (RelayHttpClient.fetchUpdateCheck() → ConnectionViewModel.relayUpdateInfo → AboutScreen). A "Relay" row beside the existing app-Version row shows the connected relay's version and, when it trails the latest release, a soft nudge + a Copy-the-command action (hermes plugins update hermes-relay vs hermes-relay-update). Refreshed on each auth.ok; fail-soft (older relay 404 → no row). The app never talks to GitHub — the relay is the single source of truth.

Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug — BUILD SUCCESSFUL; installed + launched on the test device. Relay route verified live on the host (loopback GET /relay/update-check → {"current":"1.2.1","latest":"1.2.1","update_available":false}). The About "Relay" row reads "On v1.2.1 — up to date"; the nudge stays hidden until a newer plugin-v* release exists.

2026-06-30 — Per-profile enablement helper + update discovery

Why. Two gaps surfaced while productizing the phone Threads work: (1) Hermes installs a plugin's code once but enables it per profile, so a multi-agent host hand-edits N config.yaml files to expose the relay's tools everywhere — and docs didn't explain the install-once / enable-per-profile / pair-once split. (2) Updating works (hermes plugins update / hermes-relay-update) but nothing tells an operator a newer plugin release exists, and the app/plugin/CLI version tracks aren't surfaced together.

What.

• plugin/profiles.py + hermes relay profiles list|enable [--all|NAME]. Enumerates the default config + every profiles/<name>/config.yaml, reports hermes-relay enablement, and bulk-adds it to plugins.enabled (removing it from disabled), backing up each rewritten file to .bak and skipping already-enabled configs (comments/order preserved in the common case). Pairing is untouched — one relay, pair once.
• plugin/update_check.py + hermes relay update-check + dashboard "Plugin version" card. Compares the installed plugin.relay.__version__ against the latest plugin-v* GitHub release, detects the right update command (full-relay shim present → hermes-relay-update, else hermes plugins update hermes-relay), surfaced in the Management tab via loopback GET /api/plugins/hermes-relay/update-check (GitHub fetch cached 1h; degrades to "couldn't check" offline — never a 5xx). Reuses the existing update mechanisms; no new updater.
• Docs. New configuration.md subsections: "Profiles & the relay" (the two axes + the profiles commands) and "Keeping the relay plugin updated" (update-check + the two update commands).

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_profiles plugin.tests.test_update_check plugin.dashboard.test_plugin_api — 39 pass. Dashboard bundle rebuilt (esbuild). App-side version display + soft "relay outdated" banner deferred (needs an app build + a relay-side update-check route).

2026-06-30 — Connections restructure + animated, dismissible status banner

Why. Two pain points in the connection manager: (1) the reconnect/handoff status read as static — the non-error path used ConnectionStatusBanner, which capped at two flat text lines, while the richer animated per-step stepper (spinner → green ✓ → red ✕) existed only in ConnectionStatusToast, shown for Error tone only; and (2) the Connections settings screen was overloaded — the active connection's entire deep body (Features / Routes / Advanced / Security + a 5-button action row + stacked route nudges) was crammed into one card inside the list, so the list wasn't scannable.

Animated, take-space, dismissible banner (ui/components/ConnectionHandoffBanner.kt, ui/RelayApp.kt). ConnectionStatusBanner now renders the same ConnectionStepRow/ StepGlyph animated stepper the toast uses (capped at the last 3 entries, up from 2 flat lines); per-step state already comes stamped from buildGlobalConnectionProbeEntries, so "checking → green dot → red ✕" tracks real health. The non-error banner moved out of the floating overlay into the persistent take-space stack above the Scaffold (expand/ shrinkVertically + the surface's animateContentSize keep the push-down smooth, not a hard snap; the error toast still floats). The banner gained an explicit close (×) control and a swipe-up gesture, both wired to the existing dismissedStatusKey so a dismissed status stays hidden until its content identity changes.

No misleading "Connection changed" on resume (viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt). The Reconnecting handoff was renamed from "Connection changed" (which implied a different connection) to a neutral "Reconnecting"; change-implying copy is reserved for the genuine route-switch branch. A foreground-resume timestamp (from AppForegroundTracker) now suppresses the transient reconnect banner within RELAY_RECONNECT_GRACE_MS — a quick same-connection re-handshake after returning to the app shows nothing (and its "Connection restored" pair stays silent too); only a reconnect still down past the grace window surfaces "Reconnecting".

Connections list + tabbed detail (ui/screens/ConnectionsSettingsScreen.kt, ui/screens/ConnectionDetailScreen.kt, ui/components/ActiveConnectionSections.kt, ui/RelayApp.kt). ConnectionsSettingsScreen is now a scannable list — each card is label + an Active badge (active connection) + a one-line status + the capability timeline summary (the dot/label/value rows users liked), and tapping drills into a new ConnectionDetailScreen. The detail is a 4-tab screen (Overview / Routes / Advanced / Security) with a ⋮ overflow menu for rename / re-pair / revoke / remove. Overview leads with the steps/timeline (ActiveCardFeaturesSection); Routes hosts the relocated ADR-24 route block (extracted verbatim into ActiveCardRoutesSection, reusing EndpointsCard + RouteEditorDialog); Advanced/Security reuse the existing section composables. A new Screen.ConnectionDetail route (settings/connections/{connectionId}) is wired in the NavHost. Non-active connections show an Overview-only "Switch to this connection" preview. Relay sessions are surfaced in the Security tab (ActiveCardSecurityPosture already shows the active-session count). The Active badge is preserved on both the list card and the detail's top bar.

Verification. :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin BUILD SUCCESSFUL; :app:lintSideloadDebug run locally. Store screenshot mock (StoreScreenshotTest.ConnectionsScene) updated to the new list design (Active badge kept). On-device verification (banner animation/dismissal, resume copy, the tabbed flow) is owner-driven from Android Studio.

2026-06-30 — Phone home channel: auto-config + dashboard name (silence upstream /sethome nudge)

Why. Sending into a phone Thread surfaced an upstream onboarding notice on every new Thread's first message — "📬 No home channel is set for Phone … /sethome". Upstream's nudge (gateway/run.py) checks the PHONE_HOME_CHANNEL env var directly, not the adapter's seeded config, and a single paired phone has exactly one logical home — so the prompt is friction with no decision behind it (unlike Telegram/Discord, where /sethome picks among many chats).

What.

• Auto-default (plugin/phone_platform.py). register_phone_platform now pre-fills PHONE_HOME_CHANNEL=phone (the only sensible value — what /sethome would persist) when the platform is enabled and the env var is unset/blank, respecting an explicit operator override. Presence of that env var is exactly what the upstream notice checks, so it no longer fires.
• Dashboard name field (plugin/dashboard/*). A "Home channel" card on the Relay → Management tab shows the effective home-channel name + (read-only) channel id and saves a display name via the host PUT /api/env (PHONE_HOME_CHANNEL_NAME), mirroring the existing Agent-context toggle pattern. Backed by a new loopback GET /api/plugins/hermes-relay/phone/config that reads the adapter's env resolution. Rebuilt dist/index.js.
• Docs. A brief "Phone Threads (proactive messaging) — Beta" subsection in user-docs/reference/configuration.md: the opt-in (PHONE_ENABLED), the auto-home-channel (no /sethome), and how to rename it.

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_phone_platform plugin.dashboard.test_plugin_api — 54 pass (new: 4 home-channel-default cases + 2 /phone/config cases). Dashboard bundle rebuilt via npm run build (esbuild OK; "Home channel" + "phone/config" present in dist/index.js). The auto-default applies on the next gateway restart; the name field also applies on gateway restart (env read at adapter construction). Host confirmation that the notice is gone — pending a gateway restart.

2026-06-30 — Settings/nav refresh + remote reconnect fix

Why. A UX/robustness pass across five threads: (1) the background keep-alive read as "chat"-only in its notification + settings copy, underselling what it actually holds open; (2) it lived buried in Chat settings though it's a connection-level control flipped often; (3) the Chat/Manage/Bridge mode strip spent a chrome band on every screen, including the chat home; (4) the non-error connection-status banner popped in/out and hard-reflowed the UI; (5) a remote (Tailscale) connection looped — repeatedly reconnecting before it settled.

Reconnect loop — root cause + fix (network/relay/ConnectionManager.kt, network/upstream/GatewayChatClient.kt, ui/RelayApp.kt). One shared EndpointResolver publishes _activeEndpoint for the relay socket AND every HTTP/chat surface; effectiveApiServerUrl/effectiveDashboardUrl fall back to the saved (priority-0, home-LAN) host when it is null. On a transient cold-route probe miss the AUTOMATIC paths nulled _activeEndpoint, flipping chat/dashboard onto the dead home address and rebuilding the gateway chat client — a self-sustaining flap until Tailscale warmed. The pre-existing hysteresis guard keyed on the relay socket being Connected, which the default no-relay chat path never reaches, so it protected nobody there. Fix: extend the sustainedLossDeclared hysteresis to the two AUTOMATIC null-sinks (scheduleNetworkReResolve, scheduleReconnect) only — the MANUAL paths (refreshActiveEndpoint, probeAndReconnectNow) still publish null on a genuinely dead route, which ConnectionManagerRouteTest asserts. Plus: an explicit 20s connectTimeout on the relay + gateway OkHttp clients (DERP cold starts exceed the 10s default); a 2-consecutive-failure threshold before markActiveEndpointUnreachable poisons the shared cache; clearCache moved into the debounced re-resolve so VPN-tun-interface churn coalesces into one probe; and the sustainedLossDeclared latch reset on every resolve-success edge. A 750ms debounce on the gateway-client re-acquisition (RelayApp.kt) is belt-and-suspenders on top, leaving first-connect latency unaffected (only a genuine route change waits).

Keep-alive reframe + Quick Controls (network/upstream/GatewayKeepAliveService.kt, data/GatewayKeepAlivePrefs.kt, AndroidManifest.xml, ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt, ui/screens/ChatSettingsScreen.kt). Notification, channel, settings, and manifest specialUse subtype copy reframed off "chat" to an honest "Persistent connection": it holds the app's connection to Hermes open in the background (for relay-paired setups this also keeps device control + notification mirroring reachable) — it does NOT warm Manage (stateless HTTP) or voice (per-turn sockets), and nothing survives swipe-away. Stop action "Disconnect" → "Turn off". The toggle moved out of Chat settings into a new Quick Controls card at the top of the top-level Settings landing (beside Active Agent / Profile lock), since it is connection-level and frequently toggled; the card also hosts a Turn-complete alerts toggle. Both wire to existing ConnectionViewModel flows (gatewayKeepAlive / notifyTurnComplete) — no new pref.

Mode-strip removal (ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt, DashboardManagementScreen.kt, BridgeScreen.kt, BridgeCoreScreen.kt). The triplicated RelayModeStrip is removed from all four screens. Chat is the full-height home; Manage and Bridge are reached from Settings (the "Hermes management" / "Bridge" entries already existed), each now with a TopAppBar Up→Chat back arrow (Material Up semantics; system Back still pops to Settings). RelayModeStrip/RelayPrimaryMode stay defined in ui/components/RelayCockpitChrome.kt because the store-screenshot harness renders them. This also corrects a stale CLAUDE.md note ("Main scaffold — bottom nav"): there was never a bottom NavigationBar; the bottomBar slot is a status pill, and primary nav had been this per-screen top strip.

Toast overlay (ui/RelayApp.kt). The non-error connection-status banner moved from the take-space Column (fade-only AnimatedVisibility → instant height pop + Scaffold reflow) into the existing floating-overlay Column alongside the error toast, reusing the house slideInVertically+fadeIn / slideOutVertically+fadeOut spec. An overlay occupies zero layout space, so content no longer reflows on appear/disappear, and it drops out of the Scaffold status-bar inset accounting (matching a comment that already described it as a floating overlay). Refines the take-space banner introduced in 1.2.6.

Verification. :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin / :app:assembleSideloadDebug — BUILD SUCCESSFUL at each step (no new warnings in changed files); installed sideload debug to the test device. The 6 existing ConnectionManagerRouteTest cases hold by inspection (the manual-path null-publish contracts are untouched). An independent adversarial review of the reconnect diff confirmed the hysteresis is correct, dead-route recovery is preserved (onLost still poisons after the grace window), and no existing test breaks; it surfaced one latch-reset gap, which was fixed. On-device proof of the loop fix is a logcat signature ("network onAvailable" + "re-resolve miss … keeping route" with no gateway client rebuild during a tun blip) — pending. Commits landed scoped (pathspec) on dev alongside a concurrent session's Threads/phone work.

2026-06-29 — Phone platform: unified-session "Threads" surface (slices 1–5 + 7)

Why. The proactive agent→phone conversation surfaced only as a flat notification inbox. The decision (ADR 12, refined) is to make it a Thread: a source=phone gateway session rendered as a first-class conversation inside the one Chat surface (sessions tagged by source), not a separate tab — the agent lane is just a chat the agent can start. Distinguishers are session properties (agent-can-initiate, relay proactive transport/gating, standing DM), not a separate UI.

What.

• Drawer source tags (slice 1). ChatSession gained source (carried from upstream sessions.source at the one wire→UI mapping in ChatHandler); the drawer renders a "Thread" chip + a custom ThreadSpoolGlyph (a clean Canvas thread-spool, not a phone icon) on source=phone rows, plus a Threads filter + a header affordance gated on threadsCapabilityActive (relay-paired + "Let Hermes message me") or the presence of a Thread.
• Open + reply (slices 2, 4). Selecting a Thread loads its server history via the existing loadSessionHistory path (free). A composer send while a source=phone session is active branches in sendMessageInternal to route over proactive.reply (continues the gateway phone session) instead of the normal chat transport; the user bubble carries a MessageDeliveryStatus (SENDING → DELIVERED on the relay ack / FAILED), rendered as a quiet caption.
• Relay ack + cancel (slice 7). ProactiveChannel emits a new server→app proactive.reply.ack {client_msg_id, status, ts} when it buffers a reply, and accepts an app→server proactive.cancel {message_id} (WS twin of DELETE /phone/outbound, reusing cancel_outbound). The app stamps its bubble id as the reply's message_id so the ack settles the exact bubble. proactive.reply.ack is also handled client-side (ProactiveMessageHandler.onReplyAck → ChatViewModel.onProactiveReplyAck).
• Capability surfacing (slice 5). A "Threads" capability row joins Live thinking / Media / Terminal / Voice in SessionPathCard (ConnectionInfoSheet).
• Create a Thread (slice 8, user-initiated — Discord-style). A "+ New Thread" affordance in the drawer's Threads view names a thread; ChatViewModel.startNewThread mints a fresh chat_id, and the first composer message opens it over proactive.reply (the gateway creates the source=phone session keyed by that id). switchToCreatedThread polls the session list, switches to the real session, and applies the name. Existing-thread replies now route by the chat_id parsed from the session id (…:dm:<chat_id>), so multiple threads each reach their own conversation (home thread → phone; opaque id → home fallback).

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_proactive_channel plugin.tests.test_phone_platform — 55 pass (new: reply-ack on handle, no-ack on empty, proactive.cancel drops queued one/all). :app:assembleSideloadDebug — BUILD SUCCESSFUL (clean compile, no new warnings in changed files); installed sideload debug to the test device. An independent adversarial review of the diff found no compile/logic defects (imports resolve, defaulted params break no call sites, both whens exhaustive, ack id passes through unchanged). On-device behavior pending. "Delivered" requires the relay running the updated proactive.py (the reply itself works on the old relay; only the ack is new).

On-device verifies for the Thread create-flow. Three things the build can't confirm: (1) a fresh-chat_id inbound with no reply_to creates a new source=phone gateway session (architecturally yes — handle_message → get_or_create); (2) the phone session's id carries the …:dm:<chat_id> form the client parses for reply routing + the post-create switch (defensive: an opaque id falls back to the home channel, so the single home thread stays safe); (3) renameSession titles a phone-platform session. If (2) differs on-device, the fix is a one-line parse change once a real phone session id is observed.

Follow-on — replies render in-thread + inbox retired (2026-06-29). On-device, an agent reply to a Thread only surfaced as a notification + the legacy inbox, never in the open conversation. ProactiveMessageHandler.dispatch now routes an inbound phone.message whose chat_id matches the open Thread (or a pending "+ New Thread" draft) inline as an ASSISTANT bubble (ChatHandler.addAgentThreadMessage — clientOnly, idempotent on message_id) and suppresses the notification + inbox entry when shown there; non-matching / no-thread-open messages still notify + inbox. With the conversation now living in the Thread, the redundant HermesInboxScreen is retired: deleted, its route + nav entry removed, the notification tap + Settings "View messages" re-pointed to Chat, and the surface renamed "Hermes messages" → "Threads" (ProactiveSettingsScreen / SettingsScreen / notification channel). ProactiveInboxStore is now a viewer-less write-only log (fully retireable — TODO).

Deferred (see TODO). Per-session unread badge; outbound reply outbox/retry (needs multiplexer connection-state); exact-Thread deep-link from the notification (opens Chat today, not the specific Thread — needs a select-session-on-entry signal); remove the now-orphaned ProactiveInboxStore; agent-initiated named Threads (the upstream send_message thread/chat_id param — user-initiated create now ships).

2026-06-29 — Phone platform (Phase 2c: two-way reply — device round-trip + fixes)

Why. The Phase 2c inbound reply leg shipped off-device (unit tests + lint), pending a live round-trip. The first on-device test surfaced that a reply never produced an agent answer: the agent→phone push worked and the reply reached the relay (buffered), but nothing drained it — the gateway's PhoneAdapter never connected, so its inbound /phone/replies poll loop never ran. Two distinct faults, one masking the other.

Fix 1 — PhoneAdapter.connect() signature (plugin/phone_platform.py). The gateway's platform supervisor calls adapter.connect(is_reconnect=…) (the BasePlatformAdapter.connect contract). PhoneAdapter.connect(self) didn't accept the keyword, so every connect raised TypeError and the adapter — and its reply loop — never came up. Added *, is_reconnect: bool = False to match the base + the ntfy template it was modeled on (behavior otherwise unchanged). Added a ConnectContractTests regression guard asserting the signature via inspect, since the live adapter binds to the gateway base class that's absent in CI — the exact blind spot that let this ship.

Fix 2 — operational: a stale duplicate plugin masked every deploy. Even after Fix 1 the adapter still didn't connect. Root cause: a prior plugin-clone rebuild had left a full backup copy of the old plugin inside the user-plugins directory (hermes-relay.copy-backup-…). The plugin loader dedups discovered plugins by manifest name; both the live symlink and the backup carry name: hermes-relay, and the backup sorted last, so it won the dedup — the gateway loaded old code and silently ignored the deployed clone. Removing the backup from the plugins directory let the real plugin load, register the phone platform, connect the adapter, and drain the buffered reply. Follow-up filed (TODO): the installer should purge old backup copies out of the plugins directory so this can't recur.

Also. The previously-silent except Exception around phone-platform registration now logs at warning (was debug) — a real registration failure (e.g. an upstream PlatformEntry signature drift) should be visible, not lost.

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_phone_platform plugin.tests.test_proactive_channel — 49 pass (incl. the new connect-contract guard). Two-way reply round-trip confirmed end-to-end on-device: agent → phone notification → inline reply → drained through /phone/replies → handle_message → agent answer back in the same thread. One observed gap: when the phone has dropped its (connection-scoped) proactive subscription, the agent's answer 503s and is lost — tracked as outbound buffering in TODO.

Follow-on — outbound buffering (plugin/relay/channels/proactive.py, server.py). Closes that gap. When no phone is subscribed, ProactiveChannel.push() now queues the message in a bounded deque (drop-oldest, 24 h staleness TTL) and returns {delivered: false, queued: true, …} instead of raising 503; _flush_outbound delivers the backlog FIFO on the next proactive.subscribe (stale entries pruned, socket-died-mid-flush re-buffers the remainder). Queued messages are inspectable + cancelable before they flush via peek_outbound/cancel_outbound and new loopback routes GET /phone/outbound (count + summaries) and DELETE /phone/outbound[?message_id=…] (cancel all / one). The adapter's send() is unchanged — a 200 queued reads as success. 54 proactive + phone tests pass (new: flush-on-subscribe FIFO, bounded drop-oldest, stale-drop, cancel one/all, close clears). UI surfacing of the queued state (host-side relay view + per-message status in the threaded surface) is specced in TODO.

2026-06-28 — Phone platform (Phase 2c: two-way reply — the inbound leg)

Why. Proactive messaging was push-only: the agent could message the phone, but the user couldn't answer. The phone was registered as a Hermes platform but only the outbound half (send()) was wired; its inbound path was a no-op, so a reply never reached the agent. Phase 2c wires the inbound leg so a reply becomes an inbound platform message the agent processes on the phone channel and answers over the existing send() — closing the loop into a conversation.

What (three legs across relay, plugin, app).

• Relay — receive + buffer (plugin/relay/channels/proactive.py, server.py). ProactiveChannel.handle learns a new inbound proactive.reply envelope ({text, chat_id, reply_to, message_id, ts}), added to the frozen wire-envelope docstring. Replies are buffered in a bounded deque (drop-oldest) + asyncio.Event; take_replies(timeout) is the long-poll drain. New loopback-only GET /phone/replies route mirrors the outbound POST /phone/message hop — the relay and the gateway adapter are different processes, so a reply is parked and polled rather than handed over in-process.
• Plugin — inbound loop (plugin/phone_platform.py). PhoneAdapter.connect() now also spawns a self._running-guarded long-poll loop (mirror of the bundled adapters' receive loops, e.g. ntfy _run_stream) against /phone/replies, with backoff. Each reply → build_source(chat_id=…, role_authorized=True) + MessageEvent(reply_to_message_id=…) → await self.handle_message(). disconnect() cancels the loop. The reply continues the originating conversation: chat_id keys the session, reply_to anchors it.
• App — capture the reply (notifications/, ui/screens/HermesInboxScreen.kt, viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt). ProactiveMessageNotifier gains an inline Reply action via RemoteInput + a mutable broadcast PendingIntent (FLAG_MUTABLE guarded for API < 31) carrying chat_id/message_id. New ProactiveReplyReceiver reads the typed text and sends a proactive.reply over the relay WS via a static ChannelMultiplexer slot (mirror of HermesNotificationCompanion), then re-posts a confirmation. The Hermes inbox gets a per-card reply box. ProactiveInboxEntry gains chatId (back-compat default) so an inbox reply threads correctly; ConnectionViewModel.sendProactiveReply() is the in-app send path.

Key design decision — authorization. The gateway's _is_user_authorized (gateway/authz_mixin.py) is default-deny for plugin platforms, so a reply would silently vanish unless authorized. The adapter builds the inbound source role_authorized=True: the relay's pairing/session-token layer already authenticated the device before the reply reached /phone/replies, so the adapter legitimately vouches for it. This makes replies work with zero extra config — no need to weaken the allowlist with PHONE_ALLOW_ALL_USERS.

Scope guardrails. No chat visuals touched (inbox renders its own cards; MessageBubble/theme untouched). Upstream-or-plugin only — no fork: the reply rides our plugin's relay routes + the upstream handle_message/build_source platform API. Offline replies drop best-effort (same semantics as the notification companion); a persistent send-when-reconnected queue is left to Phase 3.

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_proactive_channel plugin.tests.test_phone_platform — 48 tests pass (new: reply buffer/drain, empty-text drop, late-reply wake, timeout→[], bounded drop-oldest, close clears; reply-URL + _normalize_reply helpers). ./gradlew :app:lintSideloadDebug — BUILD SUCCESSFUL (no new findings in the changed files; the mutable-PendingIntent is guarded so no UnspecifiedImmutableFlag). Maintainer (off-device): on-device pairing + reply round-trip from both the notification and the inbox; a live gateway discovering the plugin and the adapter's poll loop reaching /phone/replies; confirming a reply continues the correct session. See TODO.md.

2026-06-28 — Phone platform: advertise the capability to the agent

Why. The phone platform worked and was discoverable via send_message action=list (the channel directory includes plugin-registered platforms), but it was not proactively advertised: platform_hint only injects for the inbound platform of a turn (system_prompt.py), which never fires for a push-only platform, and the send_message schema's target examples (upstream core, no-fork) don't list phone. So the agent wouldn't reach for it on its own.

What. Added a relay-owned system-prompt context block via the existing RELAY_AGENT_CONTEXT_ENABLED seam (plugin/enhancements/context_injection.py, which wraps AIAgent._build_system_prompt):

• New phone-platform block telling the agent it can send_message target=phone (delivered as a notification + inbox), gated on phone_platform_enabled() (PHONE_ENABLED) AND a per-block opt-out RELAY_CONTEXT_PHONE_PLATFORM (default ON) — plugin/config.py. The block only appears when the platform is actually enabled, so the prompt never advertises a disabled capability.
• Auditable/removable like the media-sensitivity block (surfaces in GET /context/injected).

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_enhancements plugin.tests.test_phone_platform plugin.tests.test_proactive_channel — 56 tests pass (new: phone-helper defaults, block present/absent by platform gate, per-block suppression, context-layer-off, labeled-fence in prompt, audit payload). Existing context-injection tests unchanged (new block defaults off). On the live box (RELAY_AGENT_CONTEXT_ENABLED + PHONE_ENABLED both on) the block activates on the next gateway plugin reload.

2026-06-28 — Phone platform (Phase 2: inbox surface + session injection)

Why. Phase 1 surfaced proactive messages as a transient notification only. Phase 2 adds the other two config-driven surfacings from the brief: a dedicated always-present Hermes inbox, and injection into the active chat session — selected per-message by the surfacing hint.

What.

• Always-present inbox is the durable log. ProactiveMessageHandler.dispatch now records every received message to the inbox, then adds the surface its surfacing hint selects: null/"default"/"notification" → also notify; "inbox" → silent (inbox only); "session" → also inject into the active chat (falls back to a notification when no session sink/active chat). Centralized in one when.
• data/ProactiveInboxStore.kt (new). ProactiveInboxRepository — DataStore-backed, newest-first, deduped by id, capped at 100, survives restart. Separate ProactiveInboxEntry model so on-disk shape doesn't track the wire protocol.
• ui/screens/HermesInboxScreen.kt (new). A flat newest-first list (self-contained cards — deliberately NOT reusing the chat-ux-owned MessageBubble), empty state, relative timestamps, clear-all action. Reached from the notification tap (route now hermes_inbox) and a "View messages" button on ProactiveSettingsScreen.
• Session injection (Phase 2b). ChatHandler.addProactiveMessage appends a SYSTEM-role clientOnly bubble — SYSTEM keeps it out of the voice TTS stream observer (which only voices ASSISTANT messages), so injection can't trigger uncontrolled speech (Phase 3 owns TTS-on-voice); clientOnly preserves it across the history reconcile. ChatViewModel.injectProactiveMessage is the small localized entry point; ProactiveMessageHandler.toSession is wired once at the RelayApp root (where both ViewModels exist) since ChatViewModel isn't available when the handler is built.
• Wiring. ConnectionViewModel gains proactiveInbox + inboxMessages + clearProactiveInbox() and feeds the handler's toInbox sink. Screen.HermesInbox route + NavHost entry added.

Scope guardrails. No chat visuals touched (MessageBubble/theme untouched — inbox renders its own cards). No voice internals touched — the SYSTEM-role choice avoids the TTS observer entirely; Phase 3's TTS-on-voice will call the existing voice player API explicitly.

Verification. ./gradlew :app:lintSideloadDebug over the combined Phase 2 changes — see commit. On-device end-to-end (surfacing=inbox/session/default) is a maintainer step.

2026-06-28 — Phone platform (Phase 1d: off-by-default enablement surface)

Why. Phase 1c wired the receive path but gated it behind a flag with no UI. Phase 1d adds the user-facing opt-in ("Let Hermes message me") and the notification-permission prompt, completing the end-to-end Phase 1 spine: send_message target=phone → phone notification, only when both server and phone have opted in and the phone is paired.

What.

• ui/screens/ProactiveSettingsScreen.kt (new). A dedicated "Hermes messages" screen: the enablement switch (bound to proactiveEnabled / setProactiveEnabled), a POST_NOTIFICATIONS request fired on enable (API 33+), a not-paired hint, and an About section that documents the server-side PHONE_ENABLED requirement. This is the permanent home Phase 3 expands (quiet hours, per-profile, rate limiting).
• viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt. setProactiveEnabled(enabled) persists the flag; subscribe/unsubscribe is already driven reactively by the proactiveEnabled collector from Phase 1c.
• ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt. New "Hermes messages" category row in the Hermes section + onNavigateToProactiveSettings param.
• ui/RelayApp.kt. Screen.ProactiveSettings route + NavHost entry + nav wiring at the Settings call site.
• Server side. The PHONE_ENABLED gate already lives in the adapter (Phase 1a); documented in-app on the new screen.

Verification. POST_NOTIFICATIONS is already declared in the manifest; rememberLauncherForActivityResult is used across existing screens (dependency present). ./gradlew :app:lintSideloadDebug run over the combined Phase 1c+1d app spine (same compilation unit) — see commit. On-device end-to-end (enable → server send_message target=phone → notification) is a maintainer step.

2026-06-28 — Phone platform (Phase 1c: app receive + system notification)

Why. The relay now pushes phone.message envelopes over the phone WSS (Phase 1b); the app needs to receive them and surface the agent's message. Phase 1c lands the receive path + a system notification, gated off by default.

What.

• network/relay/ProactiveMessageHandler.kt. Sibling of BridgeCommandHandler. Parses phone.message payloads into a ProactiveMessage and dispatches them. dispatch() centralizes surfacing so Phase 2 (inbox / session injection) extends one place; Phase 1c always raises a notification. Drops malformed payloads; logs the proactive.subscribed ack.
• notifications/ProactiveMessageNotifier.kt. Twin of TurnCompleteNotifier (channel-ensure → permission-gate → tap PendingIntent) with two differences: it stacks per message (slot derived from message_id so re-delivery replaces but distinct messages stack) and uses an IMPORTANCE_HIGH "Hermes messages" channel (a proactive ping the user opted into). Tap opens Chat for now (inbox route arrives in Phase 2a).
• network/relay/ChannelMultiplexer.kt. Adds the "proactive" route branch.
• data/ProactivePrefs.kt. KEY_PROACTIVE_ENABLED ("Let Hermes message me") + setter + reactive read, default off. The app half of the two-sided gate.
• auth/AuthManager.kt. Adds an additive authOkEvents SharedFlow (mirrors the existing profilesUpdatedEvents), emitted on every auth.ok — the per-connection signal needed to re-subscribe after reconnects.
• viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt. Registers the proactive handler; exposes proactiveEnabled; sends proactive.subscribe on each auth.ok when enabled (sourced via _authManagerFlow.flatMapLatest so it survives connection switches), and subscribe/unsubscribe when the toggle flips. The subscribe rides after the auth handshake, so it never races the auth envelope.

Verification. New files are self-contained; the receive path is gated by proactiveEnabled (default off) and the relay's per-socket subscribe latch, so nothing surfaces until the user opts in (Phase 1d adds the Settings switch + notification-permission prompt). ./gradlew :app:lint is run once over the app spine after Phase 1d (same compilation unit). On-device end-to-end is a maintainer step.

2026-06-28 — Phone platform (Phase 1b: relay forward route)

Why. The phone platform adapter (Phase 1a) POSTs proactive messages to the relay; the relay needs a route to receive them and a channel to push them over the live phone WSS. This is the server→app push counterpart to the existing bridge channel.

What.

• plugin/relay/channels/proactive.py. ProactiveChannel — the mirror of the bridge handler, reversed. It latches the phone's WebSocket on a proactive.subscribe envelope (acked with proactive.subscribed), exposes push(payload) that sends a phone.message envelope over that socket, and releases on proactive.unsubscribe / disconnect. No awaited reply — push is best-effort (notification semantics). phone.message from a phone is rejected (server→app only).
• plugin/relay/server.py. Wires self.proactive = ProactiveChannel() onto RelayServer; adds the channel == "proactive" dispatch branch; releases the subscriber on client disconnect; closes it on shutdown; and registers POST /phone/message (handle_phone_message) — loopback-only (the adapter runs in the gateway process on the same host; an outbound push could spam notifications, so it is not exposed to the LAN). Returns 503 when no phone is subscribed, 502 on socket-write failure, 400 on empty/invalid body.
• Opt-in is structural. The relay can only push when it holds a latched phone_ws, which it only gets when the app subscribes — which the app does only when the user enables "Let Hermes message me." Combined with the server-side PHONE_ENABLED adapter gate, both sides must opt in.

Verification. python -m py_compile clean. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_proactive_channel — 11 tests pass (subscribe/ack, take-over, unsubscribe/detach, push envelope shape + supplied-id passthrough, no-subscriber/closed/failed-send raises, spoofed-inbound + unknown-type ignored). import plugin.relay.server succeeds and the route registers; bridge + proactive + phone suites pass together (40 tests). End-to-end with a live phone and the app-side receive handler is Phase 1c.

2026-06-28 — Phone as a first-class Hermes platform (Phase 1a: plugin adapter)

Why. The paired phone could receive agent output only by being on the chat screen. Making it a registered Hermes platform — a peer of Discord/Telegram/ntfy — lets the agent push to it proactively (send_message target=phone, cron deliver=phone). This is delivered additively through the upstream platform-plugin API (ctx.register_platform); no fork, no upstream core change.

What.

• plugin/phone_platform.py. A push-only BasePlatformAdapter subclass (PhoneAdapter) modeled on the bundled ntfy adapter. send() POSTs loopback to the relay (/phone/message, reusing android_tool.py's relay-URL convention) rather than opening a socket — the relay forwards over the live phone WSS. connect() only marks the platform ready (the phone's inbound path is chat, so no inbound stream); get_chat_info() returns the device identity. Ships the full registry surface: check_fn/validate_config/is_connected (all gated on PHONE_ENABLED), env_enablement_fn, cron_deliver_env_var=PHONE_HOME_CHANNEL, and a standalone_sender_fn so out-of-process cron / send_message delivery works (without it, deliver=phone cron fails with "No live adapter"). gateway.* imports are guarded so the module (and its pure helpers) import without hermes-agent present.
• plugin/__init__.py. Wires register_phone_platform(ctx) into register(), guarded like the existing slash/hook blocks so an older host (no register_platform) can't block tool/CLI registration.
• plugin/plugin.yaml. Adds a provides_platforms: [phone] documentation key. The plugin stays kind: standalone (multi-capability) — it is not a dedicated kind: platform plugin; registration is programmatic.
• Off by default. Nothing is advertised or pushed unless PHONE_ENABLED is truthy.

Verification. python -m py_compile clean on the new + edited files. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_phone_platform — 22 tests pass (env gating, relay-URL precedence, payload construction/truncation/surfacing-lift, _env_enablement, and the standalone sender over a fake httpx client: success / 503-no-phone / disabled / unreachable). Relay route, end-to-end routing, and the live-gateway plugin-discovery check are Phase 1b+ and a maintainer on-box step.

2026-06-28 — Standard (no-relay) voice parity with hermes-desktop

Why. The Standard (vanilla-Hermes, no-plugin) voice path lagged the official hermes-desktop voice experience on three fronts. (1) Server-side voice config (tts/stt provider, voice, model) was unreachable from the app: the Manage "Config" tab fetches /api/config/schema and renders it read-only via summarizeKeyValueOrList, which only ever surfaced the schema's two top-level keys (fields, category_order) — never the tts.*/stt.* values — and DashboardApiClient had no PUT /api/config path. (2) Audio capture/playback had no echo-cancellation / noise-suppression and a cold-start silent-first-turn window. (3) Listen timing and two dead controls drifted from desktop. (Endpoint + streaming parity were already met — StandardHermesVoiceClient matches the dashboard /api/audio/* base64 contract, and VoiceViewModel already sentence-chunks SSE the way desktop's use-voice-conversation.ts does.)

What.

• Server voice config editor (Standard path). New DashboardApiClient methods — getConfig(), getConfigSchema(), updateConfig(config, profile) (PUT /api/config), and getElevenLabsVoices() (GET /api/audio/elevenlabs/voices) — plus pure, unit-tested helpers in DashboardConfigEditing.kt (schema parse, tts.*/stt.* dot-path filter, immutable dot-path read/merge). A new Server voice config card in Voice settings loads the schema + values, renders provider-scoped tts.*/stt.* controls, and saves via GET → merge → PUT-whole (upstream save_config overwrites the document, so a partial PUT would drop keys). Includes the ElevenLabs voice picker (tts.elevenlabs.voice_id → dropdown sourced from the server's key; graceful when available:false). Standard voice is host-global, so writes target the launch profile config (profile = null).
• Audio quality. VoicePlayer.defaultExoPlayer() now sets USAGE_MEDIA / CONTENT_TYPE_SPEECH audio attributes with handleAudioFocus=true, warming the output path before the first clip (the standard-path twin of the relay PCM deep-buffer cold-start fix). VoiceRecorder attaches AcousticEchoCanceler + NoiseSuppressor on the capture session when the device exposes them (desktop's getUserMedia({echoCancellation, noiseSuppression})); both best-effort, released with the recorder.
• VAD parity. VoiceViewModel's silence watchdog now matches desktop voice_mode: end-of-speech default 1250 ms (was 3000; slider re-ranged to 0.75–5 s in 250 ms steps), idle/no-speech auto-close at 12 s (cancels without transcribing), and a 60 s hard turn cap. The existing 0.08 amplitude floor already aligns with desktop's 0.075 silenceLevel.
• Cleanup. Removed the disabled "Auto-TTS" toggle and dead "STT language" picker (the "Coming soon" card) plus their prefs / keys / setters — desktop has no read-every-typed-message feature, and STT language is a server-side stt.*.language key now editable in the new card.
• Boundary. The Relay voice path (RelayVoiceClient, streaming PCM, realtime-agent) was not touched.

Verification. :app:lint green (BUILD SUCCESSFUL). :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest compiles and the new suites pass — DashboardApiClientTest (31/31, incl. 6 new) and DashboardConfigEditingTest (8/8); the only failures are three pre-existing DataStore "multiple instances" Windows flakes (BargeInPreferencesTest, ProfileSelectionStoreTest, ProfileSessionStoreTest), all in untouched files. Static read confirmed the Config-tab finding (no editable tts.*/stt.*). On-device render of the new card and a live save/round-trip against a dashboard are flagged for the maintainer (no dashboard available in this environment). Branch Codename-11/voice-standard-parity off dev; not pushed.

2026-06-28 — Chat UI refresh: "Blend" bubbles + assistant avatar + selectable font system

Why. Move the chat surface toward a polished blend of Telegram bubbles and Discord density, and replace the single hardcoded sans with a proper user-selectable font system (Inter default). Chat-UI + theme lane only — audio/voice/network untouched (a separate worktree owns voice).

What.

• Font system. New AppFont registry (Inter / Nunito / System) backing a DataStore pref (ConnectionViewModel.appFont / setAppFont, key app_font). Type.kt typography is now built per body family via appTypography(body); HermesRelayTheme gains appFontId and rebuilds the Material Typography from the selected face so the whole app re-themes live (no restart), keeping Monospace for code/metadata. Inter + Nunito ship as SIL OFL variable TTFs in app/src/main/res/font (weight-instanced 400/500/600/700 via FontVariation, @OptIn(ExperimentalTextApi)); license texts in licenses/. A Font picker in AppearanceSettingsScreen previews each option in its own face and persists on tap.
• Bubbles + avatar. Assistant turns get a Hermes brand-mark avatar (reusing splash_icon) in a reserved left gutter, drawn once per group like the name label; MessageBubble's content column is wrapped in that gutter Row. Compact-phone bubble cap 300→340dp, chat-list inset 16→12dp, and denser bubble padding (h14/v9) for Discord-like rhythm. The grouped flat-edge shape system is preserved.
• Code blocks. Streaming fence rebuilt Discord-style: a contrasting inset surface with a thin header (language label + copy-to-clipboard affordance that flips to a check) over a horizontally-scrollable monospace body. Markdown code/inline-code backgrounds switched to contrasting container steps (surfaceContainerLowest / surfaceContainerHighest) so code no longer blends into the surfaceVariant assistant bubble.

Verification. Host-side Roborazzi (StoreScreenshotTest): added s09_blend_chat (Hermes dark + Nous-blue light) and s10_font_picker. Renders confirm the avatar/grouping/width/density, the code-block + inline-code contrast in both dark and light, and that Inter and Nunito load as visibly distinct faces in the picker. ./gradlew :app:lint run clean. On-device typeface crispness and feel (avatar size, width, density on a real device) remain a maintainer gate.

2026-07-06 — Multi-device Android bridge targeting

Why. The relay bridge previously behaved like a single active Android client. When a phone and tablet were both paired, the most recent bridge connection displaced the other, so host-side android_* tools could not reliably target a specific device.

What.

• Bridge registry. Replaced the single bridge WebSocket slot with a connected-device registry keyed by device ID. Responses are scoped to the command's target socket so a different device cannot satisfy the request ID.
• Selectors. Added aliases and explicit selectors for phone/fold/pixel and tablet/BOOX-style devices, plus /bridge/devices, /bridge/status?device=..., and /bridge/select-active loopback routes.
• Tool schemas. Added an optional device selector to bridge-backed android_* tool schemas. The tool handler stores the selector in a call-scoped context so nested android_macro steps inherit the top-level target unless a step overrides it.

Verification. Focused plugin tests pass: python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_android_tool_device_selector plugin.tests.test_bridge_multidevice plugin.tests.test_bridge_channel plugin.tests.test_bridge_status plugin.tests.test_bridge_activity → 39 tests OK. Live relay smoke confirmed two Android bridge clients connected simultaneously, explicit selectors for each returned distinct foreground packages, and /bridge/select-active switched the default target both ways. Standard Android Settings screens returned non-empty accessibility trees on both devices. Screenshot checks remain surface-specific: one device reported MediaProjection not granted, while an e-ink tablet with the grant active timed out waiting for a frame.

2026-06-28 — Dev-loop polish after the live smoke test

Why. End-to-end testing the triage workflow on main (issue #150 through open → triage:deep → reply, plus a dispatch against #146) surfaced three things to tidy.

What.

• start-issue.sh brief filter fix. Triage/deep-dive/follow-up comments are posted by the Claude GitHub App (author claude), not github-actions — so the brief generator's author.login=="github-actions" filter would have produced an empty "Automated triage notes" section. Switched to an identity-proof match on the comment signatures (automated triage / Deep-dive analysis / automated follow-up), with the bot logins as a fallback.
• actions/github-script@v7 → @v8. Clears the Node 20 deprecation annotation (v8 targets Node 24).
• Deep-dive formatting. Prompt now tells the deep-dive to use its ##/bold headings as the section separators and not to add horizontal rules (---) between sections — the first run rendered a rule under every heading, which read heavy.

Verification. Smoke test confirmed all four jobs behave as designed: auto-label + opinionated triage (3 real likely-files), label-gated deep-dive (root cause + fix + surface-aware verification + worktree quick-start), and follow-up gating (skips bot + owner comments; response path is external-reporter-only by design). The workflow tweaks here activate on the next dev → main merge; the script fix is live from dev.

2026-06-28 — Opinionated issue triage + deep-dive + follow-up loop + issue→worktree dev-loop

Why. claude-triage.yml was a deliberately conservative classifier — label, dedupe, and one hedged note, with no root-cause opinion and no fix suggestion by design. To shorten the issue→fix loop, triage should also diagnose and hand off a starting branch/worktree, and do it surface-aware: plugin/CLI fixes can be CI-proven, while Android UI/behavior stays a manual on-device gate. Modeled on the MeshMonitor (Yeraze/meshmonitor) multi-job triage, ported to our claude-code-action@v1 interface (prompt + claude_args, not the older @beta direct_prompt/model/use_sticky_comment shape), with the existing untrusted-input hardening kept.

What.

• claude-triage.yml (2 jobs → 4). auto-label now also applies an area:* surface label from keywords. triage-ai adds a hedged probable-cause / likely-files / suggested-direction read (one ≤180-word note) and invites the triage:deep label. New deep-dive (opt-in via that label) investigates the codebase and posts a root-cause hypothesis, a fix plan, a surface-specific verification plan, and a maintainer worktree quick-start. New triage-followup re-reads a bug thread on reporter replies and escalates to needs-maintainer-review + the maintainer after ~2 rounds; not gated on commenter write-access (so external reporters get follow-up), and bot comments are excluded so it can't self-trigger.
• claude-code-review.yml. Keeps the /code-review plugin depth, adds a constructive "Maintainer's-eye verdict" header and use_sticky_comment so re-pushes update one comment instead of stacking.
• scripts/start-issue.sh. Local bridge — pulls an issue into a pre-briefed worktree (fix|feature|docs/issue-N-slug off origin/dev) with an ISSUE-BRIEF.md carrying the body, the bot triage notes, and the surface's verify commands. ISSUE-BRIEF.md is git-ignored.
• docs/dev-loop.md documents the loop, the surface→verification matrix, the label setup, and the default-branch activation lag.
• Labels. triage:deep, needs-maintainer-review, and area:android|cli|plugin|dashboard|docs created on the repo.
• Scope. All jobs stay read-only against the repo; an auto-fix (contents: write) path was intentionally left out as an injection risk.

Verification. Both workflow files parse (jobs enumerate as expected); start-issue.sh passes bash -n, is stored mode 755 with eol=lf. Issue/label/comment triggers run the default-branch copy, so the workflow stays dormant until a release-merge to main; end-to-end test pending on main. PR #147 → dev.

2026-06-28 — Drop unnecessary safe calls in the update banner/checker

Why. A sideload build surfaced two Kotlin w: warnings — an unnecessary safe call in UpdateAvailableBanner and another in UpdateChecker.

What.

• UpdateAvailableBanner. subtitle is assigned a non-null value in every reachable branch of the status when, so the compiler narrows it to non-null at use. Declared it String (was String?) and render the subtitle Text unconditionally instead of via a redundant ?.let.
• UpdateChecker. OkHttp 5's Response.body is non-null, so the ?. on resp.body was dead — and removing only the ?. would leave an Elvis-on-non-null warning. Replaced with resp.body.string() plus an explicit isBlank() guard, preserving the original empty-body error path.

Verification. Behavior-preserving; both warnings cleared. :app:lint green (BUILD SUCCESSFUL, no errors). PR #148 → dev.

2026-06-27 — Profile-scope session rename + manual drawer refresh (#133 follow-up)

Why. Auditing the #133 work surfaced that ChatViewModel.renameSession always called the unscoped apiClient.renameSession (PATCH /api/sessions/{id} on the shared api_server DB). There was a profileSessionDeleter/profileSessionLister/profileMessageLoader but no rename twin — so on a non-default gateway profile (whose sessions live in that profile's own state.db) a manual rename patched the wrong DB and never appeared in the profile-scoped list. Same class as the delete bug fixed in 6552566. Profiles are first-class, so every session write must be profile-scoped.

What.

• Scoped rename. New DashboardApiClient.renameSession(sessionId, title, profile) + a patchJsonObject helper (PATCH /api/sessions/{id}?profile=), ConnectionViewModel.renameProfileScopedSession (twin of deleteProfileScopedSession), and ChatViewModel.profileSessionRenamer wired from RelayApp. renameSession uses it when streamingEndpoint == "gateway", falling back to the unscoped PATCH otherwise (shared api_server DB, no profiles).
• Audit. Confirmed rename was the only remaining gap — list/messages/delete are scoped, gateway create goes through session.create over /api/ws, the SSE auto-title PATCH targets the shared DB (no profiles), and /branch is a server-side slash command.
• Manual drawer refresh. SessionDrawerContent gained a header refresh icon (onRefresh → refreshSessions) so a title the post-turn auto-reconcile window missed can be pulled on demand. Placed in the header rather than the per-session ⋮ menu since refresh is a list-level action.

Remaining "Untitled" causes (after these fixes). The optimistic preview only covers sessions this app run created/sent in; it isn't persisted on the SSE path. So sessions made by other clients, or any SSE session after an app restart, still read "Untitled" because the api_server surface never auto-titles and we hold no local preview for them. Closing that fully needs the upstream api_server titler PR or the opt-in client-side LLM titling feature (both in TODO).

Verification. Compiles in the sideload flavor (assembleSideloadDebug). On-device rename-persists-on-non-default-profile check pending.

2026-06-27 — Fix sessions showing as "Untitled" in the drawer (#133)

Why. A user reported most chat sessions read "Untitled" in the drawer. Tracing both sides: session titles are not set at creation — upstream generates them in a fire-and-forget background thread after the first exchange (agent/title_generator.py::maybe_auto_title), and that titler is wired into the gateway/CLI/ACP agent loops but not APIServerAdapter._run_agent, so the api_server SSE/runs/completions surfaces never auto-title at all. On the client, ChatHandler.updateSessions copied the server's title verbatim, so a re-list that arrived before (or without) the async write would overwrite the optimistic first-message preview with null → the drawer's title ?: "Untitled" rendered "Untitled". Both effects compound; title generation can also silently fail when a profile's auxiliary model has no working key (matches the reporter's intermittency).

What (client-side mitigations, this change).

• Clobber guard. ChatHandler.updateSessions now merges the title field instead of overwriting it: the server wins when it returns a non-blank title, otherwise the known local title is preserved. Stops a too-early/empty re-list from erasing the optimistic preview. New ChatHandlerTest cases cover null-server-title preservation, blank-server-title preservation, and real-server-title-wins.
• Post-turn title reconcile. ChatViewModel.scheduleTitleReconcile() re-lists at +3s/+7s after a gateway turn completes so a title written after the response (and the flushed message_count/model) replaces the preview; cancel-and-replace keeps one job in flight. Gated to the gateway transport (SSE/runs never title, so retrying there is pointless).
• Subtle drawer note. ChatViewModel.serverAutoTitles (true only on the gateway transport, kept in sync from the streamingEndpoint setter) feeds a quiet "Chats aren't auto-named on this connection — use ⋮ → Rename." caption in SessionDrawerContent, shown only on the SSE surfaces so consistently-untitled chats read as expected rather than broken.

Deferred (see TODO "Session titles (#133)"). Upstream PR to call maybe_auto_title from APIServerAdapter._run_agent (proper fix for the SSE surface); an interim relay-side titler option; and a separate opt-in feature to generate titles client-side via the main LLM.

Verification. :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests "*ChatHandlerTest" green (BUILD SUCCESSFUL; 3 new clobber-guard tests pass). Warnings emitted are pre-existing in unrelated test files. Not built in Studio / not on-device verified.

2026-06-27 — Released android-v1.2.5

Bundles the day's Android work: the #131/#132 non-address-URL crash guard, the offline Demo / Explore mode, and the demo-reachability + App-access polish. Bumped appVersionName 1.2.4 → 1.2.5 and appVersionCode 18 → 19. Promoted the Android items into a ## [1.2.5] CHANGELOG block; the Desktop CLI items stay in [Unreleased] for a future cli-v* release. Refreshed RELEASE_NOTES.md, the in-app whats_new.txt + changelog.json, and the Play what's-new. Released via a dev → main merge and the android-v1.2.5 tag; release-android.yml builds the signed APK/AAB + GitHub Release. Play upload and the App-access "Try the demo" declaration are owner-driven.

2026-06-27 — Add in-app Demo / Explore mode (offline, for Play review + first-run UX)

Why. Google Play rejected v1.2.4 under "App access": a reviewer opened the app, had no Hermes server to point it at, hit the empty Connect/setup wall, and bounced. The app is a client for a user-run Hermes server, so there is no content without a connection — and there was no offline path. This adds an in-app Demo mode so anyone (a reviewer or a first-run user) can see the app work with zero setup and zero network; Play Console "App access" can then declare that all functionality is reachable via "Try the demo" (no login). It doubles as a first-run UX win.

What. An additive, offline path layered on the real connection model — the Vanilla Hermes path is untouched.

• Canned data through the real UI. New pure-JVM data/DemoContent.kt holds a curated, obviously-fictional transcript (a capability tour with Markdown, a completed tool-progress card, and a weather HermesCard, plus a follow-up showing a code block). ChatHandler.loadDemoTranscript() pushes it into the existing _messages flow; ChatViewModel.bindDemoHandler() binds that handler with no network fetches. ChatScreen renders it through the real composables (the connect CTA only shows when messages is empty), so there is no parallel chat UI.
• State. Pure-JVM data/DemoMode.kt (active flag + transcript; enter()/exit()), owned by ConnectionViewModel, which exposes isDemoMode and enterDemoMode()/exitDemoMode(). Entering does NOT complete onboarding.
• No network in demo. reconnectIfStale(), revalidate(), connectRelayInternal(), probeApiHealth(), and probeRelayHealth() all early-return while isDemoMode is true — demo runs in airplane mode. A back-nav LaunchedEffect clears demo when the user lands on a connect surface so a stale flag can never block the real connection.
• Entry points. A "Try the demo — Explore offline, no server needed" affordance in ConnectionWizard's Method step, surfaced from the onboarding Connect page and the standalone Connect (PairScreen) entry; not on add-connection/re-pair (placeholder-in-flight) flows.
• Chrome + banner. New DemoModeBanner persistent strip ("Demo mode — sample data, not connected. Connect →") whose Connect exits demo and routes to the real wizard. RelayApp treats demo like "onboarding complete" for chrome only, and skips the startup connect-narration sphere. Manage and Voice settings show a friendly DemoUnavailableContent empty state; Bridge/Terminal already show their clean "pair to unlock" gate screens when unpaired (the demo state).

Tests. New pure-JVM data/DemoContentTest.kt (transcript has both roles, Markdown + code block, a completed tool-progress card, a rich card, renders with zero network, deterministic) and data/DemoModeTest.kt (enter loads the canned transcript, exit clears it, idempotent round-trips, injected factory).

Verification. :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest green (BUILD SUCCESSFUL — the task compiles the whole app module + both new DemoContentTest/DemoModeTest classes pass). :app:lintSideloadDebug green (no errors). Not built in Studio / not on-device verified.

2026-06-27 — Fix "Invalid URL host" crash from a non-URL value in a server-URL field

Why. An auto-captured in-app crash report (#131; duplicate #132): java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid URL host: "Manage sign-in and admin screens" from okhttp3.Request$Builder.url, inside a suspend lambda with a suppressed Dispatchers.Main.immediate frame — i.e. an uncaught throw on a Main coroutine. App 1.2.3 (code 17), Google Play build; reporter was on the Manage / sign-in area. This is the newest sibling of the same crash family as #124→#125 and #129→#128: a networking-layer exception propagating uncaught into a Main coroutine.

Root cause (hypothesis a — user-entered, confirmed by source tracing). The literal host ("Manage sign-in and admin screens") is a UI/docs label, not an address — it exists only in user-docs/guide/getting-started.md, nowhere in app source or resources, and no connection label/description is read where a host belongs (hypothesis b ruled out: every DashboardApiClient/HermesApiClient is constructed from a URL field, never a label). The value was entered. The setup wizard's URL validators only checked the scheme: apiUrlSchemeError flagged ws:///wss:// and optionalHttpUrlError flagged a non-http scheme, but both returned "no error" for any scheme-less string. So a non-address such as the docs line passed validation, the save path's Connection.normalizeApiUrlInput prepended http:// (it normalizes but does not validate), and it was stored as the connection's Dashboard/API URL. On the Manage screen DashboardApiClient built Request.Builder().url("http://Manage sign-in and admin screens/...") — and okhttp's url(String) (the throwing twin of toHttpUrlOrNull()) threw on the space-containing host. The throw happened while building the request, before executeJson()'s try/catch, inside a withContext(IO) lambda whose caller sat on Dispatchers.Main → uncaught → force-close.

Fix (two layers). Layer 1 (root cause / UX): new shared helper util/ServerAddress.kt validates an address with the same engine that builds requests — toHttpUrlOrNull() — via a strict parse() (scheme required; the request-guard primitive) and a lenient parseUserInput()/isValidUserInput()/fieldError() (bare host gets http://, mirroring normalizeApiUrlInput). The wizard's apiUrlSchemeError + optionalHttpUrlError now also reject anything that won't parse, so a non-address shows an inline error and blocks submit. Layer 2 (crash-class guard): DashboardApiClient routes every request through a private resolveUrl() (toHttpUrlOrNull()) and short-circuits to Result.failure/false on a malformed base URL — ~10 sites incl. getJson, currentSession, loginPassword, requestWsTicket, audioRoutesPresent; StandardHermesVoiceClient.transcribe/synthesize (same user-influenced dashboard URL, also built before their try/catch) get the same guard. Even a stored, pairing-, or future-call-site-supplied bad value is now reported as unreachable, never a Main-thread crash.

Verification. New ServerAddressTest (pure JVM) covers the exact crash string, blank/whitespace/missing-scheme/junk rejection, and bare-host/IP/localhost/host:port/http(s) acceptance, and asserts the helper never throws. DashboardApiClientTest.malformedBaseUrl_returnsFailure_doesNotThrow builds the client with http://Manage sign-in and admin screens and asserts getStatus/currentSession/requestWsTicket/getJsonObject/loginPassword return Result.failure and audioRoutesPresent() returns false — none throw. Follow-up audit items (HermesApiClient streaming authRequest sites, relay-client .toHttpUrl() sites — both lower-risk, gated by the health check or post-pairing server URLs) recorded in TODO.md.

2026-06-25 — Released android-v1.2.4

Cut Android 1.2.4 (appVersionName 1.2.4 / appVersionCode 18) — "Stability + connection security". Driven by #129: an external user's auto-captured crash report on the 1.2.3 Play build showed a SocketTimeoutException to the dashboard (:9119) over Tailscale surfacing on the main thread — the same crash class as 1.2.3's NetworkOnMainThreadException fix, on the sibling DashboardApiClient.currentSession() call site that 1.2.3 didn't cover. 1.2.3 tagged 2026-06-23; the currentSession() fix (99b9cf1, #128) landed 2026-06-24 — one day after release — so the published build was still exposed. Confirmed the fix is comprehensive: all four dashboard .execute() sites (currentSession, audioRoutesPresent, executeJson, executeJsonElement) and StandardHermesVoiceClient are now try/catch-guarded. 1.2.4 bundles that fix plus the connection security indicator (#127, already on dev). Release commit 2e58449 on dev (CHANGELOG [1.2.4] promotes only the Android items; Desktop CLI items stay in [Unreleased] for a future cli-v* cut); release PR #130 (dev → main, merge 0327012) merged on green Required-checks + claude-review; android-v1.2.4 tagged from the main tip → release-android.yml builds signed APK/AAB (googlePlay + sideload) + SHA256SUMS.txt → GitHub Release. Play upload is owner-driven.

2026-06-24 — Fix SocketTimeoutException crash from DashboardApiClient.currentSession()

Why. An in-app crash report (FATAL EXCEPTION: main, SocketTimeoutException, Caused by: java.net.SocketException: Software caused connection abort) captured on-device over a Tailscale connection. The visible dialog truncated the trace; the full stack was recovered from a background adb logcat capture that happened to be running when it fired.

Root cause. DashboardApiClient.currentSession() declared Result<DashboardAuthSession> but performed a raw okHttpClient.newCall(req).execute() with no try/catch — the lone outlier among the client's methods (executeJson/executeJsonElement/audioRoutesPresent all catch). Its .execute() correctly ran on Dispatchers.IO, but a transient network failure (a stale pooled connection aborting over Tailscale) re-threw out of withContext(IO). The caller chain — ConnectionViewModel.probeStandardVoice() → viewModelScope.launch (Dispatchers.Main.immediate, the Suppressed frame in the trace) — used try/finally with no catch, so the exception was uncaught on the main thread and killed the app. The .execute() being off-main is why StrictMode never fired; the uncaught propagation to the Main coroutine was the bug.

Fix. (1) currentSession() now wraps its request in try/catch, returning Result.failure on any exception — honoring the Result contract every caller relies on (mirrors executeJson). (2) Defense-in-depth: probeStandardVoice() gained a catch (rethrowing CancellationException) that degrades the voice/gateway availability state instead of letting any probe sub-call crash the Main coroutine.

Verification. New DashboardApiClientTest.currentSession_onConnectionAbort_returnsFailure_doesNotThrow (MockWebServer DISCONNECT_AT_START) asserts a connection abort yields Result.failure, not a throw. :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest + :app:lintSideloadDebug green. On-device confirmation pending a build.

2026-06-23 — Fix NetworkOnMainThreadException crash on TLS connect

Why. Two external bug reports (#118, #124) and the later comment on #70 reported the app hard-closing on connect over an encrypted link (Tailscale Serve / public HTTPS). The auto-captured traces were identical: android.os.NetworkOnMainThreadException from okhttp3.ConnectionPool.evictAll(), with a suppressed Dispatchers.Main.immediate [Cancelling] frame — i.e. a viewModelScope coroutine.

Root cause. HermesApiClient.shutdown(), DashboardApiClient.shutdown(), and ConnectionManager.shutdown() each call connectionPool.evictAll() inline. evictAll() closes pooled sockets synchronously; for a live https/wss keep-alive connection a TLS close drains a close-notify through SSLOutputStream — a real network write StrictMode forbids on the main thread. Several call sites reach shutdown() from a viewModelScope (Dispatchers.Main.immediate) coroutine: probeStandardVoice()'s finally { client.shutdown() } fires on every connect/voice probe, and onCleared() called connectionManager.shutdown() directly on the main thread. The off-main handling existed only as scattered per-call-site withContext(Dispatchers.IO) / background-Thread wrappers, so the unwrapped paths still crashed. TLS-only because a plaintext socket close writes nothing — matching every report being on Tailscale/public TLS.

Fix. Pushed the guard into the leaf. New network/NetworkShutdown.kt#shutdownOffMainThread(name, block) runs the executor-shutdown + evictAll() on a short-lived daemon thread when called from the main thread, and inline otherwise (preserving the blocking awaitTermination semantics for callers already on IO). Wrapped all three shutdown() bodies with it, so every call site is safe regardless of dispatcher. Simplified ConnectionViewModel.onCleared() — its now-redundant manual Thread wrappers were removed and connectionManager.shutdown() is no longer an unguarded main-thread evictAll().

Verification. New Robolectric NetworkShutdownTest (2 cases) asserts the teardown runs off the main thread when invoked from the main looper, and inline when invoked off it. ./gradlew :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest --tests NetworkShutdownTest green (compiles the full module + both cases pass). On-device confirmation over a real Tailscale/TLS connection pending a Studio build.

2026-06-23 — Notification trigger MVP (AXI-26)

Why. The notification companion could cache forwarded notifications for manual android_notifications_recent reads, but it did not make the app proactive. This pass adds the first safe event-trigger path: when an explicitly enabled local rule matches a posted notification, the phone prompts the user to ask Hermes instead of silently invoking an agent or replying in another app.

• Rule schema + storage. Added NotificationTriggers.kt with a minimal DataStore-backed schema in app-private notification_triggers: master opt-in, kill switch, JSON rule list, and JSON activity log (latest 25). MVP rule fields are id, label, enabled, app_package, optional title_contains / text_contains, action=ask_me, and reserved require_confirmation.
• Safe trigger path. HermesNotificationCompanion now evaluates posted NotificationEntry values against enabled rules on a service IO scope, skips self-trigger recursion for local Hermes-Relay prompts, and keeps the existing relay notification forwarding behavior. A match records an activity entry and posts a local Android “Ask Hermes about this?” notification that opens Chat; it does not send a Hermes prompt or touch another app automatically.
• Settings UI. NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen now includes explicit trigger opt-in, kill switch, single-rule editor (requiring at least one filter), visible activity log with clear action, and confirmation-policy copy.
• Docs. Added user-docs/features/notification-triggers.md, linked it from Features, and documented DataStore keys/schema in Configuration plus privacy behavior in the Privacy Policy. Changelog [Unreleased] records the user-facing addition.
• Tests. Added NotificationTriggerStoreTest for disabled default, rule matching, kill switch, empty-filter refusal, and activity-log cap/order.

Verification. ANDROID_HOME=/home/bailey/Android/Sdk ./gradlew :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest --tests com.hermesandroid.relay.notifications.NotificationTriggerStoreTest --no-daemon → BUILD SUCCESSFUL. ANDROID_HOME=/home/bailey/Android/Sdk ./gradlew :app:assembleSideloadDebug --no-daemon → BUILD SUCCESSFUL. git diff --check → clean. :app:lintSideloadDebug was attempted twice in the foreground and once in a background Gradle process; each exceeded the 5-minute tool ceiling / stalled in lint analysis before producing a report, so lint remains unverified in this run.

2026-06-22 — Released android-v1.2.2

Cut Android 1.2.2 (appVersionName 1.2.2 / appVersionCode 16) — "Multi-profile polish". The version bump + release docs were already on dev; the cut first integrated origin/dev, which had advanced to compileSdk 37 (206d182) and typed stream.event passthrough (PR #120) — dropping the temporary 1.2.2-prep markdown-renderer 0.41.0 / lifecycle 2.10.0 pins (a compileSdk-36 workaround) for compileSdk 37 + the 0.42.0 / 2.11.0 deps. dev CI (Android build + tests on compileSdk 37) green; release PR #122 (dev → main, --no-ff, merge 984d9a2) merged on green Required-checks + claude-review; android-v1.2.2 tagged from the main tip triggered release-android.yml → signed APK/AAB (googlePlay + sideload) + SHA256SUMS.txt → GitHub Release Hermes-Relay-Android v1.2.2 (published, not draft). Headline 1.2.2: session-delete persists on non-default profiles, cold-start profile isolation for the session drawer, full-screen Diagnostics status timeline, "Hermes"/"Relay" connection wording, and the clean-chat layout + scrollable history; also ships the typed stream.event relay passthrough (first slice) integrated from dev. Post-cut: main back-merged into dev (fast-forward) so they stay aligned. Follow-up: CLAUDE.md still says "Compile SDK 36" — update to 37 to match the build.

2026-06-22 — Outstanding-TODO batch (orchestration): four User-Added fixes

Why. Four open User-Added TODO items, resolved in one 4-worker orchestration pass with disjoint file ownership and coordinator-serialized commits (workers edited only; the coordinator committed each task's files by pathspec to avoid the shared-index race). A read-only Explore pass mapped each task to its files first, surfacing the two collision hubs (ChatScreen.kt, RelayApp.kt) so ownership could be partitioned to keep all four file sets disjoint. All changes are client-side Kotlin. Unbuilt at time of writing — pending Studio build + ./gradlew lint.

• Session delete on a non-default profile now persists (6552566). Root cause: a non-default Hermes profile keeps its sessions in that profile's own state.db, but ChatViewModel.deleteSession() issued the unscoped api_server DELETE /api/sessions/{id} (shared DB, no profile) and never re-fetched — so the row survived and the next profile-scoped list resurrected it. Fix mirrors the read path onto the write path: DashboardApiClient.deleteSession(id, profile) (reusing the deleteCronJob plumbing — deleteJsonObject+pathSegment+profileQuery), ConnectionViewModel.deleteProfileScopedSession() (twin of listProfileScopedSessions), a ChatViewModel.profileSessionDeleter hook wired in RelayApp beside setProfileSessionLister, and a refreshSessions() after a successful delete. Gateway deletes route through the dashboard surface; off-gateway (one shared DB) the plain delete is unchanged. HermesApiClient left untouched — the api_server has no profile concept.
• Diagnostics → full-screen status-check timeline; analytics polish (c3098a9). Replaced the Diagnostics modal bottom sheet with a dedicated DiagnosticsScreen behind a new Screen.Diagnostics nav route. It leads with a vertical status-check timeline — Network, API server, server capabilities, chat transport, pairing/auth, relay, voice — each a green/amber/red/gray dot on a connecting rail with an inline failure reason; a check backed by a logged error is tappable into the existing DiagnosticDetailDialog. Checks derive read-only from existing ConnectionViewModel flows + the recent DiagnosticsLog via a pure, testable buildStatusChecks() (no new probing — honest snapshot, first-class Unknown). New StatusCheck/CheckStatus models in DiagnosticsLog.kt, a reusable StatusCheckTimeline composable in TimelineView.kt; the recent-activity log panel stays below. Analytics: AnalyticsScreen/StatsForNerds visual hierarchy tidied (de-duped the header, section subtitle, cleaner separators) with no data/behavior change.
• Connections reframe: "Vanilla/Standard Hermes" → "Hermes" (c9fa8f7). 28 user-facing display strings across 10 connection/voice/permissions files; "Hermes-Relay plugin" → "Relay plugin" where it reads naturally. Display copy only — StandardVoiceAvailability, VoiceAudioRoute.Standard("standard") (enum + storage value), RelayUiState, and all when-branch identifiers left intact.
• Clean-chat: taller scrollable text viewport (1dca285). Replaced the fragile screenHeightDp*0.34f height cap on the clean-mode text flow with a weight split (centered sphere weight(1f) / flow weight(1.1f) ≈ 52% of the vertical slack, up from ~34%); kept the min=96.dp floor, internal scroll, top-fade, and a11y mirror paths; dropped the now-dead LocalConfiguration import.
• Method. Coordinator mapped files (4 parallel Explore agents) → partitioned disjoint ownership (A: ChatViewModel/HermesApiClient/DashboardApiClient/ConnectionViewModel; B: 9 connection/voice files + ChatScreen.kt 2 strings; C: AgentTextFlow.kt; D: analytics/diagnostics + new screen + SettingsScreen/RelayApp) → file-briefed 4 Claude workers in the active worktree (Orca --inject no-ops here) → serialized pathspec commits as each worker_done landed. The session-delete fix's one RelayApp wiring line was held and applied by the coordinator after the diagnostics worker's RelayApp route changes committed, so both edits to that hub landed as clean, separate commits.

Verification. Symbol-existence verified by grep before committing the new DiagnosticsScreen (the highest compile risk, since workers can't run gradle): all 11 referenced ConnectionViewModel flows, HealthStatus/ConnectivityObserver.Status/AuthState/DiagnosticCategory enum shapes, ServerCapabilities members, and the DiagnosticsLogPanel/DiagnosticDetailDialog/StatusCheckTimeline signatures resolve. Each worker diff was reviewed before commit. Not built or linted — Studio build + ./gradlew lint + on-device checks pending (see TODO.md "Orchestration batch (2026-06-22)").

Follow-up (same session) — cold-start profile-isolation race (889273a). A user-reported sibling of the session-delete bug: on cold start the session drawer (and the restored session context) briefly loaded the SERVER-DEFAULT profile's sessions, then visibly snapped to the persisted profile. Root cause: the activeConnectionId observer stamps the persisted profile name pending, calls resolvePendingProfileFrom(agentProfiles.value) (empty at that point), then rebuildChatApiClient() — so chatClientReady flips true and the RelayApp LaunchedEffect fires the first refreshSessions() with a null (server-default) profile before the per-connection profile list arrives to resolve the selection; the list lands a tick later, re-resolves, and re-fetches correctly (the "self-reload"). Fix: new ProfileController.selectionSettled StateFlow — true once the selection resolved, OR no non-default profile is pending, OR the profile list has arrived (resolution attempted, so a genuinely-missing profile falls back to default rather than gating forever) — exposed via ConnectionViewModel.profileSelectionSettled and added as a key + gate to the cold-start effect. While unsettled the first load waits on a 2.5s backstop; the effect re-fires the instant the profile resolves, cancelling the wait so only the correct profile-scoped load lands, and the backstop prevents a permanently-empty drawer if the list never arrives. Same effect also defers the per-profile session-context/transcript restore. Other profile-scoped surfaces (voice prefs, display alias, profile icon) read the live selectedProfile and self-correct on resolution without a visible content-flash; gating them on selectionSettled is noted as a follow-up. Unbuilt — verify the cold-start drawer on device.

2026-06-22 — Typed stream.event Relay passthrough first slice

Why. AXI-75 asks Relay/native clients to stop flattening Hermes SSE into assistant text and preserve runtime structure for native UI cards/timelines.

• Protocol + fixture. docs/relay-protocol.md now defines auth capability negotiation (supports.typed_stream_events + event_schema_version: 1), the versioned chat/stream.event envelope, stable event families, ordering/de-dupe semantics, payload safety, fallback behavior, and native rendering guidance. Added docs/fixtures/typed-stream-v1.jsonl as a golden tool-using stream.
• Relay server. plugin/relay/server.py records per-WebSocket client capabilities during system/auth and passes them to ChatHandler. plugin/relay/channels/chat.py now forwards Hermes/API-server SSE as ordered stream.event payloads for capable clients, emits final done, redacts secret-shaped keys, truncates large result fields, and keeps legacy chat.delta/chat.tool.*/chat.completed fallback for old clients.
• Native clients. Android and Desktop auth envelopes advertise typed-stream support. Android gained RelayStreamEventEnvelope plus ChatHandler.applyRelayStreamEvent() that maps typed events to existing native assistant text, thinking/progress, tool-card, artifact/memory/skill chip, error, and completion state.
• Verification. PYTHONPATH=$PWD python -m unittest discover -s plugin/tests -p test_chat_typed_stream.py green (typed ordering/final done/redaction + legacy fallback). python -m py_compile plugin/relay/channels/chat.py plugin/relay/server.py plugin/tests/test_chat_typed_stream.py green. desktop/npm ci then npm run type-check green. Android unit task was attempted with ANDROID_HOME=/home/bailey/Android/Sdk ./gradlew :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest --tests ...; it is blocked before Kotlin compile by the current dependency/SDK mismatch (AAR metadata requires compileSdk 37; installed SDK only has android-36). Follow-up commits bump app/relay-core/relay-ui/quest compileSdk to 37 to satisfy current AndroidX/Markdown AAR metadata in CI without changing targetSdk.

2026-06-22 — Released plugin-v1.2.1

Cut the Plugin 1.2.1 release — a Realtime Agent reliability patch. Both fixes were already on dev: the session_not_found brokered-handoff fix (f6b965a) and the realtime voice heartbeat-during-long-runs fix (d1820fb); 1.2.1 only adds the version bump and release packaging. Release-prep bumped the six plugin version sources via scripts/bump-plugin-version.sh (sync check green), folded the relay session_not_found fix into the existing [1.2.1] CHANGELOG.md line (the Desktop-CLI entries stay under [Unreleased] for their own cli-v* cut), and rewrote PLUGIN_RELEASE_NOTES.md as a Fixed-only release body.

• Release. dev had drifted behind main (12 Dependabot bumps merged straight to main + 3 prior dev→main release-merge commits never back-merged), so release PR #119 was BEHIND; gh pr update-branch merged main into dev (conflict-free — no overlap with the version/CHANGELOG files). Only Required checks + claude-review gate main (the path-optimized sentinel pattern); both green, with the plugin-relevant jobs (focused plugin tests, dashboard build, Python syntax) also green on the head. Merged --no-ff (merge 41037a3); plugin-v1.2.1 tagged from the main tip triggered release-plugin.yml → validate-metadata → wheel + sdist + SHA256SUMS.txt → GitHub Release Hermes-Relay-Plugin v1.2.1.

Cut the Android 1.2.1 release. Version source (appVersionName 1.2.1 / appVersionCode 15) was already on dev; release-prep promoted CHANGELOG.md [Unreleased] → [1.2.1] (Android-only — the Desktop-CLI entries and the relay session_not_found fix stay under [Unreleased] for their own cli-v*/plugin-v* cuts) and rewrote RELEASE_NOTES.md, in-app whats_new.txt, the Play release notes, and the Play listing copy, all scrubbed for public distribution. Release PR #102 (dev → main, --no-ff) auto-merged on green CI (merge 39cafc2); android-v1.2.1 tagged from the main tip triggers release-android.yml (validate → signed APK/AAB + checksums + GitHub Release; Play Production draft when the service-account secret is set, operator clicks Start rollout). Headline 1.2.1 changes: profile lock, in-app changelog, diagnostics detail + Copy/Share/Create-issue, a dismissable update-available nudge, plus voice/realtime fixes (override applies in Auto, realtime Stop halts playback, steadier hold-to-talk, readable overlay, faster connection-overlay dismiss) and a debug-only Developer-options test harness. RELEASE.md §2 gained a per-surface CHANGELOG-split clarification.

2026-06-21 — Realtime Agent API Server session handoff (issue #101)

Why. The Realtime Agent's brokered Hermes path (hermes_run_task) could fail two ways when reaching back to the API Server. (1) A caller-supplied chat_session_id that originated in a different session namespace (the gateway/client session store) was passed straight to POST /api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream, which the API Server rejects with 404 session_not_found. (2) _create_session() only read a flat id/session_id, but the current API Server returns the created session nested under {"object":"hermes.session","session":{"id":"api_…"}} — so creation raised "Hermes API created a session without an id."

Verified against upstream first. gateway/platforms/api_server.py confirms the contract: create-session returns the nested session object at status 201 (_session_response, line ~1426); _get_existing_session_or_404 emits {"error":{"code":"session_not_found"}} at 404 (line ~1349). Coded to the verified shapes, not the docs.

• hermes_tool_broker.py — nested create-session parse. Extracted _session_id_from_create_response() that accepts top-level id/session_id and nested session.id/session.session_id, preferring the flat form for back-compat with older/partial builds. _create_session() now delegates to it.
• hermes_tool_broker.py — session_not_found handoff + single retry. stream_task() tracks whether it owns the API Server session (api_session_owned). When a caller-supplied id 404s with session_not_found (matched by _is_session_not_found(), structured-or-substring), the broker mints a fresh API Server session, emits a second hermes.session.bound event with reason: "session_not_found_handoff" (so the orchestrator rebinds session.chat_session_id), and retries the chat/stream POST once. A session the broker created itself, or a second failure, is not retried — no loop. The 404 is raised before any SSE bytes stream, so the retry never double-emits chat content. Valid existing API sessions are reused untouched.
• Tests. New plugin/tests/test_hermes_tool_broker.py (13): pure-function coverage for both parsers (nested/flat/precedence/empty, 404-only session_not_found detection) plus end-to-end stream_task against a local aiohttp TestServer fake API Server — no-id-creates-session, existing-session-reused, namespace-mismatch handoff+retry, and single-retry-then-give-up. aioresponses isn't installed, so the tests drive the real aiohttp client path against a local server (the repo's existing pattern).

Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_hermes_tool_broker → 13/13 green. plugin.tests.test_realtime_agent_routes → 34/34 green (no regression). Server-side only; no Android/CLI changes.

2026-06-21 — Profile lock + voice fixes (orchestration batch)

Why. User-requested batch (TODO User-Added) covering the profile-lock setting and the concrete voice TODOs. Investigated and implemented via a planning→implementation orchestration pass: four read-only investigators, then three disjoint file-ownership implementation lanes. All changes are client-side Kotlin; the server-side realtime-voice half is deferred to TODO. Unbuilt at time of writing — pending Studio build + ./gradlew lint.

• Profile lock (new). Per-connection "lock to one profile": data/ProfileLockStore.kt (twin of ProfileSelectionStore, same profile_selections DataStore; __server_default__ sentinel via AgentDisplay); ProfileController gains lockedProfileName/isProfileLocked + lockProfile/unlockProfile, with selectProfile no-op'd when locked and resolvePendingProfileFrom preferring (and holding on missing) the locked target; ConnectionViewModel delegations + lock-clear at reset/remove sites + a lock-flow observer; ConnectionInfoSheet collapses the picker to a static "Locked to " row when locked; SettingsScreen adds the ProfileLockCard + dialog — the one surface that still lists all profiles, with a "not found on this server" banner.
• Voice override in 'auto' (fix). VoiceViewModel.shouldPreferRealtimeVoice() gated on .route (configured) instead of .effectiveRoute (resolved), so 'auto'+relay-ready never engaged the override-capable relay path and fell back to the host-global Standard /api/audio/speak (no override slot) — hence only 'Relay' applied the chosen voice. Switched to effectiveRoute. Also wired connectionId for per-profile voice-prefs namespacing (RelayApp calls setVoicePrefsConnection(activeConnectionId) and passes connectionId to VoiceSettingsScreen, which now takes the param and feeds setActiveScope).
• Realtime voice (fix, client half). Stall: RelayVoiceClient.awaitRealtimeAgentCompletion relaxes the 90s idle watchdog once a hermes.run.promoted/long run is seen, keeping the 5-min max-turn backstop. Over-chatty status: per-turn throttle in VoiceViewModel.emitStatus (≥22s gap, ≤3 spoken/turn). Waveform: realtime outputAudioActive now gates on real playback-start (RealtimePcmPlayer head-move/playbackAmplitude) instead of decoded-byte RMS, matching the basic-TTS path.
• Voice UI. Profile icon now shows in the floating overlay header pill (VoiceModeOverlay reads LocalAgentIconPath; sphere/pet stays the fallback). Voice Settings: invalid engine/route combos made unreachable (RealtimeAgent disabled without relay, unavailable routes disabled, coerceAudioRoute auto-corrects on engine switch / relay loss); long dropdown/provider labels get maxLines=1+ellipsis.
• Method. Disjoint file-ownership lanes (1: VoiceViewModel/RelayVoiceClient/RelayApp; 2: VoiceSettingsScreen/VoiceModeOverlay; 3: ProfileController/ConnectionViewModel/ConnectionInfoSheet/SettingsScreen/ProfileLockStore) so parallel implementers never touched the same file, and ChatScreen.kt was avoided (owned by a concurrent session). Pure helpers (coerceAudioRoute, shouldSpeakStatusNow, shouldMarkRealtimeOutputActive) extracted for unit-testing.
• Deferred. See TODO.md "Orchestration batch (2026-06-21)": streaming-path override question, upstream per-profile Standard voice, ChatScreen lock glyph, export decision, CHANGELOG entries, on-device verification.
• Follow-up (same day). Built + deployed to device as 1.2.1 / versionCode 15 (:app:assembleSideloadDebug, clean). Server-side realtime half implemented in broker.py (heartbeat-while-task-running + calmer spoken-status cadence) with plugin/tests/test_realtime_heartbeat.py (11) + promotion regression (5) green — deployed: committed d1820fb → pushed to origin/dev → server ~/.hermes/hermes-relay fast-forwarded + hermes-relay restarted (active, clean startup on ws://…:8767). New Kotlin unit suite green: ProfileLockStoreTest (9, in-memory DataStore harness), ProfileControllerLockTest (8, Robolectric), CoerceAudioRouteTest (7), VoiceStatusGatesTest (12) — 36/36 via :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest.

2026-06-21 — Desktop CLI first-class pass (audit-driven)

Why. The desktop CLI hadn't had feature work since 2026-05-19 while the relay plugin shipped a full v1.2.0 wave (relay-management surface, enhanced voice, context injection). A four-axis audit (command UX/visuals, pairing, desktop-tools, plugin parity) found the CLI surfaced ~⅓ of current plugin capability with an ad-hoc visual layer and weak discoverability. This pass closes those gaps; all changes are confined to desktop/ (no Android, no Python).

• Shared zero-dep UI foundation (desktop/src/lib/). theme.ts (one ANSI palette + colorEnabled + Theme with statusDot/semantic helpers, extracted from renderer.ts's pattern), table.ts (ANSI-width-aware column renderer, last column flexes to terminal width), spinner.ts (stderr braille spinner, no-op when piped/quiet/json), hints.ts (suggestedFix(err) → next-step command + formatError), usage.ts (UsageSpec → per-subcommand --help + self-documenting unknown-sub-verb), logo.ts (slim box-drawing wordmark).
• Discoverability. Fixed the cli.ts dispatch so command-scoped --help reaches the command (was always short-circuiting to global help). Added --help + usage specs across devices/sessions/status/tools/plugins/voice/relay/pair/daemon/doctor/workspace/paste; ported list output (devices/sessions) to aligned tables + status dots; routed command failures through formatError (actionable hints); replaced doctor's inconsistent !! warning markers with themed ⚠ lines.
• Pairing. Threaded an onProbe callback into probeCandidatesByPriority so pair shows per-endpoint progress + latency during the multi-endpoint race; credentials.ts warns (TTY-only) when a stored token is near/at expiry with the exact re-pair command; relayUrlPrompt.normalizeRelayUrl defaults a bare ws://host to :8767 (scoped to ws:// so wss:// proxy fronts on :443 aren't broken), surfaced not silent.
• Desktop tools first-class. New hermes-relay audit backed by a local JSONL (~/.hermes/desktop-audit.jsonl) the DesktopToolRouter appends per dispatch — the relay's ring buffer is loopback-only, so the client (the executor) is the right source of truth and this works against a remote relay with no auth. Consent prompt rewritten to state persistence + point at audit; computer-use's observe→grant→act flow documented in --help.
• Daemon observability + background run. daemon writes a heartbeat file (~/.hermes/daemon-status.json) on each lifecycle transition + a 30s tick; daemon status reads it, cross-checks pid liveness (process.kill(pid,0)), and exits non-zero when stale. Added daemon start (detached spawn — detached:true + windowsHide:true + stdio→~/.hermes/daemon.log + unref, no console window, survives terminal close) and daemon stop (kills the status-file pid + clears it); bare daemon still runs foreground. Validated start→status→stop on Windows against the live relay. A true OS service (reboot/login auto-start) remains the deferred follow-up.
• Dev loop. Added desktop/scripts/dev-install.mjs + npm run dev:install — builds the bun binary for the current platform and drops it over the curl-installed ~/.hermes/bin/ binary (backs the old one up as .bak, surfaces EBUSY as "stop the daemon first"). Closes the gap where local changes could only be exercised via npx tsx, never as the real global binary.
• Plugin v1.2.0 parity. voice now renders the /voice/config enhanced block (Gemini tone-tags/persona, xAI speech-tags). New hermes-relay relay info|security|context over the relay-management surface — context (the injected-system-prompt audit) works remote with a bearer; info/security are loopback-only and say so on a remote 403. Deliberately did not add a CLI-vs-server "version skew" warning — the two are on independent release tracks, so it would be a false alarm.
• Logo. Slim box-drawing "Hermes Relay" wordmark atop --help, the first-run welcome, the chat REPL, and a logo command; theme/no-color aware, never on piped/--json stdout.
• Verification. npm run type-check and npm run build (tsc) green. Runtime-smoked via npx tsx src/cli.ts (NO_COLOR): --help, logo, devices --help/devices bogus (usage fallback), audit (empty-state), daemon --status (no-daemon), doctor, workspace. Docs: CHANGELOG [Unreleased], desktop/README.md (audit/relay/daemon-status sections), CLAUDE.md desktop Key Files refreshed. Version bump (alpha.18→alpha.19) left to the operator — not cutting a CLI release this cycle.

2026-06-20 — Release-prep: android-v1.2.0 + plugin-v1.2.0

Why. Cut a combined 1.2.0 across both lockstep surfaces (both were at 1.1.0). The accumulated [Unreleased] block had captured the major feature arcs but a second wave had landed undocumented — audited every commit since the *-v1.1.0 tags and backfilled the changelog before promoting it.

• Versions. bump-android-version.sh 1.2.0 (appVersionName 1.1.0→1.2.0, appVersionCode 13→14); bump-plugin-version.sh 1.2.0 (pyproject + plugin/relay/__init__.py + plugin.yaml + dashboard manifest/package/lock, all in sync). check-version-tracks.py + check-plugin-version-sync.py --expect 1.2.0 green.
• CHANGELOG backfill. Promoted [Unreleased] → [1.2.0] - 2026-06-20 with a fresh empty [Unreleased]. Added the missing shipped features the accumulator had skipped: agent pets (swappable animated avatar + reactivity + in-app add/remove + AI authoring kit), per-profile agent icons + single-image avatars, in-app crash reporting, clean text-flow mode, the permissions-review screen, attachment previews; Changed: "Standard"→"Vanilla Hermes" rename, QR camera hardening for foldables, viewer landscape rotation; Fixed: PDF mid-render crash, the kotlin.Result-in-suspend ClassCastException on server images, side-loaded avatar/skin storage path, reopened-session model + media-badge fixes.
• Release notes. Rewrote RELEASE_NOTES.md (Android, "Make it yours" framing) and PLUGIN_RELEASE_NOTES.md (enhancement-layer + enhanced voice). Updated in-app whats_new.txt, Play release-notes/en-US/default.txt (438/500 chars), and the docs/play-store-listing.md What's-new block.
• Scrub. Grep'd the [1.2.0] block for names / private infra / fork plumbing — clean (only pre-existing released blocks carry the LAN host IP from old desktop-alpha entries; out of scope for this cut, flagged separately).
• Verification. python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_enhancements plugin.tests.test_terminal_channel (20 pass). Android AAB build + keytool cert verify is Studio-side (Bailey) per the dev loop. Prep committed on dev in two commits (release(android) / release(plugin)); merge-to-main + tags deferred to operator.

2026-06-20 — Static-image avatars + per-profile agent icon (Android)

Why. Two requests: a custom avatar shouldn't require authoring an animated pack (a single image should work), and each agent profile should be able to wear its own small icon beside its name — client-side, mirroring the existing local-name override.

• Static-image import (PetImporter). "Add a pet" now accepts a single image (.png/.jpg/.gif/.webp), not just a .zip — detected by magic bytes, not the file name. An image is auto-wrapped as a one-frame static pet (written as idle.png with a synthesized minimal pet.json), so a static avatar needs no manifest authoring. The renderer already supported a one-frame idle; this is purely import ergonomics. importZip → importUri; ConnectionViewModel.importPetFromZip → importPet. Test covers the image-wrap path.
• Per-profile agent icon (client-side). A direct twin of ProfileDisplayAliasStore: new ProfileIconStore (own DataStore profile_icons, keyed per (connection, profile), never sent to Hermes). It stores a path to an image copied into files/profile-icons/ (not a SAF URI, so it survives without persistable permission). Wired through ProfileController next to profileDisplayAlias (profileIcon StateFlow + setProfileIcon/clearProfileIcon + the copy), exposed on ConnectionViewModel, provided at the app root as LocalAgentIconPath, and rendered beside the agent name in MessageBubble and as the header avatar in the agent sheet, the chat top bar, and Settings — via a shared AgentAvatarFace that shows the icon (Coil from the file path) or falls back to the name's initial. The picker (AgentIconRow) sits right under the local-name row in ConnectionInfoSheet. Scope: small name-adjacent icon only — the big empty-chat/voice avatar stays global. ProfileIconStore cleared alongside the alias on connection removal; test mirrors the alias store's.
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug + PetImporterTest/ProfileIconStoreTest . Installed via adb install -r. On-device check (import an image as a pet; set a profile icon and see it by the name) in TODO.

2026-06-20 — Pet state preview in Appearance (Android)

Why. Testing a pet meant inducing each state by driving the agent (run a tool to see working, fail a turn for error, start voice for speaking/listening) — painful. An in-app preview turns Appearance into a pet test harness.

• Live preview (AppearanceSettingsScreen). Under the speed/stabilize controls (pet selected only): a ~140 dp canvas rendering the active pet, a FilterChip row for the seven sustained states (Idle · Thinking · Working · Writing · Speaking · Listening · Error), and Greet/Done buttons that replay the one-shots. Pure UI on the existing AgentAvatar seam — no new ViewModel/pref/renderer; it just calls activeAvatar.Render(AvatarRenderState(state=…)) with a user-picked state, so it also reflects the live speed and stabilize settings.
• State→render mapping. Base states feed state=…; Working feeds state=Thinking, toolCallBurst=1f (lights the overlay); Greet remounts the preview via a key (re-fires the on-appear reaction); Done drives a momentary Speaking → Idle transition on the live instance (fires the celebrate reaction), then returns to the selected chip.
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug BUILD SUCCESSFUL; installed via adb install -r. On-device visual check recorded in TODO.

2026-06-20 — Pet frame auto-stabilization (Android)

Why. On-device audit of a 4×4 AI pet (Lucy) found the character's vertical center drifting 34 px across the 16 cells, with 8/16 frames touching the cell edge — the image model held appearance but not position/scale, so the pet floated upward and bled the next frame in. The renderer slices/centers exact cells faithfully, so the drift can't be cured per-frame there — but it can be neutralized by re-centering each frame on its own content.

• Decode-time recenter (PetAvatar). With stabilization on, decodeClip scans each frame's opaque pixels (alpha bbox) and stores a per-frame offset that moves the content's bbox center to the cell center; drawPetFrame applies it (source px → dest px, scaled). Works for sprite sheets (per-cell) and frame sequences (per-bitmap); empty/transparent frames get a zero offset. The scan is one-time per clip decode on Dispatchers.IO with a reused scratch buffer, so steady-state cost is nil.
• Global toggle, default on (ConnectionViewModel, LocalPetStabilize, AppearanceSettingsScreen). A pet_stabilize pref → LocalPetStabilize provided at the app root → read in PetAvatar.Render (keys the decode produceState, so flipping re-decodes). A "Stabilize frames" Switch sits under the playback-speed slider when a pet is selected. Default on because AI sheets nearly always need it; a hand-authored pet with intentional motion can switch it off.
• Authoring (docs). The prompt kit now also stresses registration (lock head/shoulders, same position + scale, only secondary motion) so the art improves at the source — stabilization is the safety net for what the model still gets wrong.
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug BUILD SUCCESSFUL; installed via adb install -r. Fixes the already-installed Lucy at render time (no re-import). On-device visual confirmation recorded in TODO.

2026-06-20 — Pet playback-speed control + cell-resolution guidance (Android + docs)

Why. Two more on-device tuning gaps: a pet that still felt fast needed re-authoring/re-importing to slow down (slow loop), and a 128 px-celled pet looked pixelated blown up to the full-screen chat background (while crisp in the small voice overlay — same frames, different scale).

• Playback-speed control (ConnectionViewModel, LocalPetPlaybackSpeed, PetAvatar, AppearanceSettingsScreen). A global multiplier pref (pet_speed, 0.5×–1.5×, default 1.0) surfaced as a Slider in Appearance when a pet is selected. Provided at the app root via a new LocalPetPlaybackSpeed composition local and read live in PetAvatar.Render (rememberUpdatedState), so dragging the slider re-times the pet instantly with no restart. Applies to every clip (including one-shots) and composes with intensity (baseFps × speed × intensityFactor, clamped 1–60). The sphere ignores it.
• Cell-resolution guidance (docs). Pixelation is a resolution axis (cell px) distinct from smoothness (frame count): one frame set is contain-fit into every surface, so author for the largest (the chat background). Bumped the kit default to 256 px cells (a 1024×1024 sheet for a 4×4 grid), noted 512 px is fine for a sprite sheet (decodes as one bitmap), and that the old "≲256 px" note applied to frame-sequences. Updated custom-avatars.md, pet-prompt-kit.txt, pet-spec.md.
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug BUILD SUCCESSFUL; installed to the sideload build via adb install -r. Slider behavior is on-device-visual (recorded in TODO).

2026-06-20 — Pet kit defaults to 4×4 (16-frame) sheets (docs)

Why. A 4-frame (2×2) sheet reads steppy no matter the fps — the on-device Lucy made that obvious. The renderer already slices any N×M grid (decodeClip derives cols/rows from sheet size ÷ cell size; drawPetFrame indexes col = i%cols, row = i/cols), so "support 4×4" is an authoring-default change, not a renderer one.

• Kit + spec default to a 4×4 grid (16 frames). The prompt template, the manifest example, and pet-prompt-kit.txt now use frameCount: 16 with fps matched to the higher count (idle ~8 → a calm ~2 s loop); 2×2 / 4 frames stays documented as the easier-to-keep-consistent fallback. docs/pet-spec.md states any rectangular grid works (a 4×4 sheet holds 16 frames, decoded as one bitmap regardless of cell count). Added a PetLoaderTest case for a 16-frame sheet.
• Diagnosis note. The "still fast" report was tracked to the installed pet.json still carrying fps 6 (the tuned fps 3 zip post-dated the import); intensity was ruled out by tracing streamingIntensity → 0f at idle. Audited by adb shell cat-ing the on-device manifest, not the repo copy.

2026-06-20 — Pet frame-loop smoothness fix (Android)

Why. First on-device pet (Lucy) animated with a periodic hitch and felt a touch fast. Root cause: PetAvatar.Render's frame loop awaited withFrameNanos (one vsync ≈16ms) and delay(1000/fps) each iteration, so every frame waited ~16ms longer than its frameDurSec; the surplus accumulated until the loop forced a 2-frame skip to catch up — a visible hitch, worst at low fps.

• Vsync-paced loop (PetAvatar.Render). Removed the per-frame delay. withFrameNanos already suspends until the next frame, so the loop is now purely vsync-paced (~60fps) and advances the sprite only when frameDurSec of real time has accumulated — no double-count, no periodic skips. Intensity modulation still recomputes fps each tick; the accumulator absorbs the variable rate without skipping.
• Authoring guidance (docs). Clarified that smoothness comes from frame count, not fps: 4 frames (2×2) is the consistent-but-steppy minimum, 8–16 (3×3 / 4×4) for fluid motion; match fps to count (calm states 3–4, not 6+). Added to docs/pet-spec.md, the user-docs kit, and pet-prompt-kit.txt; lowered the example/kit idle+listening fps to 4.
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug BUILD SUCCESSFUL. On-device re-check pending: the test device's wireless adb dropped mid-deploy; the rebuilt APK + a tuned lucy.zip (idle/listening fps lowered) are staged to install + re-import once it reconnects.

2026-06-20 — In-app pet avatar add/remove/refresh (Android)

Why. The Appearance screen could select avatars but offered no way to add or remove a pet from inside the app — the only path was adb push into app-scoped external storage, which scoped storage stalls on (confirmed hanging on a Samsung device: a push into /sdcard/Android/data/<pkg>/files/pets/ wrote nothing, though adb shell ls of the dir worked). And the avatar list loaded once at startup, so even a successfully-pushed pet never appeared without a restart. Net effect: users saw only the Sphere.

• In-app import (PetImporter.kt, new). "Add a pet" launches a SAF document picker; the chosen .zip unpacks into pets/. Hardened: zip-slip guard (every entry confined to a staging dir under cacheDir), per-file / total-size / entry-count ceilings (zip-bomb), and post-extract validation through the same PetSpec.toAvatar the loader uses — an archive that wouldn't render is rejected up front. Accepts either shape (pet.json at the root, or one folder deep — shallowest wins); installs under the manifest id (sanitized), replacing a same-named pack.
• In-app remove (PetLoader.deletePet). Resolves a pack by manifest id (not directory name) and deletes it, behind a confirm dialog. If the deleted pet was the selected avatar, the selection falls back to the Sphere.
• Live refresh (ConnectionViewModel, RelayApp). A avatarsRefreshTick StateFlow keys the avatar produceState, so import/delete — and opening the Appearance screen — re-scan pets/ and update every surface (chat, clean mode, voice, splash) without an app restart. This also resolves the standing "pet load is process-scoped" TODO. Add/remove results surface as snackbars via a one-shot avatarEvents flow.
• Appearance UI (AppearanceSettingsScreen). Added an "Add a pet" button + "Rescan", an "Installed pets" management list with per-pet remove, and a remove-confirm dialog; replaced the static "drop a pack into pets/ via adb" hint with the in-app flow.
• Tests. PetImporterTest (root + nested import, no-manifest, missing-idle, zip-slip refused writes nothing outside staging); PetLoaderTest delete cases (by id, id≠dirname, no-match). Both pass under :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest (the 12 build failures are the pre-existing DataStore/FileStorage.kt:114 JVM cases — BargeIn/ProfileSelection/ProfileSessionStore).
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug built hermes-relay-1.1.0-sideload-debug.apk; installed to the Samsung sideload build via adb install -r (Success). A lucy test pet (9 sprite-sheet states, 256×256 RGBA with real transparency, schema-validated) staged at /sdcard/Download/lucy.zip for an import smoke test (Add a pet → pick from Downloads). On-device import/delete smoke recorded in TODO.md.

2026-06-20 — Pet AI authoring kit + JSON schema (docs)

Why. Pets are pure data, so the only real barrier to making one is sourcing the art. Documented an AI-generation workflow and a machine-readable contract so both humans and AI agents can author and validate a pet without hand-drawing.

• AI prompt kit (user-docs/features/custom-avatars.md). A reference-image-first, character-agnostic prompt template ({character}/{style}/{accent}), a per-state motion table mapping image generation to our state vocabulary, a full 9-state manifest, transparency/consistency caveats, and a "fastest first pass" (one 3×3 sheet → nine stills). Mirrored as a one-click user-docs/public/pet-prompt-kit.txt. A vendor-neutral "let an AI agent build the pack" callout names Codex/Claude Code as examples and states the acceptance criteria + image-gen prerequisite.
• JSON Schema (user-docs/public/pet.schema.json). Draft-07 schema mirroring the loader's structural rules (required idle, frames-XOR-sheet via anyOf, positive sheet dims, schemaVersion ≤ 1); $schema wired into the manifest examples and tolerated by the lenient loader (ignoreUnknownKeys). docs/pet-spec.md gained an "Editor validation" section, honest that file-existence/decodability remain load-time checks. Validated: legal draft-07 + accepts good / rejects no-idle, empty-clip, schemaVersion-2, sheet-missing-dims.

2026-06-20 — Relay enhancement layer + agent-context injection

Why. Teaching the agent to mark sensitive media (and, more generally, to know things only the relay can teach it) needs a way to inject context into the agent's system prompt — but hermes-agent exposes no plugin context hook (system_prompt_block() is memory-provider-only; lifecycle hooks are observers). The one transport-agnostic seam is AIAgent._build_system_prompt. Rather than a one-off patch, we built a reusable, removable enhancement layer so the relay can apply such patches cleanly and retire them per-surface as upstream catches up — the same pattern as the bootstrap route shims.

• plugin/enhancements/ (registry + contract). Each enhancement declares name · phase · enabled() · apply() · retirement note. Config-gated, default ON for relay installs (the relay install is the opt-in; RELAY_AGENT_CONTEXT_ENABLED=0 opts out), no-op on vanilla, removable with the plugin.
• context_injection enhancement (fail-open). Wraps AIAgent._build_system_prompt at plugin-load; appends auditable fenced blocks (<!-- hermes-relay:<name> -->). Fail-open at every step — seam absent / block build throws / setattr fails ⇒ returns the base prompt unchanged. With RELAY_AGENT_CONTEXT_ENABLED off, the prompt is byte-for-byte unchanged. Works on BOTH gateway and SSE (agent core).
• First block: media-sensitivity. Teaches the agent to mark private/NSFW media with the client's spoiler convention (||![alt](path)|| / sentinel alt) — the bit the client already blurs. No soul/memory touched.
• GET /context/injected audit route + client audit. The relay exposes exactly what it would inject; the chat "What the agent sees" sheet gained a "Relay context (server-side)" section. Server-side injection is never hidden.
• Sensitivity re-thread (client). ServerImageResult.Success carries the fetched sensitive bit again; RelayServerImage blur ORs it with the markdown-parsed flag.
• Transport-path UI. New ChatTransportStatusBadge + RelayStatusStrip surface the ACTUAL chat tier (⚡ Gateway / 📡 Sessions / Completions / Runs / offline) instead of a bare "api online"; Chat Settings gained a basic→best tier ladder + a gateway sign-in callout.
• Dashboard. Relay management tab gained Agent-context master + per-block toggles (off by default; labeled experimental/server-side/removable).
• Verification. Plugin: python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_enhancements (16 pass). Android: :app:lintSideloadDebug :app:assembleSideloadDebug --no-daemon green. Built by a 2-worker Orca orchestration (server + client slices), coordinator-integrated. Design: docs/plans/2026-06-20-relay-enhancement-layer.md.
• Follow-ups (TODO). Confirm the AIAgent module on the live host when enabling; structured media channel (docs/plans/2026-06-20-structured-media-channel.md); incremental bootstrap migration into the enhancement layer; retire the wrap when upstream ships a context hook.

2026-06-20 — Pet intensity modulation (Android)

Why. The last continuous-reactivity gap: a pet's clip looped at a fixed rate regardless of how hard the agent was working. intensity (the activity ramp already fed to every avatar — ~0.7 while streaming) was plumbed to PetAvatar.Render but ignored. Wiring it completes the reactivity story (voice ✓ · tools ✓ · activity ✓) and un-clamps the last reserved badge flag — and unlike the deferred attention, the signal needed no host plumbing.

• Live playback-rate modulation (PetAvatar.Render). Opt-in via reactive.intensity. The active base/working loop's fps is scaled by 1 + intensity·PET_INTENSITY_RATE (0.6 → ~1.4× at typical streaming, 1.6× peak, capped at PET_MAX_FPS), so it visibly "works harder" as output streams. Read live inside the frame loop via rememberUpdatedState(state.intensity) so the speed tracks the agent mid-clip without restarting the long-lived loop (re-keying on a continuously-animated float would thrash). One-shot reactions are excluded (!playOnce) so greet/done play at their authored rate.
• Badge un-clamp (PET_RENDERER_CAPABILITIES.intensity → true). The loader's existing reactive.intensity && capability formula now lets a declared intensity:true through, so the pet advertises Activity honestly. No loader change needed beyond the flag.
• Tests. PetLoaderTest: a declared intensity:true is now honored (Voice · Activity); the prior clamp test was split — tools without a working clip still stays off the badge.
• Docs (docs/pet-spec.md). Reactivity table's intensity row rewritten from "Reserved" to the speedup behavior; removed from "Forthcoming" (now only attention remains there). Reactivity is now Voice · Tools · Activity complete.
• Verification. Code + loader tests authored to the established patterns; not run here (Studio-side). On-device check (a writing/working loop quickening while streaming) recorded in TODO.md.

2026-06-20 — Pet one-shot reaction layer (Android)

Why. The behavior model's event tier: transient "reactions" that play once over the base loop, then return — the touch that turns a status display into a character (cf. the Peon Pet's celebrate-on-finish). Distinct from the sustained per-state loops and the working overlay.

• Pet-local triggers, zero host plumbing (PetAvatar). One-shots are derived from the activity-state transitions the avatar already observes each frame — no new AvatarRenderState edge from the host. PetOneShot.Greet fires on first composition (the pet appears); PetOneShot.Done fires when a productive turn ends (a Streaming/Speaking → Idle transition; Thinking → Idle and Error → Idle don't celebrate). Both are opt-in (only if the pet ships the clip) and require ≥2 frames.
• Play-once-then-revert (PetAvatar.Render). The frame loop gained a playOnce mode: a reaction clip plays 0→end (no modulo wrap), parks on its last frame, clears activeOneShot, and recomposition hands back to the base loop. A live reaction overlays everything (including working). Suppressed under reduced motion (paused). An ONE_SHOT_MAX_MS (4s) backstop guarantees a reaction never lingers on decode failure / single frame / pause.
• Friendly aliases (PetLoader.toAvatar). Resolves greet/wake → PetOneShot.Greet and done/celebrate → PetOneShot.Done from explicit states keys only (no fallback); absent reactions just don't play. One-shots are reactions, not a reactivity signal, so they don't touch the picker badge.
• Tests. PetLoaderTest: a pack with greet/done keys loads cleanly and the badge stays Voice (no accidental Tools/Activity coupling). Render-time playback (the actual one-shot animation) is on-device/Compose-test territory — flagged in TODO.
• Docs (docs/pet-spec.md). New "One-shot reactions" section (Greet/Done table, opt-in, play-once, reduced-motion), an Expressive tier on the authoring ladder, and the Loop-vs-one-shot note updated. attention-on-notification stays in "Forthcoming" — it needs a host event the avatar doesn't receive yet.
• Verification. Code + loader test authored to the established patterns; not run here (Studio-side). On-device checks (greet on appear, celebrate on turn-finish, overlay-over-working) recorded in TODO.md.

2026-06-20 — Pet working/tool-use behavior (Android)

Why. The behavior-model spec called for a distinct "agent is running a tool" pose — the strongest cross-system convention (Microsoft Agent splits Think from Process/Search; the pi-animations indicator splits Thinking · Working · Tool) is that acting should look different from thinking. Our six SphereStates folded tool-use into thinking/streaming.

• Pet-local tool overlay (PetAvatar). Implemented as a sub-state derived from the already-plumbed toolCallBurst, not a 7th SphereState — zero blast radius on the Sphere or the call sites. Render swaps to an optional workingClip when toolCallBurst ≥ WORKING_BURST_THRESHOLD (0.5) during a Thinking/Streaming turn, and returns to the base-state clip as the burst decays (the signal ramps to ~1 in 200ms and decays over 1200ms, so 0.5 activates fast and lingers ~600ms — smoothing back-to-back tool calls). Error keeps its own clip; toolCallBurst is ~0 outside tool activity, so it never fires spuriously.
• Opt-in, clip-driven capability (PetLoader.toAvatar). workingClip resolves only from an explicit working key (no fallback) — a pet without one keeps its base-state clip during tool use, exactly as before. Shipping a usable working clip is itself the tool-reactivity capability: it drives both the swap and the Tools badge (reactivity.tools = (workingClip != null) && PET_RENDERER_CAPABILITIES.tools), so the declared reactive.tools flag is no longer needed and can't over-promise. Flipped PET_RENDERER_CAPABILITIES.tools to true (the renderer now consumes the signal).
• Tests. PetLoaderTest: a working clip lights the Tools badge (Voice · Tools); a working clip with missing files does not; the existing declared-but-no-clip case still clamps to Voice.
• Docs (docs/pet-spec.md). working moved from "Forthcoming" into the implemented model: a Working row in the state table, a "The working overlay" subsection (opt-in, tool-use vs. thinking), the authoring ladder's Rich tier now 7 clips, and the reactivity table's tools row now "driven by the working clip." Forthcoming trimmed to one-shot reactions + intensity modulation.
• Verification. Code + tests authored to the established patterns; not run here (Studio-side). On-device check (clean mode, a working clip swapping in during a tool run) recorded in TODO.md.

2026-06-19 — Pet reactivity: honest badge + behavior-model spec (Android)

Why. Follow-up to the custom-avatar audit. The pet picker badge read reactivity.summary() straight from pet.json, so a pet declaring reactive:{tools:true,intensity:true} advertised "Voice · Tools · Activity" while PetAvatar.Render only ever consumed voice — the badge could lie. Separately, the goal was to let pets associate behavior with agent activity (show "thinking" vs "writing" vs "speaking"), which needed a documented behavior model rather than a fallback table buried in the clip docs.

• Honest capability badge (PetAvatar, PetLoader). Added PET_RENDERER_CAPABILITIES (the live signals Render actually consumes today: voice only) and clamp a pet's effective reactivity to declared AND supported in toAvatar. One forward-compat switch: flip a flag there the day the renderer learns a signal and every manifest that already declared it lights up. PetLoaderTest gained a case asserting declared tools/intensity are dropped from the badge.
• Friendly writing alias (PetLoader.STATE_CLIP_CHAIN). The Streaming (output-producing) state now resolves writing → streaming → … so authors can target it with the intuitive key; tidied the Speaking/Error chains to fall back through related activity clips before idle. Backward compatible (existing streaming/speaking/error keys still resolve).
• Behavior-model spec (docs/pet-spec.md). New "Agent states & pet behavior" section: what each of the six activity states means, the friendly clip-key vocabulary + fallback chains, a loop-vs-one-shot note, and a Minimal→Basic→Standard→Rich authoring ladder. A "Forthcoming behavior" subsection specifies the designed-not-yet-rendered tier — a distinct working/tool-use clip, one-shot reactions (greet/celebrate/attention), and continuous tool/intensity modulation — so authors can plan. Reactivity table updated to state the clamp.
• Prior-art grounding. Researched the convention (no first-party "Codex pet" exists — the agent-state→mascot pattern is third-party only: pi-animations, Peon Pet; canonical spec lineage is Microsoft Agent's .acs animation set, with Live2D/VRM/VTuber lip-sync and game-dev FSMs converging on idle-base + thinking/working/output split + amplitude-driven talking + one-shot reactions). The thinking≠tool-use split is the strongest cross-system signal and drives the recommended working state. Sources cited in TODO follow-up context.
• Verification. Code + test authored to the established patterns; not run here (Studio-side). Behavior roadmap (working state, one-shots, intensity modulation) recorded in TODO.md.

2026-06-19 — Custom-avatar audit: storage fix, loader unification, tests, docs (Android)

Why. An audit of the just-shipped swappable agent-avatar / "pet" feature found one blocking bug and a set of clarity/coverage gaps. The only documented way to install a pet (and a sphere skin) was adb push … /sdcard/Android/data/<pkg>/files/{pets,spheres}/ — i.e. external app-scoped storage — but both loaders read from context.filesDir (internal, /data/data/<pkg>/files/), which is not adb push-able on a non-rooted device. So the documented side-load path could never work, on either flavor. Secondary gaps: no in-app hint that pets exist, no user-docs coverage of avatars/skins at all, and the pure loader logic was Context-coupled and therefore untested.

• Shared storage layer (UserContentDir.kt, new). Both PetLoader.userDir and SphereSkinLoader.userDir now resolve through one helper that prefers external app-scoped storage (getExternalFilesDir(null) = /sdcard/Android/data/<pkg>/files/<name>/, reachable by adb push, no runtime permission on API 19+) and falls back to internal filesDir only when external is unmounted. Single source of truth for "where side-loaded customization content lives" — fixes the bug once for pets and sphere skins together. The adb push commands the docs already showed are correct against this location.
• Testability refactor (PetLoader, SphereSkinLoader). Added pure loadPets(dir: File) / loadUserSkins(dir: File) overloads (no Android Context); the Context overloads delegate. The validation/resolution/skip-invalid path is now unit-testable against a temp directory, mirroring DashboardManageDiskCache's dir: File shape.
• Tests (PetLoaderTest, SphereSkinLoaderTest, new). 17 + 6 JUnit cases covering parse, id/label fallbacks, schema-version + missing-idle + missing-file rejection, the safeChild path-traversal guard (a real ../escape.png outside the pack is refused), fps clamping, one-bad-pack-doesn't-break-the-rest, sort order, and empty/absent dirs. No real bitmaps needed (the loader only checks isFile); unitTests.isReturnDefaultValues=true makes Log.w a no-op so no mockkStatic.
• In-app discoverability (AppearanceSettingsScreen). Added an "Add your own pet" pointer line under the Agent-avatar chips (mirrors the existing sphere-skin pointer) so users learn the feature exists even with no pets installed.
• Docs (docs/pet-spec.md, docs/sphere-spec.md). Corrected the storage prose (app-scoped external, external-preferred / internal-fallback, both flavor paths), cross-linked the two specs under one "customize the agent avatar" framing, fixed a "Agent sphere" → "Agent avatar → Sphere skin" naming drift, and added two authoring caveats: a present-but-undecodable image renders blank (not caught at load), and frame-sequence pets decode every frame at full resolution into RAM (keep frames small / prefer sprite sheets).
• User docs (user-docs/features/custom-avatars.md, new + nav). New user-facing page covering the two-level avatar→skin model, the reactivity badges, how to add skins and pets, reduced-motion behavior, and troubleshooting; wired into the Features sidebar.
• Verification. Tests authored to the established temp-dir pattern and validated against the actual toAvatar/toSkin contracts (read from source); not run here (Android build/test is Studio-side). Follow-ups (per-frame memory cap/downsample, decoded-clip cache to kill re-decode churn) recorded in TODO.md.

2026-06-18 — Chat: mid-session model switch, error surfacing, model-scope UI (Android)

Why. On-device testing surfaced four linked issues. (1) Switching the in-chat model in an existing conversation showed the pick but the turn still ran the old model. (2) A failed turn (grok-4.3 hitting xAI's 200-tool cap) flashed an error bubble then vanished. (3) The chat header and agent drawer showed the global/profile model, not the session's live model — the drawer even paired the global model name with the session provider (gpt-5.5 · xAI Grok). (4) An upstream-injected [System: the active model changed …] marker rendered as a chat bubble.

• Session-scoped model switch (GatewayChatClient.prewarmAwait, ChatViewModel.selectModel). selectModel called fire-and-forget prewarm() then immediately setModel(), so config.set {key:"model"} ran with liveSessionId == null and upstream applied it as a GLOBAL write — never touching the live session (verified: _apply_model_switch, tui_gateway/server.py:2134, is the session-scoped in-place swap the CLI/TUI /model uses). Added a suspending prewarmAwait() that resolves/resumes the live session before returning; selectModel awaits it then applies setModel session-scoped, or skips the global write and defers to the next session.create override when there's genuinely no session. Confirmed on-device: sessionScoped=true → session.info flips → turn runs the picked model.
• Errors never swallowed (GatewayChatClient.dispatchOn, ChatHandler.loadMessageHistory). Root cause: dispatchOn (marshals turn callbacks to the main thread) omitted onStatusUpdate, so it fell back to the data class's default no-op — the server's ❌ terminal-error lifecycle line never reached markError, the turn wasn't badged Error, and onComplete's post-turn history reload (which a non-errored turn runs) wiped the client-only error bubble. Wired onStatusUpdate through dispatchOn (also restores live status lines, previously dead on the gateway), and hardened loadMessageHistory to re-inject local Error-badged assistant messages the server transcript lacks, so no reload path can swallow a failure.
• Model display scoped to the session (ChatScreen header, ConnectionInfoSheet.AgentSheetHeader). The header subtitle resolved profile.model ?? serverModelName; now mirrors the input chip (selectedModelOverride ?? gatewayCurrentModel ?? profile ?? server). The agent-sheet header was pairing the global model name with the session provider; it now takes a sessionModelName so model+provider come from one scope, and adds a quiet "Server default: …" caption only when the session diverges (the always-visible global-vs-session split; the redundant in-section split was removed).
• System steering markers hidden (ChatHandler, ConnectionViewModel, RelayApp, ChatSettingsScreen). Upstream injects [System: …] model/personality-change markers into history for the LLM (tui_gateway/server.py:1769); we rendered them as bubbles. loadMessageHistory now drops role:system [System:-prefixed rows by default (desktop/TUI parity), gated by a new ChatHandler.showSystemMarkers flag wired from a default-off "Show system messages" debug toggle in Chat Settings (DataStore-backed, mirrors parseToolAnnotations).
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug BUILD SUCCESSFUL; deployed to device; each fix confirmed on-device via filtered logcat traces. Separate known item (not an app fix): xAI/grok models exceed the provider's 200-tool cap with the full relay toolset (server-side).

2026-06-18 — Chat UX: model-picker apply, relay inbound images, smooth profile switch (Android)

Why. An audit of profile switching and the chat composer surfaced three issues: (1) the in-chat model picker showed the picked model but the agent ran on the account's global default; (2) an agent-returned server-local image showed a path/"on server" notice instead of rendering, even when paired to the relay; (3) switching profiles visibly tore down and rehydrated the conversation.

• Model picker binds to session.create (GatewayChatClient, ChatViewModel, GatewayModels). Verified against upstream tui_gateway/server.py: a model is a per-session override, applied via config.set {session_id,…} on a live session or model/provider params on session.create for a fresh one. The app only did the first; on a brand-new chat the config.set carried no session_id (upstream treats it as a no-op) and session.create omitted the model, so the agent built from the global default. Added a live sessionModelProvider (mirrors sessionProfileProvider) so the picker's model+provider bind onto each session.create; mid-session switches still go through config.set. A profile switch now retires an explicit pick (the profile defines its own model) and seeds the picker pill from the profile model so the header doesn't lag the round-trip. SSE paths already carried the model in the request body. Tests added for the new binding.
• Relay-backed inbound images (ChatImageContent, ChatScreen, ChatViewModel). Markdown images (![](src)) flowed through a renderer that only understood http(s) → Coil; a server-local path fell to a static "image is on the server" notice and never consulted the relay (the relay media route was only wired to the MEDIA: marker path). Added a RelayServerImageResolver CompositionLocal, provided by ChatScreen from ChatViewModel.resolveServerImage, which fetches an absolute server path through the relay's bearer-auth /media/by-path route (same route + sandbox the MEDIA: path uses), decodes, caches (bounded LRU keyed by path), and renders inline with tap-to-zoom. Null when unpaired → unchanged standard (no-plugin) behavior. Complementary nudge: composeInjectedContext appends a one-line media-capability hint to the SSE system_message when a relay route is configured (RelayHttpClient.mediaUrlConfigured()), surfaced in the "What the agent sees" audit sheet. SSE-only — the gateway has no per-turn system slot, so there the client render fallback (and upstream's own MEDIA: instruction) carry it.
• Profile-switch transition (ChatViewModel.switchProfileContext, ChatScreen). Stopped clearing the message list synchronously before the async history fetch; the previous transcript is held and swapped atomically when the new history resolves, so the LazyColumn's per-item animateItem() cross-fades old→new instead of blanking to an empty/"Loading…" state. The top loading row is suppressed while held content is on screen.
• Verification. Rebased Codename-11/fix-ui-ux-issues onto dev first (its only unique change was already on dev). :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin + :app:compileSideloadDebugUnitTestKotlin BUILD SUCCESSFUL (no new warnings in the changed files); GatewayChatClientTest extended with model-binding cases. On-device verification via Studio.

2026-06-18 — Cold-start keystore contention + honest loading states (Android)

Why. A cold-start logcat trace showed the chat header's identity/model/approvals lagging seconds behind first frame. The cause was on-device, not the network: EncryptedSharedPreferences.create() decrypts a Tink keyset via a KeyStore op (~0.6–1 s on StrongBox) and Tink serializes those process-globally, and the app was building three keysets at startup (a throwaway legacy-sentinel AuthManager, the active connection's token store, and the dashboard cookie store) — they thrashed the lock (Long monitor contention … AndroidKeysetManager.build(), waiters up to 4; a by lazy held for 2.369 s). The relay auth round-trip itself was ~150 ms. Separately, a design constraint surfaced: never display unconfirmed server state (model/provider/approvals) as if confirmed — show an honest loading state and make the load fast, don't cache a maybe-wrong value.

• Process-global store cache + raw-build factory (SessionTokenStore.kt). SecureStoreCache.getOrBuild(prefsName){…} (a synchronous ConcurrentHashMap.computeIfAbsent) builds each prefs file's keyset once process-wide, and buildRawTokenStore() is the shared backend factory. Synchronous on purpose so the SAME instance serves both the suspend token path (wrapped in IO) and the synchronous OkHttp cookie-jar path.
• Sentinel deferral (AuthManager.kt + ConnectionViewModel.kt). Added eagerHydrate (false for the legacy sentinel that ConnectionViewModel builds at field-init and replaces the moment the active connection hydrates), so it no longer decrypts a keyset just to be discarded. Re-gated the pre-StrongBox hermes_companion_auth → _hw migration on the file name (not the sentinel's connection id) so deferral stays correct, and marker-gated it (legacy_migrated) so the legacy file is read at most once ever.
• Cookie keyset unification (DashboardApiClient.kt, UpstreamTransportController.kt, ConnectionViewModel.kt, DataManager.kt). The dashboard cookie store now rides the connection's token file (threaded tokenStoreKey via a tokenStoreKeyProvider) instead of its own hermes_dashboard_<id> keyset — eliminating the second build. One-shot, marker-gated migration (dashboard_cookies_migrated) copies existing cookies across on first access; failure just means a one-time Manage re-login (cookies are re-obtainable, unlike the relay token). Also fixed a double store.load() per cookie request.
• Honest loading + fade-ins (LoadedFadeIn.kt + 5 call sites). New shared LoadedFadeIn/RelaySkeletonLine mirroring the header's skeleton→identity spec. Wired into the header subtitle (model fades in when confirmed), the agent sheet's model line, ContextMeterBar (fade+expand), the session drawer (loading→list crossfade), and Manage (Loading→Loaded crossfade). The agent sheet's YOLO switch now shows "Checking…" instead of rendering the unknown (null) state as a definitive "off". No model/provider/approvals value is ever cached and shown as confirmed.
• Also (header/chrome). Dropped the redundant LAN/Tailscale endpoint chip from the chat top bar (the footer status strip already shows <status> / <route>) and made that footer strip tappable → Connections; subtitle no longer renders a none personality.
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug BUILD SUCCESSFUL; deployed to device. Cold-start logcat before→after (warm launch, same device): 3 keyset builds → 1; the sentinel's "no stored session_token → Unpaired" build is gone; first-frame→Paired ~2.9 s → ~0.95 s; steady-state (post-migration) trace shows zero Long monitor contention events. On-device check still wanted: Manage/voice remain signed in after the one-time cookie migration.

2026-06-18 — Connection toast stepper + chat header de-clutter (Android)

Why. Two adjacent UI/UX gaps. The floating connection-status toast already slid in from the top and supported swipe-up dismiss, but it rendered its trace entries as flat label: detail text and the swipe silently accumulated to a threshold then snapped — while the cold-start sphere right next to it had a far nicer live stepper (·/spinner/✓/✕). The two were built separately and never unified. Separately, the chat header subtitle (personality · model · ⚡ approvals off) was being clipped because the trailing actions row (endpoint chip + Share + Terminal + Settings) won the width fight; the appended approvals text made it worse.

• Stepper state model (RelayUiState.kt). Added ConnectionStepState { Pending, Active, Done, Failed } and an optional state on ConnectionHandoffTraceEntry (defaulted null so every producer keeps compiling). Null means "infer from position + snapshot"; producers that know a surface's verdict stamp it explicitly.
• Probe entries stamp real states (ConnectionViewModel.kt). buildGlobalConnectionProbeEntries now tags Route=Done, and API/Relay as Active (Probing) / Done (Reachable) / Failed (Unreachable), plus the relay-socket "Session" step as Active.
• Toast redesign (ConnectionHandoffBanner.kt). ConnectionStatusToast renders entries as a live stepper (fixed-width monospace glyph + spinner via LaunchedEffect, mirroring the splash's StartupCheckRow vocabulary), reusing ConnectionStatusBadge's green for Done and colorScheme.error for Failed. Swipe-dismiss now tracks the finger with an Animatable offset + fade, flinging off-screen past threshold (then firing onDismiss) or springing back; keyed on status identity (title+tone) so frequent updatedAtMs trace bumps don't reset an in-flight swipe. Warning/Error poses get a bottom divider + "Open →" link for discoverability. The legacy edge-variant ConnectionStatusBanner was left as-is (only referenced within its own file).
• Chat header (ChatScreen.kt). Dropped the inline · ⚡ approvals off annotation from the subtitle (now a plain single line). Added an amber ⚡ Icons.Filled.Bolt to the app-bar actions, shown only when approvals are effectively off, tapping into the agent sheet where the full explanation already lives. Share moved into a ⋮ DropdownMenu (rendered only when there's a conversation to share), leaving Terminal + Settings + the endpoint chip as the visible actions. RelayChromeIconButton gained optional tint / borderColor params for the amber treatment.
• Verification. Pending — Kotlin-only UI changes; per the project dev loop these build via Android Studio's run button (not gradle build from here). ./gradlew lint recommended before push.

2026-06-18 — Terminal: TUI input correctness + chrome cleanup (Android + relay)

Why. On-device terminal use surfaced input bugs and wasted chrome, benchmarked against Orca's mobile terminal. The extra-keys bar clipped labels ("CTRL" → "CTR") because it was weight-distributed across a fixed width; the on-screen arrows and PASTE bypassed the emulator and sent fixed/raw bytes (wrong inside TUIs and unsafe for multi-line paste); and the header + tab strip + a stray inset ate vertical space, especially in the common single-tab case. Separately, the relay wrapped each PTY in the user's default tmux, inheriting tmux's 500ms escape-time and screen $TERM — the classic source of laggy ESC, mangled Alt, and degraded color in vim/htop.

• Extra-keys bar (ExtraKeysToolbar.kt). Rewrote from a weight-divided Row to horizontalScroll with fixed-min-width keys, so labels never clip and the cluster scrolls when wider than the screen (Orca's strategy). Then compacted to Orca's proportions — 32dp height, 36dp min width, 12sp, tighter padding/spacing — and centralized the key haptic.
• Mode-aware special keys (index.html + TerminalScreen.kt). Added window.termSendKey(name) that reads xterm's applicationCursorKeysMode and encodes arrows/Home/End as SS3 (\eOA) vs CSI (\e[A); the toolbar arrows now route through it. PASTE routes through term.paste() (bracketed paste) instead of a raw sendInput, so multi-line paste no longer auto-executes.
• Compact header (TerminalScreen.kt). Replaced Material's fixed 64dp TopAppBar with a ~52dp custom Row + statusBarsPadding: status is shown once, inline with the title (a ConnectionStatusBadge dot + one concise word, ellipsized via weight(1f, fill = false) so it can't push the actions off-screen), the whole block opens the info sheet. The subtitle no longer renders the full hermes-<deviceId>-tabN wire id (it was wrapping to two lines).
• Less wasted vertical space. The tab strip + its divider now render only for 2+ tabs; with one tab the new-tab "+" lives in the header instead. Dropped a redundant navigationBarsPadding() on the keys bar (the app Scaffold's bottomBar already owns the nav-bar inset, leaving a dead gap), and added an 8px bottom gap in #terminal so the last row clears the keys bar.
• Isolated, TUI-tuned tmux (plugin/relay/channels/terminal.py). Sessions now spawn on a dedicated -L hermes-relay socket with a generated ~/.hermes/hermes-relay-tmux.conf (written lazily, best-effort): escape-time 0, default-terminal "tmux-256color", truecolor terminal-features/overrides, mouse on, focus-events on, set-clipboard on, aggressive-resize on, status off. A dedicated socket is the only safe way to set server-global escape-time without altering the user's own tmux; persistence is unchanged (the socket's server outlives the relay process).
• Verification. :app:assembleSideloadDebug BUILD SUCCESSFUL and deployed to device; python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_terminal_channel (4 tests) + py_compile pass. Relay change hand-deployed to the staging box and verified live on the hermes-relay socket (escape-time 0, default-terminal tmux-256color, status off, mouse on, focus-events on). tmux 3.4 with tmux-256color terminfo present.

2026-06-18 — Native secure routes: split connection Features from Routes (Android)

Why. Connection setup conflated two separate questions — what a Hermes connection can do (features) and how this phone reaches it (route) — which coupled Relay features to a single transport. Modeling them separately lets a user enable Relay tools over any route (LAN, Tailscale, public HTTPS, VPN, or a plugin-provided secure proxy) and sets up a plugin-assisted native encrypted route that does not require Tailscale. The standard path stays direct-to-upstream and plugin-free. (Backfilled log entry — the work landed in PR #88; full design in docs/plans/2026-06-18-native-secure-routes.md.)

• Split connection model. ConnectionsSettingsScreen / ActiveConnectionSections now render distinct Features and Route sections; Endpoint.kt + ConnectionData.kt carry the route/role model and QrPairingScanner threads it through pairing.
• Plugin secure proxy route. A plugin_proxy route role surfaces as a "Secure proxy" option with encrypted / pinned-TLS treatment (recommended, not forced) alongside the existing LAN / Tailscale / public / custom roles.
• Docs. Added the 2026-06-18-native-secure-routes plan and a connections split-model mockup; fixed the docs-site hero sphere to keep its canvas backing store synced to the CSS box (HeroDemo.vue).
• Verification. CI green on PR #88 (Android Build + Lint + Test).

2026-06-18 — Android onboarding permissions review surface

Why. Android onboarding already kept the standard path clean, but permissions were scattered between feature-specific prompts, Bridge, and Android Settings. A central review page makes the model explicit: standard Chat and Manage do not need phone-control permissions, while voice, camera, notifications, and sideload Device Control remain opt-in.

• Shared permission snapshot. Added AppPermissionStatusProbe so Bridge and Settings read the same runtime grants and special-access switches: notifications, microphone, camera, notification listener, accessibility, screen capture, overlay, contacts, SMS, phone, and location.
• Permissions screen. Added PermissionsStatusScreen with Standard Hermes, On demand, and flavor-aware Device Control sections. Rows show required/optional/session status and link to the relevant Android Settings surface or Bridge session grant.
• Onboarding and Settings entry points. The Power Tools onboarding page now has a "Review permissions" action, and Settings -> App includes a Permissions row. Google Play builds show the sideload Device Control section as unavailable rather than implying hidden phone-control permissions.
• Verification. :app:compileGooglePlayDebugKotlin, :app:compileGooglePlayDebugAndroidTestKotlin, and :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin pass with ANDROID_HOME pointed at the local SDK.

2026-06-17 — Chat transparency + provenance polish: injected-context audit sheet, spoken-turn badges, version-skew error

Why. On-device voice testing surfaced two transparency gaps and two papercuts. The per-turn system context the phone injects (persona + phone status + voice hint) was invisible — no way to audit what the agent actually receives. Spoken voice-mode turns were indistinguishable from typed ones in the scrollback, while realtime turns were already badged. A field an older relay plugin doesn't accept produced a misleading "Network error · HTTP 400" with a dead Retry. And the floating connection toast's Warning tone was semi-transparent, letting content bleed through.

• Injected-context audit sheet. ChatViewModel.composeInjectedContext() extracts the per-turn system-message composition (persona/profile precedence + phone-status block + per-turn interface context) into one builder used by both startStream (which sends combinedSystemMessage) and the new previewInjectedContext() — so the audit can't drift from what is sent. combinedSystemMessage is built byte-for-byte as before (listOfNotNull over the raw blocks); per-block fields null out blanks only for display, and the resolved profile is passed in to preserve the no-skew invariant with modelOverride. Tapping the ContextMeterBar (now with an ⓘ affordance) opens InjectedContextSheet ("What the agent sees"); on the gateway path the persona block is labeled "added server-side — not sent from this device", since the server owns the soul + personality overlay there.
• Spoken-turn badges. Voice-mode replies are tagged "Voice", realtime replies keep "Realtime Agent"; both share a speaker glyph as the modality marker (MessagePathBadge gained an optional leading icon). The Voice tag is set on the assistant placeholder from the per-turn interface-context signal and rides the id-swap + content updates.
• Badges survive history reload. ChatHandler.loadMessageHistory now carries provenance badges forward by message id when it rebuilds the list from server data — the post-turn reload previously wiped them (this also fixes the pre-existing loss of "Stopped"/"Error").
• Version-skew error. RelayErrorClassifier maps a 400 whose body names an unsupported field to "Relay update needed" (non-retryable), distinct from a bad value like "unsupported codec" (which keeps its normal classification).
• Connection toast opacity. ConnectionStatusToast composites its container color over the theme surface so the floating overlay is always opaque while keeping each tone's tint; the in-flow ConnectionStatusBanner is intentionally left translucent (it blends with a known backdrop).
• Verification. :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin BUILD SUCCESSFUL; ./gradlew lint clean. On-device confirm via Studio/sideload.

2026-06-17 — App theming: theme-aware brand tokens, app themes, hot-swappable sphere

Why. Chat (and other brand-styled surfaces) were effectively hardcoded dark: the RelayRefresh brand palette was a single dark-only object of val Color(...) constants that ~150 call sites referenced directly, bypassing the Material light scheme. The goal was three-fold: fix that alignment, add real app themes (light/dark plus the Nous Hermes baselines), and make the agent sphere a hot-swappable component with user-authored skins.

• Theme-aware brand tokens (the fix). New ui/theme/BrandPalette.kt defines a 21-token BrandPalette, the LocalBrand CompositionLocal, a toColorScheme() derivation (Material scheme is now derived from the palette, never authored separately), and the AppTheme/AppThemes registry. RelayRefresh was converted from constants into a snapshot-backed façade over an activePalette: every RelayRefresh.X is now a getter reading a mutableStateOf, so reads in composition and draw phases subscribe and repaint on theme change — the ~150 existing call sites became theme-reactive with no edits. HermesRelayTheme(appThemeId, themePreference, fontScale) resolves the theme + light/dark/auto mode into one palette, drives the Material scheme + LocalBrand, and mirrors it into the façade via SideEffect.
• App themes (8). Hermes Relay (the brand, with full light + dark) plus ports of the canonical Nous dashboard baselines from upstream web/src/themes/presets.ts — Hermes Teal, Nous Blue (light), Midnight, Ember, Mono, Cyberpunk, Rosé. Per the hybrid model, the brand honors Light/Dark/Auto while the character themes are fixed-mode looks (matching how Nous ships themes; light mode lives as the Nous Blue theme). ConnectionViewModel gained an appTheme id pref (DataStore app_theme); the picker is a swatch gallery in AppearanceSettingsScreen, and the Light/Dark/Auto control disables + explains itself for fixed-mode themes.
• Flourish alignment. The glow/gradient/markdown-highlight flourishes across 13 files keyed off isSystemInDarkTheme(); they now read LocalBrand.current.isDark, so a fixed dark theme keeps its flourishes on a light-mode phone (and vice-versa). isSystemInDarkTheme() now lives only in Theme.kt (resolving Auto).
• Hot-swappable sphere. The core algorithm (MorphingSphereCore.kt, mirrored in preview/web/sphere.js) was left untouched — parity contract preserved. A new SphereSkin layer supplies per-state colors/params and declares its reactivity (voice/tools/intensity/gaze), gated inside MorphingSphere so reactive inputs are optional + detectable. SphereRegistry ships Adaptive (recolors to the active theme via LocalBrand), Classic (the original look), Aurora, Solar, and Mono. MorphingSphere gained a skin param defaulting to LocalSphereSkin.current, so all ~11 call sites are untouched; RelayApp provides the resolved skin + available set. User skins load from app-private spheres/*.json via SphereSpec (kotlinx.serialization, data-only, validated, invalid files skipped) → SphereSkinLoader; surfaced in the picker with capability badges and a "Custom" tag. Format documented in docs/sphere-spec.md.
• Verification. Reviewed-but-not-compiled — no Android SDK in this worktree and Studio owns builds. Brace/paren balance checked on all new/edited files; import resolution and call-site compatibility reviewed by hand. ./gradlew lint + on-device confirm pending (via Android Studio). Palettes are single BrandPalette literals, easy to tweak after an on-device pass.

2026-06-17 — ConnectionViewModel decomposition: extract transport/pairing/profile collaborators (ADR 34 follow-up)

Why. ConnectionViewModel was the one god-object the ADR 34 fence deferred — ~5,531 lines reaching across both sides of the upstream/relay package boundary (the HermesApiClient/GatewayChatClient/DashboardApiClient zoo and the relay ConnectionManager and pairing and profiles). Goal: move cohesive concerns into named, testable collaborators in a new viewmodel/connection/ package, behind the ViewModel's existing public surface, so the standard-vs-relay wiring lives in explicit seams. Pure mechanical, behavior-preserving extraction — the whole-module compile (production + every test source unchanged) is the public-API-preservation guard. Continues the ConnectionSwitchCoordinator precedent.

• PairingController (229 lines). Owns the paired-devices list (GET /sessions) + management (loadPairedDevices/revokeDevice/extendDevice/revokeChannelGrant, incl. the optimistic local removal and the full-grants-rebuild encoding) and the insecure-ack DataStore flags (insecureAckSeen/insecureReason/setInsecureAckComplete). Self-contained — nothing else reads its state except applyPairingPayload's insecureReason.value. The ViewModel delegates unchanged.
• UpstreamTransportController (269 lines). Owns the per-connection encrypted DashboardCookieStore cache, a single consolidated DashboardApiClient factory (was 4+ scattered build sites — the plan's headline), the cached GatewayChatClient (lazy build + mid-turn LAN/Tailscale retarget) with its availability tier + sticky-Unsupported verdict, and the per-endpoint capability snapshot + chatMode + the streamingEndpoint-preference resolution. The @Synchronized gateway-cache lock moved with the state (now the controller instance) — same mutual exclusion, different monitor. rebuildApiClient pushes the probed snapshot via setCapabilitiesAndMode.
• ProfileController (313 lines). Owns the merged agentProfiles list (relay auth.ok ∪ dashboard /api/profiles), the per-connection selected-profile state machine + its three persistence stores, profileDisplayAlias, activeSessionTransport, and the per-profile last-session restore. Because the state machine is co-driven by ViewModel-level lifecycle observers (connection switch / active-connection change / agent-profile arrival / gateway-availability settle), those observers stay in the ViewModel and call profileController.* lifecycle hooks in their original order — orchestration stays put; only state + logic moved, so the state machine is now unit-testable in isolation. The three stores are exposed as public vals so the connection-lifecycle orchestrators (removeConnection, duplicate-merge, resetAppData, saveLastSessionId) keep their clear/persist call sites byte-identical.
• Deferred: RelayTransportController (the plan's Step 2). Left in place per the plan's explicit "too entangled — don't force it" rule. ConnectionManager is referenced at ~38 ViewModel sites, including eager StateFlow initializers (relayConnectionState, activeEndpoint, effectiveApiServerUrl/RelayUrl/DashboardUrl, relayReady, insecureMode), the ConnectionSwitchCoordinator, and the relayHttpClient/ScreenCapture/tailscaleDetector URL-provider lambdas. The relay/route methods are inseparable from the central _relayUrl/_apiServerUrl state (also written by non-relay orchestrators + the switch coordinator) and from shared connection-store helpers (persistActiveConnectionUrls, mergedRouteCandidates); the route-probe public nested types (RouteProbeStatus, RelayReachable) are part of the frozen public API. A faithful extraction needs ~18 injected callbacks/refs — relocating coupling into lambdas rather than removing it, against the plan's "named seams, not emergent shared state" goal and at a regression risk the compile-plus-focused-slice verification can't catch. The other three controllers stand on their own; the ChatTransportProvider capstone (optional) is likewise not attempted.
• Result. ConnectionViewModel 5,531 → 5,089 lines (−442); cohesive transport/pairing/profile concerns now live in 811 lines of viewmodel/connection/ collaborators with narrow, provider-injected interfaces. Public API unchanged.
• Verification. :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin + :app:compileSideloadDebugUnitTestKotlin BUILD SUCCESSFUL after each extraction (every caller + test source compiles unchanged → public surface byte-identical). Focused slice *ArchitectureBoundaryTest (Konsist fence — viewmodel/connection/ is outside network.* so it imports both worlds freely, fence stays green) + *RelayUrlDeriverTest + *ConnectionSwitchTest passes. ./gradlew lint clean. On-device confirm pending (Bailey, via Studio).

2026-06-17 — Voice mode audit: relay bug fixes, spoken-output hint, Google enhanced voice

Why. A post-refactor audit of the standard and relay voice paths surfaced one reachable correctness bug plus several enhancement opportunities: leverage the desktop-style non-persisted per-turn context to instruct spoken-output formatting, and expose Google/Gemini enhanced voice (tone tags, voice/model/persona) that upstream added in recent PRs.

• Relay realtime-agent loop drift (correctness). The non-native ("render-after-Hermes") websocket loop in plugin/relay/realtime_agent/broker.py lacked a playback.drained branch, so the end-of-turn ack every client sends fell through to the unsupported-message error; the client treats voice.error as fatal and tore the session down on every turn whenever a non-native provider was configured. Extracted the client→server messages identical across the native and non-native loops (session.start, session.resume, client.ack, playback.drained, hermes.confirm) into a shared _handle_common_client_message dispatcher used by both loops so they can no longer drift, and added the missing input_audio.clear handling to the non-native path. The native loop's per-message provider_task.done() break check is preserved exactly. (hermes.confirm echo is by-design in both loops — the realtime model answers confirmations via its hermes_confirm tool, which returns forwarded_to_hermes_ui — so it was left unchanged.)
• TTS file leak. plugin/relay/voice.py synthesize streamed upstream-written ~/voice-memos/*.mp3 files and never deleted them. It now passes its own temp output_path into the TTS tool and deletes the artifact after streaming (reads bytes into memory and returns a web.Response so cleanup can run; audio is bounded by MAX_TEXT_CHARS).
• Realtime "lab" session binding. plugin/relay/realtime_voice.py handle_ws authenticated but never checked the websocket caller created the session. Added _auth_matches_session (mirrors voice_output.py) binding sessions to the creating principal's kind + device-id / token-hash, reusing voice_auth's shared AuthPrincipal / _bearer_from_request.
• Spoken-output formatting hint (standard + relay). Enriched the per-turn voice interface context (VoiceViewModel.STABLE_VOICE_INTERFACE_CONTEXT) to tell the model its reply will be spoken — short conversational sentences, no markdown/emoji/URLs. This rides the existing non-persisted system_message slot (upstream ephemeral_system_prompt), so it never lands in history. Because the gateway prompt.submit RPC has no system-message slot, ChatViewModel.startStream now forces any turn carrying a per-turn interface context (voice) onto an SSE endpoint so the hint always reaches the model.
• Provider-aware enhanced voice (Gemini + xAI) — relay path. /voice/synthesize accepts optional per-request overrides (voice, model, audio_tags, persona_prompt, language) mapped onto the active provider. Upstream's text_to_speech_tool has no per-call override surface, so the relay merges overrides into a config copy and invokes the provider generator directly — _generate_gemini_tts (voice/model/audio_tags tone-tag rewrite/inline persona via a temp file) or _generate_xai_tts (voice→voice_id, audio_tags→auto_speech_tags, language). Gemini's audio-tag rewrite fails soft when the auxiliary LLM is unavailable. /voice/config advertises a provider-aware tts.enhanced capability block. Android plumbs EnhancedVoiceOverrides from new persisted prefs through RelayVoiceClient.synthesize + the relay adapter, with an "Enhanced Voice ()" Voice Settings card rendered from the capability flags. OpenAI is excluded — upstream exposes only voice/speed for it (no instructions tone steering).
• Enhanced voice on the streaming renderer (/voice/output). Because voice_output_enabled defaults true, the streaming renderer — not /voice/synthesize — is the normal relay playback path, so the per-request override was effectively fallback-only. Added xAI auto_speech_tags as a per-profile voice_output: setting threaded through every layer (config dataclass + env + YAML loader, voice_output_settings, profile override, VoiceOutputSession, _provider_options, config_payload, the PATCH /voice/output/config allow-list), mirroring text_normalization. The render applies upstream_voice.apply_xai_speech_tags() (fail-soft) to each chunk before the voice_lab xai_tts renderer — keeping voice_lab standalone and the upstream import in the patch-point. Android: VoiceOutputConfig.auto_speech_tags + updateVoiceOutputConfig(autoSpeechTags=) + an "Expressive speech tags" switch in the Hermes Chat + Voice Output card (xai_tts, persisted with the existing Save buttons). No Gemini streaming provider in voice_lab, so Gemini enhanced voice stays /voice/synthesize-only.
• Render-path visibility (troubleshooting). The streaming-vs-synthesize decision was logcat-only. Added a per-session DiagnosticsLog entry naming the active path and a persistent "Render path" row in the Voice Settings card (derived from voiceOutputConfig).
• Docs. docs/upstream-surface-matrix.md gained a "Voice Surfaces (standard vs. relay)" section with an explicit route-ownership table (every /voice/* route is relay-owned; only dashboard /api/audio/* is upstream — no upstream streaming/WS audio route) and an enhanced-voice matrix across both relay paths; docs/spec.md Phase V documents the override, the tts.enhanced block, and voice_output auto_speech_tags; user-docs/features/voice.md gained an "Enhanced Voice (Gemini & xAI)" section + the streaming speech-tags toggle and corrected the stale ~/voice-memos note.
• Standard voice polish. Pre-flight 25 MB transcribe guard (matches upstream _MAX_TRANSCRIPTION_UPLOAD_BYTES) + friendly 413/400 copy in StandardHermesVoiceClient; hardened the dashboard audio HEAD probe to also try /api/audio/speak.
• Verification. Python: py_compile on all touched relay modules; relay voice suite green at 103 tests except one pre-existing xAI-OAuth env-dependent failure (identical on the unmodified tree). New tests: non-native playback.drained regression (red-on-bug/green-on-fix), Gemini + xAI synthesize-override integration, override-parser + capability-block units, auto_speech_tags PATCH round-trip, apply_xai_speech_tags call-through/fail-soft. Kotlin not built locally (Studio + ./gradlew lint are the pre-push gate).

2026-06-17 — Upstream/Relay isolation: package fence + Konsist rule + vanilla contract test

Why. The load-bearing "standard path = vanilla upstream" invariant was enforced only by CLAUDE.md convention (network clients were cleanly named but co-located in one package, so nothing stopped a standard-path file importing a relay client), and the standard path had never been validated against true vanilla upstream (staging runs the fork with relay routes compiled in). ADR 34 records the decision; this lands all three parts. Net-additive, behavior-preserving.

• Package fence. Split app/.../network/ into network/{upstream,relay,shared} — main + mirrored test sources (38 files moved, ~83 touched for import repointing). VoiceAudioClient.kt split three ways: the VoiceAudioClient interface + AutoVoiceAudioClient router → shared; StandardHermesVoiceClient → upstream; RelayVoiceAudioClientAdapter → relay (co-locating them would force one file to import both worlds). ChatHandler → upstream (per ADR 3 chat never flows through the relay multiplexer; the handler is fed only by upstream transports). AndroidManifest GatewayKeepAliveService FQCN and the ci-android.yml RelayUrlDeriverTest path updated for the move.
• Hidden coupling surfaced. The move exposed the one real upstream→relay dependency the import grep couldn't see (it was a same-package bare reference): ChatHandler renders phone-action bubbles from the bridge's LocalDispatchResult DTO. Resolved by moving that passive DTO to network.shared — both sides now depend only on shared to speak it.
• Konsist boundary test. ArchitectureBoundaryTest (scopeFromProduction) asserts upstream ⊥ relay and shared imports neither. Added to the ci-android.yml explicit --tests list (the broad aggregate hangs, issue #32, so a named test is the only way it runs in CI). Konsist 0.17.3 resolves clean on Kotlin 2.3.21.
• Vanilla-upstream contract. scripts/check-upstream-route-contract.py source-parses upstream's declared routes (aiohttp add_* + FastAPI decorators) — no server boot, no pip, no model keys. Two tiers: REQUIRED standard-path routes fail the build if missing; mode-dependent routes (auth-gate, /api/pty, /v1/models) only warn. A fork-marker guard refuses to pass against our own fork. ci-contract.yml checks out vanilla upstream with no relay bootstrap, asserts the checkout is vanilla, runs the contract; weekly schedule tracks upstream main as a drift siren, PR/push use a pinned ref. Notable: in the checked upstream commit the dashboard exposes no /api/auth/ws-ticket REST route (it uses the injected session token + a ws ticket query param), so the Desktop-style auth-gate routes are advisory, not required.
• Deferred (tracked in ADR 34). The ConnectionViewModel transport-strategy split — the one true god-object leak — is intentionally deferred as the riskiest change; the fence now contains the blast radius. Same-package redundant imports left behind by the move (e.g. a relay file importing its own network.relay sibling) are harmless and not cleaned. The contract job's PR-run UPSTREAM_REF defaults to main until pinned to a confirmed-public known-good SHA.
• Verification. :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin + :app:compileSideloadDebugUnitTestKotlin BUILD SUCCESSFUL; ArchitectureBoundaryTest passes; contract script PASS against the local upstream clone (12/12 REQUIRED routes). ./gradlew lint: BUILD SUCCESSFUL (clean, all four variants).

2026-06-17 — Gateway parity: live session.info sync + YOLO/Fast + stale-state refreshes

Why. An audit (full tui_gateway surface vs. what the official desktop uses vs. what we used) found we were dropping most session.info fields and fetching several server lists once. Goal: augment upstream, never show stale state. Verified every contract against the up-to-date upstream clone; a parallel review confirmed the new RPCs match config.set exactly and caught three race-window bugs (fixed).

• More of session.info consumed live. The interceptor now also surfaces reasoning_effort, credential_warning, yolo, and fast (added to serverReasoningEffort/serverCredentialWarning/serverYolo/serverFast flows); startGatewayStateSync gained one guarded collector each. A /reasoning change made on the desktop/TUI now reflects instantly instead of only on turn-complete.
• Credential warnings no longer silent. session.info.credential_warning (present only when the active provider key is missing/invalid) is surfaced once per distinct warning as a ⚠ system notice — dedup'd against the constant session.info echoes, cleared when the key is fixed. Previously such turns just failed silently.
• YOLO + Fast mode. New session-scoped toggles in the agent sheet (config.set yolo value 1/0 scope session; config.set fast value fast/normal) with optimistic set + rollback, live state from session.info.yolo/fast, and reset across every session/profile/connection switch. YOLO (approval bypass) renders loud — error caption + an errorContainer "Approvals are OFF" banner — and stays ephemeral so a backgrounded app can't leave global auto-approve armed.
• No fetch-once staleness. refreshSkills() + refreshModels() (SSE /v1/models) now fire on agent-sheet open alongside the personality/model refreshes, so server-side skill/model changes appear without an app reload.
• Review fixes. activateGatewayProfile now nulls YOLO/Fast (the missing 5th clear site); the setYolo/setFast optimistic rollback guards against a session switch landing during a slow prewarm (re-check client identity + only roll back if we still own the value).
• Verification. :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest compiles clean; contract-fidelity review = all PASS. Touches only GatewayChatClient/ChatViewModel/ConnectionInfoSheet. The command-palette skills-refresh-on-open is the one optional follow-up (palette lives in the co-owned ChatScreen.kt). ./gradlew lint + on-device confirm still pending.

2026-06-17 — Personality: server-owned on the gateway + picker-command handling

Why. Two reports against the personality flow. (1) Sending /personality (no arg) showed an agent reply bubble that appeared then vanished; (2) /personality none returned a confirmation but the app never reflected that the overlay was cleared. Verified the actual contract against the up-to-date upstream clone: /personality is a picker command (hermes_cli/commands.py _PICKER_COMMANDS) that the desktop/TUI never raw-forward — a bare command expands to an arg step, and a named/none value is applied via config.set {key:"personality"}, which persists display.personality + applies ephemeral_system_prompt live to the session and emits session.info. The app instead blindly forwarded every slash to slash.exec/command.dispatch, had no none concept, and never consumed session.info — so it kept injecting a stale per-turn personality prompt that fought the server.

• Slash results stopped vanishing. ChatHandler.loadMessageHistory did a wholesale reload preserving only voice-intent-/steer-/ask- ids; system-notice- (every addSystemNotice slash result) was wiped by the next turn's reconcile. Added system-notice- to the preserve allow-list — fixes the disappearing bubble for /personality and all other inline command output.
• Gateway client owns personality. GatewayChatClient gained serverPersonality: StateFlow<String?>, getPersonality() (config.get), and setPersonality() (config.set {key:"personality", value, session_id}), plus a connection-level session.info interceptor that captures the personality field even with no turn in flight. "none"/"default"/"neutral" all clear the overlay (upstream _validate_personality conflates them).
• ViewModel mirrors server truth. selectPersonality pushes via config.set on the gateway (optimistic, rolled back on a server reject with a now-durable notice) and only drives per-turn injection on the SSE fallbacks; startStream skips the persona-prompt injection entirely on the gateway so it can't double-apply. A startPersonalitySync collector + a ready-socket config.get seed keep _selectedPersonality reconciled to whatever the server/desktop/TUI set.
• Picker-command UX. /personality is intercepted client-side like the desktop: bare /personality opens the agent sheet's Personality section (new openPersonalityPicker one-shot), /personality <name|none> routes to selectPersonality. The synthetic client "Default" row was removed — the picker is now None + the server-provided personalities (the configured default, if any, shows tagged (default) and highlights when active); upstream's active value is just none or a name, so the client shouldn't invent a third state. Added a /personality none palette entry. AgentDisplay treats none/neutral as cleared-overlay aliases (base identity, not the literal word) via isClearedPersonality.
• /model sibling fixed. /model is the other picker command (_PICKER_COMMANDS = {model, skin, personality}; skin is cli_only and already excluded on mobile). A bare /model had the same raw-forward dead-end — now it opens the model picker (openModelPicker one-shot → ModelPickerSheet), while /model <args> stays a real gateway switch.
• Live model/provider sync. The session.info interceptor now also surfaces model + provider (serverModel/serverProvider flows); the VM's startGatewayStateSync (renamed from startPersonalitySync) drives the model pill from them, so a /model switch on the desktop/TUI reflects live. Format-safe — the pill normalizes through AgentDisplay.displayModelName, and session.info keeps model/provider separate like model.options.
• No app reload for server-supplied data. refreshPersonalities() (list + default + active config.get) now fires on agent-sheet open alongside refreshModelOptions, so a personality added/changed server-side appears without restarting the app; the active value also tracks live via session.info.
• Profile SOUL double-inject fixed. On the gateway the session is bound to the selected profile (SOUL applied server-side) AND the personality rides config.set — so startStream now sends NO persona/profile prompt on the gateway (only the phone-status block), where it previously re-injected the profile's systemMessage on top of the server's own SOUL. SSE fallbacks keep the client-side precedence rules.
• Verification. :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest compiles the full module clean; new AgentDisplayTest cases for isClearedPersonality / none-as-cleared pass. ./gradlew lint still the pre-push gate. On-device confirm of the live gateway round-trip pending.

2026-06-16 — Per-surface release notes (plugin + CLI parity with Android)

Why. Plugin and CLI GitHub Release bodies were static boilerplate baked into the workflow YAML (version-interpolated, but change-agnostic — a reader couldn't tell what a plugin-v*/cli-v* release actually changed). Only Android had real per-release notes (RELEASE_NOTES.md via body_path). Brought plugin and CLI up to the same Summary/Added/Changed/Fixed format.

• New notes files. PLUGIN_RELEASE_NOTES.md and CLI_RELEASE_NOTES.md at repo root — hand-written per release, same structure/scrub as RELEASE_NOTES.md. They keep the valuable Install/Verify sections but add a per-release "What's changed" block.
• Version stays auto-accurate. Rather than hardcoding the version in install commands (three spots for CLI), the files use __VERSION__ (and __TAG__ for CLI) placeholders; each release workflow sed-renders them into a temp body before softprops/action-gh-release consumes it via body_path. Human writes prose, pipeline fills the version.
• Workflow wiring. release-plugin.yml (package job, already checks out) and release-cli.yml got a "Render release notes" step + body_path: in place of inline body:. The CLI publish-release job had no actions/checkout (it only downloaded build artifacts) — added one so the notes file is present in that job.
• Docs. RELEASE.md: §2 cross-references all three per-surface files; the plugin release recipe now updates + commits PLUGIN_RELEASE_NOTES.md; the CLI CI-behavior section documents CLI_RELEASE_NOTES.md + the placeholder substitution.
• Verification. All three release workflow YAMLs parse (yaml.safe_load); plugin/CLI confirmed on body_path with no leftover inline body. Placeholder sed substitution validated by inspection. No release cut.

2026-06-16 — Dev-velocity tooling: Play auto-publish, worktree workflow, desktop UI preview

Why. Three workflow improvements to expedite shipping: automate the manual Play Console upload step, write down the worktree mental model, and cut the Compose UI edit→build→install loop.

• Play Console auto-upload (CI). gradle-play-publisher 4.0.0 was already configured in app/build.gradle.kts (play { }, DRAFT status) but release-android.yml never invoked it — Play upload was fully manual. Added a publish step to the release job, gated on a new optional PLAY_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON secret and skipped for prerelease tags (dash in version). It runs publishGooglePlayReleaseBundle --track=production, landing the build as a Production draft so a human still clicks Start rollout. Closed the multi-flavor footgun structurally: a playConfigs { register("sideload") { enabled.set(false) } } block means only the googlePlay flavor can ever reach Play, even via the aggregate task. RELEASE.md updated (secrets table + §5 note). When the secret is unset CI prints a "skipped" summary line and behaves exactly as before.

• Worktree workflow doc. Added docs/worktree-workflow.md — a one-paragraph mental model (worktree = second folder on the same .git, warm caches per branch), four rules, the Orca-manages-worktrees note (use orca-cli worktree commands, not raw git worktree, here), raw-git worktree fallback + gotchas, and how it maps onto the existing main/dev no-ff release contract. Complements RELEASE.md "Branching policy" / decisions.md §23 without duplicating them.

• Desktop UI preview module (:ui-preview). New JVM-only Compose for Desktop module for hot-reload UI iteration on the PC. Compose Multiplatform 1.10.3 (bundles stable Compose Hot Reload, enabled by default for desktop targets) against the repo's Kotlin 2.3.21 / JVM 17. Follows the existing sphere pattern: shares the platform-agnostic MorphingSphereCore.kt algorithm from :relay-ui via a Gradle srcDir include (excluding the Android MorphingSphere.kt renderer, whose @Preview/androidx.*.tooling imports don't exist on desktop), and provides a thin DesktopSphere.kt renderer + a Main.kt gallery with a state selector and live sliders. Additive — include(":ui-preview") in settings.gradle.kts and a .gitignore build entry; no shipped artifact depends on it. First-sync verification pending: the module pins the one CMP version in the repo, to be confirmed on the next Studio sync (realign per the Compose compatibility matrix if Kotlin/CMP drift). Run via the IDE "Run with Compose Hot Reload" gutter or ./gradlew :ui-preview:run.

• Verification. Kotlin/Gradle changes not built locally (per workflow: builds happen in Studio; ./gradlew lint is the pre-push gate). YAML and Gradle edits are additive and reviewed by inspection; the :ui-preview module is isolated behind one settings include and verified-on-first-sync.

2026-06-16 — fix v1.0.0 connect force-close (corrupt keyset) + dashboard button contrast

Why. Two reports against v1.0.0 from the same reporter. (1) A force-close after a successful pair/connect on both Standard and Relay modes, surviving a cache clear. (2) Dashboard relay-plugin buttons rendered with text the same colour as their background. The crash was opaque from code review alone — every obvious connect-path was already guarded — until a Play Console stacktrace pinned it.

• Crash — AEADBadTagException escaping the legacy token-store constructor. The Play Console stack showed EncryptedSharedPreferences.create → LegacyEncryptedPrefsTokenStore.buildPrefs (SessionTokenStore.kt) → AuthManager.store. EncryptedSharedPreferences decrypts its Tink keyset eagerly on construction, so a corrupt legacy keyset (the classic post-upgrade / post-restore case: the encrypted blob persists but the hardware master key it was sealed against is gone) throws AES-GCM tag-mismatch straight out of the constructor. Every accessor on the store already healed via resetPrefs(), and KeystoreTokenStore hides construction behind tryCreate's try/return null — but the legacy store is new-ed directly (the fallback when tryCreate returns null, and the migration source), so nothing caught a throwing constructor. It crashed in both modes because both call AuthManager.store to read the session token. A cache clear didn't help because the keyset lives in data, not cache.
  • Fix — heal at construction + a non-persistent last resort. LegacyEncryptedPrefsTokenStore now builds via buildPrefsResilient(): on any build failure it deletes the corrupt prefs file and rebuilds a fresh keyset against the current master key (the token in the unreadable file was lost regardless, so the user re-pairs). As defence-in-depth, AuthManager.store() wraps the legacy fallback in runCatching and degrades to a new in-memory InMemoryTokenStore if even the rebuild fails (a fundamentally broken keystore) — the app stays up and the user re-pairs each cold start instead of force-closing. Corrected the inaccurate KeystoreTokenStore comment that claimed its constructor "can't throw".
• Dashboard button contrast (#71). plugin/dashboard/src/styles.css scopes a form-control reset .hermes-relay-plugin button { color: inherit }. Scoping bumps its specificity to (0,1,1), which outranks the host shadcn Button's text-*-foreground utilities (0,1,0), so solid-variant buttons painted their label in the inherited container foreground — which on the dashboard theme nearly matches the button background. Removing the rule (the reporter's local workaround) would break inputs/textareas (they need light text on the dark --hr-bg) and ghost/outline buttons (they rely on inheritance). Fix follows the file's existing .bg-white { …; color } idiom: solid variants .bg-primary / .bg-secondary / .bg-destructive re-assert their paired foreground colour at (0,2,0), winning back over the reset without !important. dist/style.css re-synced via the package's copyFileSync build step.
• Verification. Dashboard CSS verified by analysis against the variants actually used (destructive×6, secondary×1, bare-default bg-primary; outline×23 / ghost×4 correctly keep inheriting). Kotlin changes are localized to SessionTokenStore.kt + AuthManager.kt; on-device confirmation and gradlew lint pending a Studio build.

2026-06-15 — Claude review required check and Dependabot PR cleanup

Why. Open Dependabot PRs targeting main were blocked by the required claude-review check. Re-running a current Dependabot PR showed the Claude GitHub App token exchange succeeds, but anthropics/claude-code-action stops before review because the actor is dependabot[bot] and bot actors are not allow-listed. Dependabot-triggered runs also do not expose the same secret surface as human-authored PRs, so forcing Claude review on those PRs is the wrong gate.

• Workflow fix. .github/workflows/claude-code-review.yml now detects bot-authored PRs with github.event.pull_request.user.type == 'Bot' and emits a passing no-op claude-review job. Human-authored PRs still run the full Claude Code Review action; aggregate dev -> main release PRs still use the existing no-op skip.
• Workflow self-change guard. PRs that edit claude-code-review.yml now also no-op after checkout when the changed-file list includes that workflow. The Claude action requires the workflow file to match the default branch before app-token exchange, so workflow maintenance PRs must not invoke the action they are changing.
• Dependency PR cleanup. Batched overlapping Gradle version-catalog updates after the required-check fix: Kotlin 2.3.21, Compose BOM 2026.05.01, Navigation Compose 2.9.8, Activity Compose 1.13.0, DataStore 1.2.1, Markdown Renderer 0.41.0, Media3 1.10.1, and Foojay resolver 1.0.0. The Android Gradle Plugin and softprops/action-gh-release bumps were already present on main, so their stale Dependabot PRs were superseded by current main state.
• Verification. Confirmed CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN was refreshed in repository secrets after Claude Code GitHub setup. Re-ran Claude Code Review on PR #46 and confirmed the current blocker was bot-actor policy, not GitHub App installation. git diff --check, .\gradlew.bat lint, .\gradlew.bat assembleDebug, and the focused :app:testSideloadDebugUnitTest CI slice pass with ANDROID_HOME pointed at the local SDK.

2026-06-14 — profile chat: turn-complete wipe + cross-transport session continuity

Why. v1.0.0 polish (on dev, into release PR #61). After the per-profile session work landed, on-device testing of a non-default agent showed: a turn streamed fine (thinking + reply), then on turn-complete the chat switched to a new/empty session untouched; the just-finished conversation only reappeared in the drawer a moment later. Watched adb logcat during a repro to confirm root cause.

• Bug 1 — turn-complete reload wiped non-default-profile turns. ChatViewModel.onCompleteCb (and the error-recovery path) reconcile the transcript after a gateway/sessions turn by reloading server-authoritative history. They called the bare client.getMessages(sid) = api_server /api/sessions/{id}/messages (no profile=), which reads the launch state.db. A gateway turn on a non-default profile persists into that profile's own state.db, so the row 404s — and getMessages maps !isSuccessful → emptyList() (not an error), so loadMessageHistory(emptyList()) silently blanked the just-finished turn. Default profile was immune (its sessions live in the launch DB). Fix: both reconciliation reloads now route through loadSessionHistory(sid), which already prefers the profile-scoped /api/sessions/{id}/messages?profile= loader on gateway connections. Confirmed live: log showed the turn on session 20260614_192846_… under a non-default profile, ending at message.complete.

• Bug 2 — sessions are not portable across the two chat transports (continuity). The same logcat showed session.resume failed for api_1781479723_f60ca534 — creating fresh (session not found): every send on the non-default profile forked a new session instead of continuing. Verified against the upstream clone why: the two transports use different DBs and id namespaces, and a session created by one cannot be resumed by the other on a non-default profile.

  • api_server SSE path (/v1/runs, /api/sessions/.../chat/stream) — ids api_<unixsecs>_<hex>; _ensure_session_db() is a bare SessionDB() (api_server.py:1001) = the launch state.db. The api_server has no per-request ?profile= handling at all (profile is read only via get_active_profile_name(), the process profile), so the ?profile= the client appends is ignored for storage.
  • gateway (/api/ws) — ids YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_<hex>; session.create/session.resume both bind _profile_home(profile) (server.py:677), so create and resume hit the same per-profile state.db. Gateway-native sessions therefore resume fine; only a cross-transport (api_) id resumed over the gateway 404s → fork. The "auto" resolver flipping (gateway used only when GatewayAvailability.Ready — dashboard reachable + Manage signed-in) is what produces an api_ session on the SSE path that a later gateway send can't resume.
  • Fix — transport-aware persistence. ProfileSessionStore is now keyed by SessionTransport (GATEWAY/SSE) as well as connection+profile, so a gateway session and an api_server session never clobber one slot. saveLastSessionId buckets by the id's namespace (SessionTransport.forSessionId — the prefix is the server's ground truth about what can resume it, robust to a per-turn SSE fallback). refreshLastSessionForProfile restores the slot for the active resolved transport, and defers while the gateway probe is still Unknown (rather than guessing SSE and restoring an unresumable id); a _gatewayAvailability collector re-runs the restore once the probe settles. A null save clears only the active transport's slot and only when the transport is known — never during the defer window or right after a connection switch (availability reset to Unknown) — so a still-valid session isn't wiped before the collector can restore it. The key shape changed, so pre-existing untransported slots are dropped once (also clearing the exact stale cross-transport ids that caused the forks).

• Bug 3 — new session missing from the drawer until a manual reload. The only post-creation session-list refresh fires ~160ms after onSessionId (RelayApp LaunchedEffect) — mid-stream, before the new session's first message is persisted server-side, so the dashboard /api/sessions?profile= list omits it and the drawer carries it only via ChatHandler's optimistic row (which a later switchProfileContext clear can drop). onCompleteCb reloaded the current session's messages but never re-synced the list. Fix: onCompleteCb now calls refreshSessions() after the post-turn reconciliation (by message.complete the list includes the new session, with authoritative title/metadata), and opening the drawer (LaunchedEffect(drawerState.isOpen)) re-syncs too — so a session created here or on another device shows without a manual reload. The optimistic active row is still preserved by updateSessions if the server list lags.

• Scope note. Recovering an orphaned legacy api_ conversation under a profile is out of scope (it lives in the launch DB with no real profile association server-side). Going forward, a connection that stays on the gateway keeps full continuity; the fix prevents the mid-conversation fork/wipe and keeps each transport's last session distinct.

• Verification. compileGooglePlayDebugKotlin green; :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests ProfileSessionStoreTest green (rewrote for the transport key; added gateway/SSE slot-independence, forSessionId/forEndpoint, and clear-scope cases); lintGooglePlayDebug green. Confirmed on-device (debug APK via ADB): a non-default agent turn created a clean gateway session 20260614_210122_… and completed with no wipe, and a later turn resumed without creating fresh — the fork is gone (session.resume failed absent from the log). Bug 2 root cause cross-checked against the upstream clone (api_server.py, tui_gateway/server.py, web_server.py). Bug 3 drawer behaviour confirmed visually on-device.

2026-06-14 — per-profile sessions, the right way (upstream-verified) + switch QoL

Why. v1.0.0 polish (on dev, into release PR #61). After testing the prior session's profile work: the switch swapped the agent but (1) the reply got reset / no in-chat signal of the switch, and (2) the drawer didn't filter per profile. Decision: clone upstream and follow the official desktop. Doing so revealed the prior a1a758d ("per-profile drawer via gateway session.list") was built on a false premise.

• Cloned NousResearch/hermes-agent (outside the repo tree) and read the real tui_gateway/server.py, hermes_cli/web_server.py, and apps/desktop/src/{store/profile.ts, app/session/hooks/use-session-actions.ts}. Ground truth: gateway session.list reads ONE process-global SessionDB pinned to the launch profile (the per-session profile_home ContextVar override only applies during resume/prompt turns) — it takes only limit, returns no profile field, and cannot scope per-profile over one socket. The desktop gets per-profile sidebars by spawning a backend per profile (a topology a single remote socket can't replicate) and stamps profile client-side. Memory: gateway-profile-session-topology.
• Correct source = dashboard REST. GET /api/sessions?profile=<name> (web_server.py:2554) and …/{id}/messages?profile=<name> (6528) open that profile's own state.db directly (_open_session_db_for_profile) and tag rows with profile — the exact mechanism behind the desktop sidebar, same surface Android already uses (dashboard cookie session), same id-space the gateway resume reads. So: new DashboardApiClient.listSessions(profile, limit) + getSessionMessages(sessionId, profile); ConnectionViewModel.listProfileScopedSessions() / loadProfileScopedMessages(); ChatViewModel.refreshSessions() + loadSessionHistory() route gateway connections through them (api_server shared list stays the off-dashboard fallback). Removed the misleading gateway listSessions() + its test. Without the messages half, tapping a non-default profile's session would open empty — the drawer was only half-working.
• Switch jank. activateGatewayProfile() was calling createNewChat() on top of the profile-context switch RelayApp already fires on a profile change — a redundant second reset racing the first (the "reply typing → new chat appears" effect). Now it only clearSession()s the live gateway session so the next turn rebinds the profile; the context switch alone cancels the in-flight turn (unified activeStream handle → gateway session.interrupt) and resets the thread. Re-tapping the active profile leaves the thread be (desktop parity).
• QoL (all four landed). (A) empty chat now reads "Chat with <Agent>" + the agent's description so a switch is legible in the thread, not just the header (the desktop's fresh-session intro); (B) a leading delay(160) in the profile-context LaunchedEffect coalesces the lastSessionId null→value churn so switching to a profile with history skips the intermediate empty paint (LaunchedEffect cancels the prior coroutine on re-fire); (C) ChatHandler.updateSessions preserves the active optimistic row when the min_messages=1 list omits it, and sendMessageInternal stamps a new chat's drawer row with the first user message; (D) drawer shows a spinner instead of flashing "No sessions yet" while a profile's list loads.
• Cold-start profile hydration (follow-up, 60f9b7a+1). Reported: on cold open the header shows the default agent; opening the agent sheet takes a beat, then snaps to the persisted agent and re-scopes the chat. Root cause: the persisted profile is stored as a NAME and only resolves once the connection's profile list arrives, but on a dashboard/gateway connection the relay auth.ok list is empty and _dashboardProfiles was fetched lazily — only by the agent sheet's LaunchedEffect. So the resolve couldn't happen until the picker opened. Fix: ConnectionViewModel now calls refreshDashboardProfiles() eagerly at the end of the activeConnectionId.collect (after rebuildChatApiClient()), and clears _dashboardProfiles on connectionSwitchEvents so a pending name can't resolve against the previous connection's list. The agentProfiles collector then resolves the pending name as soon as the eager fetch lands — header + chat are correct from launch.
• Verification. compileGooglePlayDebugKotlin green; :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests DashboardApiClientTest/GatewayChatClientTest/AgentDisplayTest green (added listSessions_* + getSessionMessages_* request-shape tests); lintGooglePlayDebug green; assembleGooglePlayDebug green. On-device profile-switch + drawer behavior pending confirmation (live driving paused). The one unverified spot stays the same: the dashboard /api/sessions?profile= contract is read from upstream source, not yet round-tripped against a live server.

2026-06-13 — profile hot-swap + agent-sheet dropdowns + What's New rendering

Why. v1.0.0 polish (on dev, into release PR #61). Reported: switching a gateway profile from chat didn't change the agent or the top bar (same class as the prior model-switch issue). Plus: make the agent-sheet pickers dropdowns to save space, and render the in-app What's New cleanly.

• Profile hot-swap (d8d9ce7). Root cause: selectProfile only set client state + rebuilt the SSE client; the gateway's bare prompt.submit carries no profile, so the live agent kept the server's active profile. (SSE was fine — it sends profileName per-request.) An initial attempt mis-targeted personality (routed persona turns to SSE) and was reverted: the target is the gateway profile, and the official desktop hot-swaps cleanly (no fresh session). So: mirror the verified model switch — GatewayChatClient.setProfile(name) → config.set {key:"profile", value, session_id}, session-scoped so the live session's agent (SOUL+model+skills) swaps in place. ChatViewModel.activateGatewayProfile() wires it (prewarm → setProfile → "Switched to X" notice → refresh model.options); the profile rows call it next to selectProfile. Unit test setProfile hot-swaps the live session via config set locks the RPC shape (key=profile/value/session_id). CAVEAT: the exact upstream key ("profile") is inferred from _apply_model_switch (not in this repo — upstream tui_gateway; live testing paused). A wrong key surfaces as a "Couldn't switch profile" error, not a silent no-op — pending live verification.
• Agent-sheet dropdowns. New CollapsiblePickerSection (reuses SectionLabel + chevron; collapsed by default, header shows "Title — current value"). Wrapped Profile / Personality / Model — the rich rows (SOUL/skills badges, provider grouping) live behind the header now. Compile + assemble green; layout pending on-device review (live device driving paused).
• In-app What's New (b4a8c7c). WhatsNewDialog pasted raw whats_new.txt into one Text (literal *, flat headers). Now parses the format → version subtitle, bold headers, real • bullets. Lint green.
• Verification. :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests GatewayChatClientTest green; compileGooglePlayDebugKotlin + assembleGooglePlayDebug green; lintGooglePlayDebug green (hot-swap) / pending (dropdowns). On-device profile/dropdown behavior pending confirmation (live driving paused).

2026-06-13 — open/save attachments + cold-start connect-button gate

Why. v1.0.0 polish, two asks: (1) let users open/save chat images and other attachments; (2) stop the chat empty-state from flashing the "Connect to Hermes" button on cold start while we're already logged in and just hydrating.

• Open/save attachments. New util/MediaSaver.kt — permission-free save via MediaStore scoped storage on API 29+ (images → Pictures/Hermes-Relay, files → Download/Hermes-Relay); pre-Q falls back to the share sheet (no WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE request for a niche path). Share stages bytes into the existing FileProvider hermes-media/ cache (can't ACTION_SEND an http:// URL). Saves preserve original bytes — read back from the cached content:// (inbound) or base64 (outbound), not a re-encode — and a magic-byte sniff sets the right extension for remote images with no usable content-type. New ui/components/ChatImageViewer.kt — full-screen Dialog with detectTransformGestures pinch-zoom + pan, double-tap 1×/2.5×, Share/Save/Close overlaid past the status bar inset; decoupled display (Coil model OR ImageBitmap) from a suspend bytesProvider() for save/share. Wired: ChatImageContent.RemoteChatImage tap → viewer (remote URL, bytes via OkHttp GET); InboundAttachmentCard.ImageRender tap → viewer (bitmap + cached bytes); FileCardRender now combinedClickable (tap = open external as before, long-press → Open/Share/Save dropdown).
• Cold-start gate. Root cause: ConnectionStore seeds _connections = emptyList() / _activeConnectionId = null and hydrates DataStore async, so "nothing configured" and "not loaded yet" are indistinguishable — and chatReady (client != null && reachable) is false during launch, so the empty-state painted the Connect to Hermes CTA for a beat. Fix: ConnectionStore.isHydrated StateFlow (flips true in the init finally, even on read failure) → ConnectionViewModel.chatConnectState (Connecting / Ready / NeedsConnection, seeded Connecting). ChatScreen's empty-state switches on it: quiet "Connecting to Hermes…" spinner + low-key "Manage connections" escape hatch while hydrating or while a configured connection comes up; the CTA renders only once hydration confirms no connection exists.
• Verified e2e on-device (USB ADB, R5CY61QE9CT). Cold-start gate: force-stop → relaunch shows splash → hydration checklist → chat with history, never the connect CTA. Attachment viewer: had gpt-5.5 echo ![sunset](picsum…), the inline image rendered, tap → full-screen viewer, Save wrote Pictures/Hermes-Relay/sunset.jpg (21,590 B; magic-byte sniff turned the image/* guess into .jpg) with a "Saved to Pictures/Hermes-Relay" toast. Found + fixed one bug mid-verify: the share path staged sunset.bin (ensureNamed mapped the image/* wildcard → .bin); stageForShare now sniffs too — re-verified the share sheet reads "1 image". Watch the comment image/* → image/…: the literal /* in a KDoc opened a nested block comment and swallowed the file (memory: kotlin-nested-comments-and-pipefail). lintGooglePlayDebug green; :app:assembleGooglePlayDebug green.

2026-06-13 — gateway turn survival across network blips + chat UI (images, scroll, empty bubble)

Why. v1.0.0 polish. Reported: a gateway chat turn that "restarted/reloaded" and replied to an earlier message after switching to Settings mid-tool-call. Root-caused, fixed, and verified e2e on-device (USB ADB, forced Wi-Fi drop). Then folded in image rendering, scroll, and the empty-bubble polish.

• Root cause (the big one). Mid-turn network handling cancelled/lost gateway turns three ways, all confirmed on-device via a forced 4s Wi-Fi drop mid-turn: (1) the old "rejoin via session.resume" was wrong — upstream tui_gateway session.resume mints a NEW live id + a fresh agent from DB and does NOT reattach to the running thread (which keeps emitting on the OLD id over the shared gateway stream); the old code gave up in ~24ms anyway. (2) a transient blip made ConnectionManager.onLost mark the active endpoint unreachable + re-resolve, switching LAN→Tailscale mid-blip, which rebuilt the chat client and cancelled the turn. (3) activeGatewayChatClient() shut down the old client on a URL change → activeTurn.cancel(), and updateApiClient() cancelled the stream.
• Fix (1d10cae). GatewayChatClient: reconnect the socket ONLY and KEEP the live session id (no resume), retry with backoff up to 20s. ConnectionManager: defer the loss reaction behind a 6s grace (cancelled by onAvailable) + endpoint hysteresis (don't switch DOWN in priority on a transient probe miss). Chokepoints: activeGatewayChatClient keeps an active-turn client (GatewayChatClient.hasActiveTurn()), updateApiClient skips gateway turns (activeStreamIsGateway), route-change rebuild deferred while streaming (setChatStreaming). Reconcile server history on error too. Rewrote the misleading rejoin unit test to assert the real no-resume recovery (tail on the ORIGINAL session id). On-device: turn now rejoins keeping the session; no more cancelled. RESIDUAL: a genuine sustained mid-turn route switch still fails at the 180s watchdog (then reconcile surfaces the answer) — proper fix is route-following (mutable dashboard URL + resume same session); follow-up.
• Chat UI (1d10cae + 71a6c60). Empty timestamp-only assistant bubble suppressed (thinking/tools-only message). Transport-fail no longer wedges the composer in "streaming" behind a dead Stop (reset cancel flag per turn + finalize streaming on swallowed cancel). Generated images: Coil 3.4.0 + explicit OkHttp ImageLoader, parse ![alt](src) out of assistant content, remote http(s) → Coil with loading/error, server-local/failed → inline notice explaining why (was a blank element). Scroll: ~140px at-bottom slop so streaming jitter doesn't drop the Telegram-style follow.
• Also found (not fixed). Gateway turns run on the server DEFAULT model (kimi-k2.6), not the selected profile (gpt-5.5) — the gateway protocol carries no model on session.create/prompt.submit; honoring it needs a /model dispatch. Live tool pills are gated by server display.tool_progress (and the kimi/nous provider may not stream tool callbacks) — not a client bug. The perf_hint Session ID too large logcat is Android ADPF, unrelated.
• Verification. :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests GatewayChatClientTest green; lintGooglePlayDebug green; full assembleGooglePlayDebug green; network-resilience verified e2e on-device. Image rendering, the model switcher, and route-following all verified on-device after unlock.
• Image render (71a6c60). Remote https://picsum… rendered via Coil; a /home/… path showed the inline "can't render" notice with the path. Both paths confirmed.
• In-chat model switcher (154b483). GET /v1/models (augmented with profile models — /v1/models collapses to one generic alias here) → Model picker in the agent sheet; tapping a model dispatches /model (rich model-info card) + sets an SSE override. Verified switching on-device.
• Gateway route-following (154b483). Mutable dashboard target + retarget(): a SUSTAINED mid-turn route switch (LAN→Tailscale) now retargets the live client (reconnect via the new route, keep the session) — verified in logcat (retargeting active client to follow the route → reconnect via Tailscale, turn NOT cancelled, UI not wedged). A fresh socket can't replay an in-flight turn (upstream resume doesn't reattach), so post-retarget the turn gets a 30s settle then reconcile-on-error recovers the answer; full live-follow needs upstream resume-reattach.

2026-06-13 — v1.0.0 bump + gateway attachment parity (PDF / file)

Why. Final touches for 1.0.0 (rechrome + standard path + polish). Question raised: does the app match upstream hermes/hermes-desktop on media attachments via the standard path? Verified against actual upstream source (tui_gateway/server.py, gateway/platforms/api_server.py on NousResearch/hermes-agent), not the repo docs.

• Version. gradle/libs.versions.toml appVersionName 0.8.1 → 1.0.0, appVersionCode 11 → 12 (via scripts/bump-android-version.sh). Left uncommitted on dev; CHANGELOG [Unreleased] → [1.0.0] rename happens at release-cut.
• Finding. Images inline were already at parity — gateway image.attach_bytes (exact upstream RPC + params, legacy image.attach.bytes fallback) and /v1/chat/completions image_url (upstream _normalize_multimodal_content). But non-image attachments were force-shunted to the SSE fallback, where vanilla upstream api_server.py has zero attachment handling (no attach/attachments consumer — only OpenAI image_url/input_image parts) — so a PDF/.txt sent on a vanilla server was silently dropped. Meanwhile the gateway already had pdf.attach (content_base64 → pdftoppm → vision tiles, 50MB/25pg) and file.attach (data_url → materialized @file: workspace ref) the whole time; we just never wired them.
• Fix. Generalized GatewayImageAttachment → GatewayAttachment (+contentType). uploadAttachment() routes by MIME: image/… → image RPC (unchanged dual-name path), application/pdf → pdf.attach (content_base64), else → file.attach (data:<mime>;base64,… data URL + name). ChatViewModel: dropped the attachments?.any { !it.isImage } SSE-force clause (now only a missing gateway client falls back) and the .filter { it.isImage } map gate; mapper toGatewayAttachment() adds the pdf ext + carries contentType.
• Not-silent on SSE fallback. ChatViewModel.startStream now warns via ChatHandler.addSystemNotice() (display-only SYSTEM bubble, TTS-ignored) when a turn carries attachments the chosen SSE endpoint can't deliver: completions flags only non-images (it still carries images inline as image_url), sessions/runs flag everything. Centralized inside dispatchSse() so all three SSE entry points (resolved-SSE, missing-gateway, gateway-preflight-fallback) are covered once; gateway-success never calls it, so no false warning. Text always sends.
• Tests. GatewayChatClientTest — existing image cases ported to GatewayAttachment(... contentType=); new pdf attachments route to pdf attach + non-image non-pdf route to file attach with a data url assert the right RPC + param shapes fire and the wrong ones don't. :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests GatewayChatClientTest green; lintGooglePlayDebug/lintSideloadDebug green.
• Gotcha. First compile failed with a cascade of bogus "unresolved reference" + "Unclosed comment" 240 lines down — a literal `image/*` in a KDoc. Kotlin block comments nest, so /* opened a second level (memory: kotlin-nested-comments-and-pipefail). Fixed to image/…. AS live-inspection missed it; only kotlinc caught it.
• Release-prep docs pass (1.0.0). Audited against RELEASE.md §2. Stale pins + branding: user-docs/guide/index.md status → v1.0.0, example APK filenames → 1.0.0, and dropped the "self-hosted" qualifier (per branding memory — keep it only for VPN/WireGuard/OIDC technicals) in README.md hero, docs/privacy.md, docs/security.md, and the Play listing prose. Docs version badge: none existed — added a nav badge in .vitepress/config.mts that reads appVersionName from gradle/libs.versions.toml at build time (single source; bump-android-version.sh already updates it), try/catch → '' fail-safe, links to GitHub Releases. Verified resolution (v1.0.0) + full vitepress build green. Release-cut content: CHANGELOG [Unreleased] → [1.0.0] - 2026-06-13 (+ fresh empty Unreleased); rewrote RELEASE_NOTES.md (v1.0.0 body + Download table), app/src/main/assets/whats_new.txt, and docs/play-store-listing.md. Play body made paste-ready: the Full Description was 4799 chars (over Play's 4000 hard limit) and used **markdown bold** that renders as literal asterisks in Play (plain-text field). Rewrote it to plain-caps section headers (dropped the ━━━ heavy bars — render but cost chars + hurt screen-reader accessibility; plain caps chosen), stripped the bold, condensed features → 3652 chars; Short 64/80, Release Notes 433/500. Header now flags "plain text, no markdown, ≤4000".
• Play feature graphic regenerated. assets/play-store-feature-1024x500.png was last touched 2026-04-09 — the only pre-rechrome store asset (screenshots were all re-shot 2026-06-12). It read "Hermes Relay" (space) in the old purple palette and its trio was "Chat · Terminal · Bridge — Device Control" — advertising Device Control on the Play listing, which that build doesn't ship (accuracy/policy risk, not just dated). Regenerated to the RelayRefresh indigo palette: hyphenated "Hermes-Relay", the Chevron Compass mark recolored purple→indigo, tagline "Your Hermes agent, in your pocket", and a Play-accurate trio Chat · Voice · Manage. Reproducible via new tracked scripts/gen-feature-graphic.mjs (inline SVG → @resvg/resvg-js, present transitively via vitepress; run from repo root). Icon (512, mark-only) + the 8 screenshots left as-is — already current.

Owed: Studio rebuild + on-device check of a PDF + a .txt send over the gateway (server needs poppler-utils/pdftoppm for pdf.attach), and that the SSE-fallback notice renders. CHANGELOG/RELEASE_NOTES date (2026-06-13) assumes a same-day tag — adjust if the cut slips. Play Console specialUse FGS declaration at submission.

2026-06-13 — Gateway latency: tracing → pre-warm + keep-alive FGS; phone-context drop

Why. Reported: chat "feels slower than hermes-desktop on the same backend." No latency tracing existed (only presence logs), so it was diagnosis-by-feel.

• Tracing (util/TurnLatencyTracer.kt). One comparable TurnLatency INFO line per turn across all four transports — gateway logs warm|cold connect@ session@ submit@ ttfe@ ttft@ done@; SSE (sessions/completions/runs) log ttfe/ttft/done. ttft = first visible token (reasoning or text), the metric that exposes SSE reasoning dead-air vs the gateway. Durations only, never content.
• Diagnosis (on-device). Measurement showed the turns were already on the gateway, not the SSE fallback. A warm turn = ttft@49ms (instant, desktop-parity); a cold turn = session@4439ms + ttft@5356ms — the whole gap is the cold session.create/resume paid before submit. Cold happens on a chat's first turn and after the background-close fired. (Aside: this device's logcat rotates in seconds and had dropped to the (2) adb serial — enlarged buffer to 5 MiB, switched to -t 1 transport-id addressing.)
• Pre-warm + grace. GatewayChatClient.prewarm() (connect + resume existing session, never create) fired from a ChatScreen foreground/visibility effect when the gateway is the resolved transport; background-close grace 30s→120s. Moves the cold cost off the send path the way desktop's connect-at-launch does.
• Phone-context preamble DROPPED on gateway (reverts yesterday's buildGatewayPreamble). It prepended [preamble]\n\n to the user text → persisted into the session transcript (ugly on reload + visible from desktop). The gateway has no invisible per-turn slot (ephemeral_system_prompt is the personality slot); since it cannot be matched cleanly, the preamble was dropped. SSE keeps its invisible systemMessage; buildGatewayPreamble removed.
• Keep connected in background (opt-in, BOTH flavors). network/GatewayKeepAliveService.kt — specialUse FGS + persistent notification holds the process up so the existing socket survives Doze; the client's background-close is suppressed while on (setKeepAliveInBackground). data/GatewayKeepAlivePrefs.kt shared key; ConnectionViewModel StateFlow/setter + driver (mirrors BridgeViewModel); ChatSettings toggle. Declared in the main manifest (normal users benefit; Home-Assistant precedent) → needs a Play Console FGS declaration at submission. specialUse over dataSync (6h/day cap on SDK 35). Stops on task-removal.
• Docs. CHANGELOG [Unreleased]; CLAUDE.md key files; chat.md app-context corrected (gateway no longer injects) + new "Keep connected in background"; flavor-differences.md manifest split corrected (FGS now in main/Play); play-store-listing.md Play Console declarations section.
• Seamless handoff + slide-down status toast. Repaint-on-handoff was a LaunchedEffect key bug: RelayApp keyed the init + refreshSessions() effects on the chat-client instance, which a route handoff rebuilds — so LAN↔Tailscale/reconnect re-ran init + reloaded sessions and flashed the chat. Fix: the 546 effect compares chatViewModel.boundHandler === handler and takes the cheap updateApiClient() path on a same-chat client swap (full init only on a genuine handler re-bind); the 582 effect now keys on a chatClientReady boolean + connection/profile/session identity, not the instance. Chat state lives in ChatHandler StateFlows, so it survives the swap for free. UX: the connection banner (a Column sibling above the Scaffold that resized content) became ConnectionStatusToast — a floating overlay in the root Box, slideInVertically { -it } + fadeIn, status-bar padded, CircularProgressIndicator spinner while active, tap-to-act + swipe-up dismiss (content-identity dismiss key so a new status re-shows). Reuses the existing globalConnectionStatus model unchanged. Follow-up: the update-available banner (UpdateBanner) got the same treatment (shadow + status-bar-padding param) and both toasts now stack in ONE top-aligned, status-bar-padded overlay Column (children pass includeStatusBarPadding = false so two stacked toasts don't double-pad); the update vars were hoisted out of the Scaffold Column to the outer scope. The unattended-access strip stays inline (steady-state safety indicator — shouldn't float over content or be dismissible).

Owed: Studio rebuild + ./gradlew lint (uncompiled here — manifests + new FGS + VM wiring); on-device Samsung FGS verification; Play Console FGS declaration when shipping 0.9.0.

2026-06-12 — Docs: getting-started funnel, Google Play badge, hero chatbar, naming

What. Follow-up to the parity wave, all in user-docs/ plus a copy pass in the app.

• Google Play prominence. New self-hosted Get it on Google Play badge (user-docs/public/badges/google-play.svg — hand-built SVG; Google's hosted badge URL 404s now, so it's vendored: black plate, four-facet play mark meeting at the central seam, Arial wordmark) wired through a global <StoreBadge> component (theme/components/StoreBadge.vue, registered in theme/index.ts so it works in markdown too). Slotted into the home hero (home-hero-actions-after) above the CLI platform note, and used as the primary install action on the getting-started page.
• getting-started.md de-walled. Was a flat scroll of server commands. Now three steps (Install → Point at Hermes → Connect) with progressive disclosure: every wall (sideload + SHA256/cert verify, first-time hermes server install, dashboard auth, build-from-source, manual setup, plugin install, dashboard login reference) moved into :::: details collapsibles, and the macOS/Linux vs Windows command pairs became ::: code-group tabs. No detail deleted — just relocated. Verified in the build: 6 details blocks + code-group tabs render, cert fingerprint still present.
• Hero demo chatbar (HeroDemo.vue) — the homepage phone mockup still showed the old footer (separate / slash glyph + classic mic). Rebuilt to mirror ChatInputBar.kt: + (attach / long-press commands), pill field, ONE morphing trailing slot via a new inputTrailing computed (typing → indigo Send w/ glow · empty → GraphicEq waveform · streaming+empty → danger Stop circle). No standalone slash button.
• chat.md rewritten for the new bar + parity features: morphing trailing button table, steering (inject vs queue), edit-and-resend, voice waveform + needs-setup dot, subagent lanes, rich/interactive ask cards, context meter, turn-complete notifications.
• Naming. Case-sensitive rename Hermes Relay → Hermes-Relay (21 occurrences) across user-facing app strings (BridgeCommandHandler, ConnectionWizard, VoiceViewModel, + 2 comments) and phone-control-tools.md/voice.md. Lowercase "Hermes relay" (= the relay component) deliberately left alone. App-string changes need a Studio rebuild to surface.

App-context on gateway turns — fixed (Option A, scoped). App-context injection (PhoneStatusPromptBuilder.buildPromptBlock → mobile preamble + bridge/permission/safety, combined into systemMsg at ChatViewModel.kt:1842) is forwarded only on the SSE/runs/sessions paths (systemMessage=); the gateway's prompt.submit is bare text (no system slot — verified against upstream tui_gateway/server.py: params are session_id/text/truncate_before_user_ordinal; the only call-time overlay is ephemeral_system_prompt, which is the personality slot, so it'd collide). Upstream PR deferred ("no PR for now"). Fix: new buildGatewayPreamble(settings) returns just the non-sensitive mobile preamble (gated by master); the gateway branch prepends it as [preamble]\n\n<message> to the wire text — guarded to skip slash commands (a prepended /cmd no longer starts with / and would break server-side routing). Local user bubble + autoTitle keep the clean message; only the persisted wire copy carries the one-line marker. The richer bridge/safety block stays SSE-only / android_phone_status on demand, to avoid bloating every persisted user turn.

2026-06-12 — Gateway chat transport: live thinking over the dashboard /api/ws (vanilla upstream)

Context. Voice testing on the Standard path showed 49–71s of dead air per turn (adb logcat: run.started → first assistant.delta 49s later; turn 2: 71s + tool + 58s). Root cause traced through upstream source: reasoning models think silently because the api_server SSE paths never registered the agent core's reasoning_callback — live reasoning deltas are dropped server-side; only a post-hoc reasoning.available (→ tool.progress, ≤500 chars) and run.completed.messages[].reasoning survive. The app's whole thinking UI (ThinkingBlock, thinkingContent/isThinkingStreaming, "Show reasoning" toggle, sphere Thinking state) was already built and starved. Governing constraint (now in CLAUDE.md Key Instructions + memory): Standard path must work on unmodified upstream — no fork patches. The upstream surface that does stream reasoning live is tui_gateway over the dashboard's /api/ws (reasoning.delta/thinking.delta, emitted unconditionally — tui_gateway/server.py:2813), i.e. exactly what hermes-desktop speaks. Plan: add Gateway as a 4th chat transport, auto-preferred when available.

Shipped (branch feature/gateway-chat-transport).

• network/GatewayChatClient.kt — newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0 over OkHttp WS to wss://…/api/ws?ticket=…; fresh single-use ws-ticket per connect attempt (2-attempt loop — stale pooled connections poison the first try after a server restart); gateway.ready handshake; rpc correlation map; session.resume(stored id) → session.create fallback; 180s turn watchdog reset per event; lazy connect on send, 30s background-grace close, no background reconnect loops; onPreflightFailure contract = nothing started server-side, caller may re-dispatch on SSE.
• network/GatewayEventMapper.kt (pure JVM) — event→callback table; message.complete backfills text/reasoning when nothing streamed + translates tui_gateway usage keys (input/output/total — NOT the SSE input_tokens scheme; V1 verification caught the plan's wrong assumption); unknown event types silently ignored (forward compat); synthetic FIFO tool ids when tool_id absent.
• ChatViewModel — activeStream retyped EventSource? → ActiveTurnHandle (fun interface; SSE branches wrap via .asTurnHandle()); dispatchSse() extracted so the new gateway branch falls back per turn (no gateway client / attachments / preflight failure → SSE; "sessions" fallback degrades to "completions" when no server session exists). Voice-intent/card synthetic traces stay unsynced on gateway turns (prompt.submit is bare text). Interactive asks (clarify/approval/sudo/secret) → ChatHandler.addSystemNotice() (SYSTEM role — TTS observer ignores it; desktop CLI v0.1 precedent: display-only).
• ConnectionViewModel — GatewayAvailability piggybacks on the standard-voice probe (/api/status + /api/auth/me; no ticket-burn probing); sticky markGatewayUnsupported() on WS-upgrade 404/403, reset on connection switch; gateway client cached per (connection, dashboard URL) sharing Manage's encrypted cookie store; resolveStreamingEndpointPreference() extracted pure — "auto" prefers gateway when Ready (deliberate rollout choice), manual picks pass through.
• Chat Settings: 5th endpoint option "Gateway" + sign-in hint row. RelayApp re-resolves on gatewayAvailability so a mid-session Manage sign-in flips auto → gateway live.
• Tests: 33 new (mapper table fixtures; MockWebServer WS harness — handshake order, fresh-ticket-per-reconnect, resume fallback, cancel→interrupt, mid-turn socket loss, foreign-session drop; resolution matrix). Full googlePlay unit suite green.

Bugs the tests caught. (1) OkHttp does NOT auto-ack a peer-initiated close frame — without onClosing → close() the socket sits half-closed ~60s and reconnects stall; (2) mockwebserver's server-side RealWebSocket.cancel() NPEs (call!! null) — use close() + tolerate its known shutdown give-up after WS upgrades.

V1 verification (static, against fetched upstream main — local checkout was 1367 commits stale). Gateway stored ids are YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_<6hex>; GET /api/sessions lists ALL sources (no filter) so gateway sessions appear in the drawer; usage keys confirmed different from SSE. On-device verification still owed: live thinking in chat + voice overlay, Wi-Fi↔cell mid-turn, drawer cross-resume of api_* sessions via gateway.

Deferred: answering interactive asks from the phone; subagent.*/status.update/tool.progress rendering; session.list adoption; persona/phone-status injection on gateway turns (prompt.submit carries bare text); SSE-path post-hoc reasoning backfill from run.completed.messages[].reasoning (would give signed-out users a "Thought process" block).

Desktop-parity wave (same day — full recommended set, via workflow orchestration). Two-workflow orchestration: a 3-agent spec pass (wire contracts extracted from upstream tui_gateway source with file:line evidence; component-level UI designs against RelayRefresh; integration map with contention risks), then a 5-agent build (parallel network + UI tracks with strict file ownership → integration agent that compiled/tested/linted the tree green → 2 adversarial reviewers), then a surgical fix agent for the review's 4 majors + 6 chosen minors. Spec catches that prevented real bugs: steer is only accepted mid-tool-batch ({status:"rejected"} otherwise → auto-queue fallback); upstream's upload RPC is image.attach_bytes/content_base64 (the vendored CLI's dotted name 404s); approval.respond is session-scoped while clarify/sudo/secret are request_id-scoped; prompt.submit returns {status:"streaming"} not {ok}; POST_NOTIFICATIONS was missing from the main manifest (googlePlay flavor silently couldn't notify on 13+). Review majors fixed: ask-aware turn watchdog (a blocked clarify legitimately produces 300s of event silence — the 180s watchdog was killing it and force-denying), answer-before-collapse on ask cards (failed respond RPC no longer strands a collapsed card), edit-and-resend mid-stream text loss, 500-message-cap ordinal guard. Shipped: gateway image attachments, steer + 5-state trailing button, ask cards (hold-to-confirm sudo + countdown), edit & resend, subagent lanes, tool-preparing state, context meter, server slash catalog + dispatch, turn-complete notifications, ChatInputBar redesign (slash button removed; waveform voice glyph + one-shot hint).

On-device round 1 (same day). Transport confirmed live: both voice turns ran /api/ws (zero SSE logs — the old tell), voice-input→first-audio fell 50–130s → 11–13s, TTS streamed sentence-by-sentence. Chat-test findings, fixed same session: (1) double typing dots — ChatScreen rendered a standalone StreamingDots item below the list on top of MessageBubble's in-bubble dots; outer one removed. (2) Bottom-pinned scroll stutter during live thinking — the auto-follow ran animateScrollToItem per delta under collectLatest; at gateway token frequency (vs SSE's ~190-char bursts) that's a cancel/restart storm stranding the viewport mid-animation on earlier content before yanking it back. Same-turn growth now pins instantly (scrollToItem); the animation is reserved for discrete new-bubble appends. Also dropped animateItem() from the trailing spacer (placement churn at the viewport bottom every delta). (3) Tool cards missing on gateway turns — unresolved as of this entry: upstream emits tool.start/tool.complete (verified in source, default display.tool_progress: all) and the client chain is unit-tested, but the installed build logged nothing per-event, so client now logs GW ← <type> for every gateway event (SSE-log parity). Next tool-calling turn on a fresh build says definitively whether tool.start arrives (client bug) or never leaves the server (config / agent callback path).

2026-06-11 — Media re-capture: demo video + full screenshot set (programmatic, via adb)

Context. The README/docs hero video (assets/chat_demo.mp4, Apr 9, pre-cockpit-refresh) and the Play Store screenshot set (Apr 9–12) lagged the v0.8.x UI by two release cycles; DEVLOG had already queued the re-capture. Scope: a programmatic pipeline — audit → demo video re-shoot → full screenshot re-shoot. Browser/dashboard captures and og-image explicitly deferred.

Pipeline built (all driven from the desk, no hands on the phone). Wireless adb to the S25 Ultra (1080×2340) + mobile-mcp for accessibility-tree coordinates + adb shell screenrecord for takes + ffmpeg for post. Key device-staging learnings, recorded for next time:

• One UI demo mode needs package-targeted broadcasts — am broadcast -p com.android.systemui -a com.android.systemui.demo ...; untargeted intents are dropped. Only enter/exit + notification-hiding work; the clock/battery/network staging sub-commands are ignored, and the mode silently drops on its own mid-session, so it can't be trusted across a take.
• settings put secure icon_blacklist "volume,wifi,battery,clock,..." empties the system-icon side; Google Cast media chips survive everything.
• Net: stage what you can, then crop the 96px status-bar inset in post (crop=1080:2244:0:96) — deterministic, uniform, immune to demo-mode flakiness. All shipped media is cropped.
• screenrecord over wireless adb pads a frame gap at the head (single frame at PTS 0, next at ~13s) — cut lists must be built from probed packet timestamps, not wall-clock estimates.
• adb shell input text types at ~25 cps — reads as natural typing on camera. ENTER inserts a newline in the chat field; send must be tapped. uiautomator dump sees the chat tree under the startup gate overlay, so "field exists" is not "gate finished" — verify landings with screenshots.

Demo video (47.4s, 1.49 MB, 720×1496@30, replaces both assets/ and user-docs/public/ copies + poster). Script: cold launch → startup-gate narration (~5.5s) → empty chat beat → prompt typed/sent on camera ("Morning! Quick check - server uptime and memory, two lines max?" — tuned after a first rehearsal wandered through five tool calls and 90s; the constrained phrasing reliably yields 1–2 quick execute_code cards) → cards + answer stream in real time (waiting stretch time-compressed 2.2×) → voice-overlay closer (sphere + transcript + mic). Sessions staged: five filler sessions created and renamed via the drawer so visible history looks lived-in; hero session renamed "Server health check"; rehearsal sessions deleted.

Screenshot set (assets/screenshots/, old 8 deleted, new 8 at 1080×2244 PNG): 01_startup (gate + checklist), 02_chat (prompt + tool cards + answer), 03_voice (overlay), 04_sessions (drawer), 05_commands (slash sheet, 205 commands), 06_manage (KPI strip + tiles), 07_connections (standard path + Routes(2)), 08_settings. Also deleted the orphaned 23.5 MB foreground_service_demo.mp4 (assets/ + user-docs/public/ — referenced nowhere since the docs rewrite).

Bugs found on camera (not fixed this session — both fixed the same day by the parallel app session):

1. Startup gate dismisses into a ~1.5s "Disconnected / Connect to Hermes" flash before the API probe settles, then recovers — reproduced in both takes. The gate narrates "hermes online ✓" and still lands on the disconnected fallback; defeats the hold-until-ready purpose (cut around it in the edit). Fixed in 1d09c7b ("Reveal-flash root cause" entry below): the gate keyed on resolver health evidence while the CTA renders from the later chatReady signal; both now key on chatReady.
2. Gate cold-start variance — "loading conversation" ranged ~6s to ~28s across runs against the same LAN server; worth a timeout/diagnostic. Fixed/addressed in fix/health-retry-burst-gate-diagnostic ("Cold-start variance" entry below): a transient first-probe miss parked "offline" until the next 30s health tick (the ~28s tail), now recovered by a bounded fast-retry burst; the 12s-backstop release now records a Diagnostics warning naming the unmet conditions. Note: these takes ran on a fresh REINSTALL, so the first run also paid the one-time keystore-marathon hint priming.

Deferred / blocked: terminal + bridge stills (phone's relay session unpaired after the reinstall — needs a fresh pairing first); dashboard screenshots (5 TODOs in features/dashboard.md); og-image re-render (old tagline still live). The five filler sessions remain on the server pending cleanup.

Docs hero recreated in code (same day). The homepage hero video was replaced by a code-driven recreation — HeroDemo.vue rewritten in place (index.ts slot unchanged): DOM chat chrome inside the existing phone bezel, over a canvas running the real preview/web/sphere.js algorithm (same import path as SphereMark). The sphere is driven through the actual product state machine in sync with the scene — Thinking during the boot gate, Listening while the prompt types, Thinking + toolCallBurst pulse when the tool card lands, Speaking with intensity shimmer while the answer streams, Idle on the hold. ~19.5s loop, every visual a pure function of t (modulo loop; the clock pauses off-screen via IntersectionObserver so scrolling back never jump-cuts; gaze stays off — lightAngleBlend: 0 — so it doesn't compete with SphereMark's eye further down the page). Scene mirrors the recorded take: gate checklist (state restored / route · LAN / hermes online) → typed prompt ("Quick check — server uptime and memory?") → execute_code card with shimmer → streamed two-line uptime/memory answer. Agent named "Hermes" (canonical for first impressions, not the local "Victor" profile). Container-query units (cqw) keep all chrome proportional to bezel width; reduced-motion renders the completed conversation statically; SSR renders the boot frame. Review/capture affordance: ?demoT=<seconds> freezes the scene at any timeline point (transitions killed via .had-static) — added because rAF clocks don't advance under headless Chrome's --virtual-time-budget (the 100ms dt clamp eats fast-forwarded time), and it doubles as a design-review scrubber. Verified per-phase via headless Chrome screenshots at demoT 2.5/6.2/9.5/13.2/16.5; production build green. Rationale: the docs site is the one surface with a controllable runtime — the recording stays for README (no JS on GitHub) and getting-started ("the chat looks like this" wants a real capture). Hero video re-edit deferred; chat_demo.mp4 remains referenced by getting-started.

Hero demo follow-up (2026-06-12): loop-wrap tween explosion + 1:1 header. Observed: the sphere rendered wrong ("periods in the eye"). Root cause: the tween rig was clocked off the looped scene time — at each wrap t jumps ~20.3s→0, Tween.update() sees a negative elapsed, and the smoothstep t²(3−2t) extrapolates cubically (the intensity tween, whose startTime survives the wrap via setTarget's same-target early-return, landed near −57,000 → effRipple ≈ −28,000 → char indices slammed to the ramp floor, strongest at center because ripple scales by (1−normDist): literal rings of ·/. through the eye from loop 2 onward). Fix mirrors the app: drawSphere(sceneT, clockT) — looped time drives only WHAT the scene shows; a monotonic clock (raw elapsed, like MorphingSphere.kt's animatedTime) drives tweens + noise fields, which also kills the per-loop texture snap. Hardened Tween.update with a both-ends clamp, and shadowStrength 0.45→0 (the app passes none; 0.6 is SphereMark's own look). Static paths (?demoT=, reduced-motion) now snap tweens to settled targets via drawSphereSettled instead of drawing mid-flight Thinking params. Header/navbar made 1:1 against assets/screenshots/02_chat.png + a zoomed crop (two passes — the crop caught what the full screenshot hid): drawer hamburger; light avatar with dark initial (was inverted); solid filled LAN pill (was outlined); share / </> / tune as three separate bordered buttons (first pass wrongly grouped them in one cluster pill); active tab = navy #20225A fill with brighter indigo border; agent-name label as a chip; tool card done-state ✓ ⌄ (was "3.0s ✓"); mic icon at rest in the input bar (send arrow only while typed). Re-verified via 2× headless captures at demoT 1.8/9.6/17.0; build green.

2026-06-11 — Standard-route network auto-switch (LAN ↔ Tailscale roaming without Relay)

Context. Reported: away from home, a configured + signed-in standard connection never switched over to its Tailscale route — chat stayed dead and voice stayed gated, while the old Relay-paired path used to hand off fine (chat catch-up, voice, realtime). Audit traced it to the rechrome: every downstream piece (route candidates stored by the wizard, effectiveApiServerUrl/effectiveDashboardUrl flows, client-rebuild collectors, chat session refresh on client swap) was sound; nothing upstream ever triggered re-resolution on the standard path, and standard voice ignored the resolved route entirely.

Root causes (4). (1) ConnectionManager's ADR 24 NetworkCallback registered only inside connect() — never on socketless standard connections — and its handlers early-returned without a socket URL. (2) The fallback trigger (networkStatus StateFlow → revalidate()) is value-deduped over 3 coarse states; with Tailscale's always-on VPN keeping "internet available" true through any handoff, the value never leaves Available, so the collector never fires — the exact user this feature targets is the one it can't see. (3) activeDashboardUrl() (standard voice client + availability probe) read the persisted dashboard URL, not effectiveDashboardUrl. (4) The resolver's 60s positive probe cache wasn't cleared on resume/network-change re-resolution, so a just-died LAN route kept winning.

What changed (branch fix/standard-route-network-switchover, merged --no-ff; follow-ups direct on feature/standard-voice-dashboard-surface).

• ConnectionManager — NetworkCallback registers at construction (no-op without context); onAvailable/onLost unify into a debounced (300ms) scheduleNetworkReResolve() that publishes activeEndpoint even with no socket, preserving the socket-swap/reconnect semantics when one exists. refreshActiveEndpoint(clearProbeCache) clears the resolver cache; revalidate() passes true.
• Standard voice — activeDashboardUrl() now delegates to effectiveDashboardUrl, so the voice client and probeStandardVoice() follow the resolved route; rebuildApiClient() → probeStandardVoice() re-gates the mic automatically after a route swap.
• Escalation safety net — the 30s API health loop turns two consecutive Unreachable probes into a cache-cleared re-resolve, covering handoffs Android never surfaces as connectivity events. Client rebuild stays reactive via the effectiveApiServerUrl collector (single rebuild path for all triggers).
• Route-candidate preservation — new Connection.mergeRouteCandidates(rebuilt, existing): URL edits (updateApiServerUrl, updateRelayUrl, connectRelay, testRelayReachable, saveApiAndProbeVoice, saveStandardApiConnection fallback) rebuild only the touched route and keep stored priority>0 extras verbatim — previously any URL save collapsed the list to one candidate and silently killed roaming. The wizard doesn't pre-fill its Tailscale field, so blank-on-rerun means "unchanged", not "remove".
• Per-route sign-in UX — dashboard cookies are host-scoped, so a LAN sign-in doesn't authenticate the Tailscale host (the store holds both; it's a one-time sign-in per host). New standardVoiceSignInRouteHint flow + route-aware copy in Voice Settings' SignInRequired block + a Diagnostics entry from the probe.
• Cleanup — removed the duplicate networkStatus → revalidate() collector left by the rechrome.

Tests. New ConnectionManagerRouteTest (Robolectric + MockWebServer): callback registration/unregistration at construction, socketless onAvailable publishing activeEndpoint, stale-cache vs clearProbeCache resolve. New ConnectionRouteCandidateMergeTest: extras preserved, payload relay URLs verbatim, host:port collision defers to rebuilt, primary replacement, no-extras passthrough. :app:lint + targeted unit suites green locally.

On-device verification needed (via Studio): standard connection with a Tailscale route → leave Wi-Fi → chat should re-route within ~30–60s worst case (network callback usually immediate); Voice Settings should show the per-route sign-in hint until Manage sign-in on the Tailscale host; return home → routes flip back to LAN (priority 0). Also worth re-checking the Relay-paired handoff path for regressions since onAvailable/onLost were unified.

Pre-release polish (same day). Review pass before handing to Studio: (1) gated network-change socket actions on shouldReconnect — the swap path force-set it true, so a network event could resurrect a socket the user explicitly disconnected (pre-existing hole the refactor preserved; routes still publish for HTTP surfaces); (2) refreshActiveEndpoint keeps the live route on a transient probe miss while the WSS is Connected (mirrors the callback's guard — a resume-time probe blip no longer downgrades every HTTP surface to the saved LAN URL); (3) sign-in route hint upgraded to displayLabel() ("Tailscale") and the chat mic toast made route-aware; (4) escalation counter resets while no API client exists.

Remote-access discoverability (same day). UX audit of the onboarding → remote journey found the mechanics worked but nothing led users to them: the wizard's happy path (scan LAN → connect) produced a LAN-only connection silently (the Tailscale field hid inside the collapsed Advanced expander), the setup result card had no remote line, "Hermes API unreachable" didn't distinguish "server down" from "you're remote with no fallback route", and TailscaleDetector powered only an informational chip. Shipped four nudges, each at a moment of real user attention: (1) the Tailscale field lifted into the main setup form as "Remote access — Tailscale URL (optional)" with a detected-on-this-phone hint; (2) a "Remote" readiness line on the setup result card (StandardApiSetupResult.remoteRouteConfigured); (3) the unreachable status pill diagnoses by route count — single-route gets "add a Tailscale or public route" (sharpened when the phone is on Tailscale), multi-route gets "none of the N routes responded, fallbacks retried automatically"; (4) an "Add Tailscale route" shortcut on the Connections card when the phone is on Tailscale but the connection lacks a tailscale route (route-editor state hoisted out of the expander so it opens with the list collapsed). Deliberately skipped: auto-deriving the server's MagicDNS URL (needs server-side support vanilla hermes-agent doesn't have) and QR-for-standard (no upstream payload generator). user-docs remote-access.md gains an "Add or Edit Routes on the Phone" section + per-route sign-in tip.

Routes editor (same day). Two gaps confirmed: the standard path's only multi-route provisioning was the wizard's buried optional Tailscale field (single route, setup-time only, not pre-filled on re-runs — and no QR equivalent exists because vanilla hermes-agent has no payload generator; the QR comes from the Relay plugin), and the Routes card was read-only. Closed both: EndpointsCard gains Add route + per-row Edit/Remove (fallback rows only — the priority-0 primary mirrors the connection's API URL and is edited there; remove confirms first), backed by a RouteEditorDialog (Tailscale/Public/Custom role chips, URL field, inline validation errors from the save callback). ConnectionViewModel.saveExtraRoute/removeExtraRoute persist to Connection.routeCandidates, seeding from the same fallback chain observeDeviceEndpoints displays (per-device PairingPreferences → synthesized primary) so an edit never hides QR-provisioned routes; host:port collisions are rejected with a pointed message; removing a route clears a preferred-route override that pointed at it; both finish with a cache-cleared refreshActiveEndpoint so the change takes effect immediately. Relay URLs for manual routes are derived (:8767 convention) — QR remains the path for custom relay URLs. Wizard helper text now points at Settings → Connections → Routes.

Route probe visibility + URL forgiveness (same day, remote-debugging). Field report from the road: Tailscale route added (100.64.0.100, port auto-appended), phone on the tailnet, but "Probe now"/"Use now" left the card on "Current: Resolving" showing the internal URL, with no probing indicator anywhere. Diagnosis found one real bug plus a UX black hole:

• The bug — probeAndReconnect() early-returned (resolved?.relay?.url ?: current ?: return@launch) when every probe failed on the standard (no-socket) path: nothing was published, nothing was shown, and the only record went to DiagnosticsLog. Replaced by probeAndReconnectNow(): EndpointCandidate? (awaitable; probeAndReconnect() is now a launch wrapper) which always publishes the outcome — with the Connected-socket transient-miss guard preserved. probeNow()'s 100ms-delay-then-health-check hack (a real resolve takes 4s+ when LAN must time out) now awaits the resolve, rebuilds the API client on route change, then health-probes.
• The black hole — no probe feedback at any layer. New RouteProbeOutcome map on EndpointResolver (per-candidate verdict + human reason; survives clearCache() — caching ≠ verdict history) with the TLS case spelled out ("TLS failed — server may be http://, not https://"), RouteProbeStatus (Idle/Probing/Done(winner)) on ConnectionViewModel, and UI: Re-check buttons show "Checking…", route rows show Reachable/Unreachable-with-reason, the Current line states "No route reachable — using saved URL " in error color instead of eternal "Resolving" over the relay URL fallback (the "internal url" in the field report — ConnectionsSettingsScreen printed connection.relayUrl under the resolving label).
• Likely root cause of the field failure — the route row only showed host:port; the scheme (the tls flag) was invisible, and the editor's placeholder even suggested https://. An https route against the plain-HTTP API server TLS-fails every probe. Rows now show the full URL including scheme; the editor previews "Will save: http://100.64.0.100:8642" live.
• URL forgiveness — new Connection.normalizeApiUrlInput(raw, defaultPort=8642): bare hosts/IPs get http:// + the surface's default port (dashboard field uses 9119); explicitly-schemed URLs pass verbatim (an https://host may be a reverse proxy on 443 — never force-append 8642). Applied in saveExtraRoute, saveStandardApiConnection (API + Tailscale + dashboard fields), and updateApiServerUrl (save-time only — its single call site is applyManualPair, not per-keystroke). Wizard validators soften to accept bare hosts; field copy now names the ports (API 8642 vs dashboard 9119, relay 8767 derived). saveExtraRoute/removeExtraRoute end in a full probeNow() so a just-saved route shows its verdict immediately.

Tests: +4 resolver outcome tests, +2 ConnectionManager probeAndReconnectNow publish tests (winner published socketless; null published when all routes die — the old early-return regression case), +10 normalizeApiUrlInput cases incl. the bare-Tailscale-IP end-to-end journey. All green; lint green. user-docs remote-access.md gains "Which URL Do I Enter?" (raw 100.x IP → http:// + API server must listen beyond loopback; *.ts.net behind tailscale serve → https://, cert is name-only). On-device verification needed: with the Tailscale route's scheme visible, check whether it was saved as https — edit to http if so; Re-check should now show per-route verdicts either way.

README + Play listing audit (same day). Audit found both documents lagging the standard-first pivot by two release cycles: README said "What's new in v0.6.0" (app at 0.8.1), the CI badge pointed at deleted ci.yml, two in-page anchors were broken (renamed headings), voice was described as relay-only in three places (surfaces table, features bullet, How It Works diagram) despite the dashboard-surface change, and neither document mentioned Manage parity or remote access at all. Rewrote both: README restructured around the setup card's Chat/Manage/Voice/Remote/Relay framing (one Quick Start instead of three overlapping sections — Quick Start / What It Does / Getting Started), operational detail (sideload steps, update-banner mechanics, paste-workflow demo, uninstall flags) compressed to one-liners with docs-site links, desktop section trimmed to install + 4 commands behind an explicit alpha banner stating the planned refocus into a remote "hands" connector now that hermes-desktop owns desktop chat/management (per project direction). Play listing rewritten end-user-first: new short description ("Your self-hosted Hermes AI agent, in your pocket — chat, voice, and control.", 76/80 chars), a 3-step QUICK START block, Manage + Works Away From Home feature sections, voice corrected to the no-plugin story, "TUI" jargon dropped, v0.8.1 release notes drafted (464/500 chars). Compliance-sensitive GOOGLE PLAY BUILD / SECURITY & PRIVACY sections kept verbatim.

Field follow-up: http fixed chat; Manage stayed dark over Tailscale (same day). Confirmed on-device that flipping the route to http:// made chat roam. Manage not working over the same route has three candidate causes, all by-design rather than app bugs: (1) the dashboard (:9119, hermes_cli/web_server.py) is a separate server from the API (:8642) — tailnet reachability of one proves nothing about the other (bind/port-mapping/ACL; note hermes-relay-tailscale enable fronts only 8767 + 8642, never 9119); (2) dashboard sessions are host-scoped cookies, so the home sign-in doesn't authenticate 100.x.y.z:9119 — one sign-in per route, the app keeps both; (3) an explicit dashboard URL override pins Manage to that host (only auto-managed URLs roam — deliberate, since overrides usually mean a reverse proxy; the wizard's LAN scan can store one silently when detected ≠ derived). Audit confirmed the app already targets effectiveDashboardUrl everywhere (client factory, sign-in dialog, payload cache keys) — what was missing was visibility. Manage now: shows a persistent "Dashboard: · route" target line under the mode strip; names the failing URL in the "Dashboard unavailable" card; and explains per-host sign-in in the sign-in card when the route has moved. Plumbing: new ConnectionViewModel.dashboardRouteMovedHint (route label when effective ≠ persisted dashboard URL); standardVoiceSignInRouteHint refactored to reuse it (semantics unchanged).

user-docs cockpit rechrome + content refresh (same day). The docs site still wore the pre-refresh "Nothing-inspired" chrome (OLED #000, neutral grays, #7C3AED purple) while the app shipped the relay cockpit palette two days earlier. Rechromed user-docs/.vitepress to mirror RelayRefresh.kt: dark mode is now navy-black #08090D with navy panels (#121426/#191B31), warm-white ink #F7F6F0, alpha-based warm-white hairlines (the Line/LineStrong trick), Relay periwinkle #AEBFFF for links/active text vs ElectricMuted #4F5BD5 for fills (same glare lesson as the app), status colors from the app's Green/Amber/Danger, a 42px-grid + 10px Relay-dot lattice on the home surface mirroring relayGridTexture(), and light mode moved to warm paper #F7F3EA. Hardcoded old-palette colors swept from HermesFlow/HermesFlowNode (edges, nodes — diagrams stay dark in both modes like instrument panels), HeroDemo (navy bezel + periwinkle glow), ExperimentalBadge (app Amber), FeatureMatrix (sideload tint). Content pass from a full staleness audit: four complete pages were unreachable from the sidebar (features/voice, features/voice-intents, features/phone-control-tools, reference/relay-server) plus architecture/flavor-differences linked from nowhere — all five added to config.mts; guide/index.md version heading bumped 0.8.0→0.8.1; desktop/installation.md example pins bumped alpha.14→alpha.18. Build verified: compiled CSS/JS contain the new palette and zero old-palette hex values. Deferred: demo video + the 5 dashboard screenshot TODOs in features/dashboard.md (chat_demo.mp4 and the poster also predate the cockpit refresh and should be re-captured). Feedback round (live design review on the dev server): dark brand accent shifted from Relay periwinkle #AEBFFF → electric indigo #6E7CFF ("too light, not our app blue" — periwinkle survives only in the dot texture); SphereMark gained a radial occlusion halo so the home dot-grid fades behind/around the sphere, plus an isConnected guard on the cached install-section anchor (a detached node's rect is all zeros → scrollVy locked at 1 and the eye stared down forever after HMR/route swaps — the reported "tracking breaks after scrolling"); install-extras cards un-crunched from 2-col to stacked full-width with one-liners wrapping (pre-wrap) instead of horizontal-scrolling. Verified live via Orca browser screenshots: gaze tracks cursor left/right post-scroll, halo clean, no horizontal scroll.

Server-side root cause + fix (same evening, via SSH). ss -tlnp on hermes-host showed the real story: API (:8642) and relay (:8767) on 0.0.0.0, but hermes-dashboard.service ran with --host 192.168.1.100 — LAN interface only, so 100.64.0.100:9119 was connection-refused (not 401, hence no sign-in card; the "existing login" observed on-device was last-known persisted state). Rebound to --host 0.0.0.0 + restart (authorized via prompt), verified /api/status on both IPs, updated the server's ~/SYSTEM.md services table. Phone (adb) confirmed end-to-end: Manage's new target line showed 100.64.0.100:9119 · Tailscale route, banner flipped to "sign-in required", sign-in card rendered with the route strip. Two learnings recorded: the app's DashboardCookieJar is per-connection, NOT host-scoped (sends the stored session cookie to whichever host the route resolves to — sessions normally roam; the restart wiping in-memory dashboard sessions is what forced re-sign-in), and the sign-in strip's "per host" wording could be tightened later.

Manage loading/overview pass (same day). Three complaints: the cold-load skeleton stacked four progress bars with fake narrative labels; every re-entry to Manage was a cold load; the KPI glyphs (ok/…/!) and the one-line status banner (truncated by two trailing buttons, one a duplicate "Connection" link) were weak. Shipped: (1) process-lifetime payload cache — DashboardPayloadCache singleton replaces the remember{} maps, keyed connection|dashboardUrl|section so connection switches and route handoffs stay partitioned; Loaded.fetchedAtMillis drives a 30s stale-while-revalidate window (fresh → no fetch; stale → cached content + thin refresh bar); sign-in/out clears as before. (2) App-start pre-warm — section fetch core extracted to fetchDashboardSectionState(); prewarmDashboardManage() (internal, same file) fills cold keys only, aborts the sweep on first unreachable/auth failure, never marks Loading so it can't fight the open screen; RelayApp fires it (1.5s debounce) when the persisted snapshot says reachable + signed-in/auth-free, re-firing on route handoff. (3) Skeleton — one LinearProgressIndicator + three pulsing content-shaped ghost cards. (4) KPI strip — count / tone-colored dashboard state word (ready/sign-in/offline/error) / server version (RelayMetricCard gains optional valueColor). (5) Status banner — two-line layout (state+identity+Sign out / URL·route·checked), duplicate "Connection" button removed (Connections tile is directly below).

user-docs marketing reposition: "the brain stays home, the hands go everywhere" (same day). Direction: desktop is becoming a remote-device access point — "a hand inside other devices you install to" (remote control, filesystem, CLI); chat/management on desktop belongs to hermes-desktop. Docs site rewritten to lead with that. Homepage: hero is now "The brain stays home. The hands go everywhere."; CTAs flipped (brand → "Get the Android app", alt → "Give it hands — desktop CLI"); 8 feature cards rewritten benefit-first ("Chat that streams, not spins", "Voice with a face", "Manage from your pocket", "Your phone, on the agent's toolbelt", "Hands on any computer", "One pair, every network", "Notifications and media in the loop", "Private by architecture"); surface cards re-roled as "The companion · Android" / "The hand · Desktop CLI" with CTA "Put a hand on this machine →"; new HowItWorks.vue 3-step strip (01 Install · 02 Pair · 03 Reach) slotted between SphereMark and InstallSection in theme/index.ts (markdown body renders after VPFeatures, so a body-level strip landed at page bottom — component slot fixes the order). desktop/index.md re-led with the hands story: tool routing promoted to "The point — the agent works on your machine" directly under the intro, modes table reordered (Tools/Daemon above Shell/Chat), chat marked "maintained for scripting; not a growth surface", new info box stating the track direction, killer demo reframed as the escape-hatch bonus. Nav/meta refreshed (og/twitter titles → "give your self-hosted Hermes agent hands"; sidebar/nav say "remote hands"). Old-positioning sweep cleared guide/index.md tip, InstallSection Step 2, features/index "Coming Soon" row. Verified via Orca screenshots + clean build. og-image.png still renders the old tagline — re-render alongside the deferred demo/screenshot batch. Headline rounds 2–3: "hands" demoted from hero to feature level; "server" rejected too (with official Hermes Desktop the brain may be a PC/laptop) — final hero is "Runs on your machine. Lives on your devices."; "self-hosted Hermes agent" dropped globally in favor of plain "Hermes agent" (self-hosting implied; kept only as a technical term: self-hosted OIDC/VPN); "Desktop CLI" renamed to plain "CLI" across all user-docs copy (the binary runs on any host — desktops, laptops, headless boxes; /desktop/ URLs and desktop-v* track names stay until the code refactor); hero gained a mono platform-note subtext under the action buttons: "CLI: Windows today · macOS / Linux coming soon" (home-hero-actions-after slot + .hero-platform-note). Decisions recorded in auto-memory hermes-relay-branding-voice. Round 4 — two-path funnel (audit first, then approved): the homepage install funnel was the power path presented as the only path (HowItWorks step 01 told standard users to curl-install the relay plugin; InstallSection led with plugin + hermes-pair + "Python 3.11+"). Restructured: HowItWorks recast as the quick-path journey (01 Run Hermes on your machine — API serves chat, dashboard serves Manage/voice, nothing extra to install · 02 Install the app · 03 Connect — LAN scan / setup QR / URL, since standard onboarding accepts a QR) with a power-path footer pointer; InstallSection rebuilt as stacked path cards — "Quick path · No server install — Just connect" (app links + the brief chat=API / Manage+voice=dashboard / pure-chat-needs-only-API nit) above "Power path · Relay plugin — Give it hands" (plugin curl, hermes-pair, CLI one-liners pwsh-first with the Windows-today note, AI-agents block rescoped to the power path); homepage surface card + "Works at home and away" feature card de-relay-flavored (standard connections roam too). guide/getting-started.md needed no change — already standard-first. Round 5: power card now shows ONLY the Windows CLI one-liner (the sh one-liner invited users to install binaries that don't exist yet) with a muted "lands with those builds" note; surface cards moved up out of the page-bottom orphan slot into a new SurfaceCards.vue slotted between How-it-works and Get-started ("meet the two surfaces before the install commands") — index.md body is now intentionally empty; "Voice with a face" renamed "Hands-free voice" and "voice with the morphing sphere" copy dropped (user-swappable voice animations are planned — don't marry voice marketing to one visual); Windows-only status propagated to the remaining availability claims: desktop/index experimental box, installation.md intro, and a "Coming soon" warning on its macOS/Linux section (capability mentions like clipboard tool paths left intact — that code exists). Sphere gaze root-cause (reported: "tracking gets confused over time / switching scroll↔mouse"): the core blends light angles linearly (naturalAngle*(1-blend) + bias*blend) and naturalAngle = ω·t is UNBOUNDED — SphereMark's proximity-driven blend (0.76–0.90) leaked (1-blend)·ω·t (slow continuous orbit off the cursor) and snapped on every blend change (two fractions of a huge angle). Fix without touching the parity-locked core: pin lightAngleBlend to exactly 1 (0 for reduced motion), move the ambient-life feel into fbm wander amplitude (0.12 idle → 0.05 engaged via the existing proximity EMA), and ignore non-mouse pointers (a lifted touch parked a phantom hover). At blend 1 the asin/acos gaze mapping collapses to exactly linear. Recorded in auto-memory sphere-gaze-partial-blend-leak — the 0-or-1 contract applies to any future caller (Android MorphingSphere currently never sets a partial blend; only the core default 0 exists).

Frozen-sphere incident: Keystore/Tink global-lock contention (same day, found via adb after a reported ~3s startup freeze). Cold-start logcat showed Skipped 45 frames at first draw (pre-existing VM-init cost), then Long monitor contention … AndroidKeysetManager$Builder.build() … owner DefaultDispatcher-worker-5 … for 4.095s on the main thread, ending in Skipped 1386 frames / Davey! duration=11596ms. Mechanics: EncryptedDashboardCookieStore built its Keystore-backed prefs eagerly in its constructor — 1–4s per build on Samsung StrongBox, serialized through Tink's process-global AndroidKeysetManager.Builder.build() lock — and the new Manage pre-warm constructed one per section (8×, worker-5 = the lock owner in every contention event), while other paths (connection validation probe, Manage's per-fetch client factory, session clear) constructed yet more instances, one of them on the main thread. The pre-warm didn't create the main-thread keystore work, but it multiplied the stall by keeping the lock hot. Fix (three layers): (1) EncryptedDashboardCookieStore.store is now by lazy — construction free on any thread, the build lands on first cookie access, which is always an OkHttp/IO thread; (2) new ConnectionViewModel.dashboardCookieStoreFor(connectionId) — ONE cached instance per connection, now used by Manage's client factory, the validation probe, session clear, standard voice, and the pre-warm (previously each had private instances = N keyset builds for the same prefs file); (3) prewarmDashboardManage takes the shared store + builds ONE DashboardApiClient for the whole sweep (fetchDashboardSectionStateWith(client, …) core extracted; per-section client/store construction removed; NonCancellable shutdown in finally). DashboardOAuthSignInDialog.cookieStoreFactory widened to the DashboardCookieStore interface. Net keyset builds at cold start: was ~10+ serialized seconds-long holds; now ≤3 (two AuthManagers + one cookie store), all off-main. Correction to the earlier "pre-warm can't delay the UI" assessment: it missed the keystore-lock dimension — network was off-main, but lock contention is transitive.

Use-now/Prefer split + Manage waterfall fix + disk cache (same day). Branch feature/route-override-split-manage-cache. Three items:

• Routes: "Use now" vs "Prefer" separated. Observed: "Use now" silently flipped the connection to "Preferred: tailscale" — both affordances routed through setPreferredEndpointRole, which persists preferredRouteRole. Split per the act-now-vs-policy principle: "Use now" → new ConnectionViewModel.useRouteNow(role) (transient setManualRoleOverride + probeNow; dies on disconnect; useRouteNow(null) restores the persisted preference); "Prefer this route" (⋮ menu, now a toggle with "Stop preferring" + explanatory sublabels) remains the only writer of preferredRouteRole. ConnectionManager.manualRoleOverride became a StateFlow so the card can label Current as automatic / preferred / manual (until disconnect) — the trick: a preference is implemented through the override (restored into it on connection load), so "manual" is simply override != preferredRole. Card gains "Cancel manual switch" + "Stop preferring" rows; top-level "Auto" clears both layers. Decision recorded: do NOT auto-prefer Tailscale — strict priority + reachability already promotes it when LAN dies and prefers the faster LAN at home; silent preference changes were the exact complaint.
• Manage waterfall. Reported: still 5–10s to fully load. Root cause was arithmetic, not regression: fetchDashboardSectionStateWith ran the full auth preamble (status → providers → session → ws-ticket) before EVERY section payload — 8 sections × 5 sequential round trips ≈ 40, and both pre-warm paths ran them serially. Extracted DashboardPreamble + fetchDashboardPreamble(): fetched once per sweep, passed into the section fetch (which then costs one payload GET); prewarmDashboardManage aborts the whole sweep on an unreachable/unauthenticated preamble and fans the section GETs out concurrently (one OkHttp client, dispatcher caps per-host); the in-screen sibling prewarm reuses the visible section's already-verified status/session as its preamble and launches sections in parallel. Net: ~40 sequential → ~4 + 8 concurrent. Foreground (visible-tab) loads keep the full preamble — the header needs fresh status/session.
• Disk cache ("yes add that now"). New DashboardManageDiskCache (ui/screens/DashboardManageDiskCache.kt): plain-JSON file cacheDir/dashboard-manage-cache.json (schema-versioned envelope, tmp+rename writes, mutex-serialized, corrupt/foreign-version decodes to empty) — deliberately NOT EncryptedSharedPrefs per the Tink-lock lesson; payload carries no credentials (cookies stay in their encrypted store) and cacheDir is app-private. DashboardSummaryItem/DashboardItemAction/DashboardActionKind moved there (private→internal, @Serializable); DashboardStatus/DashboardAuthProvider/DashboardAuthSession annotated @Serializable in place. Hydration (hydrateDashboardManageCache, RelayApp LaunchedEffect(Unit), once per process, never overwrites populated keys) preserves fetchedAtMillis, so hydrated entries render instantly AND count as stale — the existing SWR window + the pre-warm (cold filter widened to include stale-Loaded so disk-hydrated entries refresh) handle the rest with zero new states. Write-through after every Loaded fetch + end of pre-warm sweep (whole-file rewrite, a few KB); all three sign-in/out clear sites also wipe the file. New DashboardManageDiskCacheTest (8 cases: field-complete round-trip, corrupt/future-version/unknown-keys, filesystem round-trip, missing-file, clear, atomic replace).

Verified: :app:lint green, full testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest green. Answer to "was it just caching saved info before?": no — pre-rechrome Manage had NO cache at all (remember{} per entry); "fully loaded" got slower because the overview/pre-warm multiplied the per-section preamble 8×. Cold-process data loss was real though (cache was process-lifetime only) — the disk mirror closes it. On-device: cold start should show Manage data instantly (after one prior visit) and the route card's Use-now should no longer flip the Preferred chip.

Startup gate rework: sphere = loading screen with narration (same day). Reported: a ~15s cold start played out as a slideshow: "Connect to Hermes" CTA → connected (button gone) → last session + agent name. Two gate bugs made the intermediate states visible: (1) startupConnectionResolved listed apiHealth == Unreachable as a release condition — the FIRST health verdict at cold start often runs against the persisted URL moments before the route resolver lands, so the gate dropped users into disconnected chat while they were connected-just-waiting; (2) showStartupSphere had !startupGateTimedOut — at 5.5s the sphere force-hid regardless of progress, which is "shown the app screen before UI was ready" verbatim. And nothing ever gated on conversation restore. Branch feature/startup-gate-narration:

• Readiness contract — happy path: startupApiUp && initialChatSettled (new one-way latch in ChatViewModel, set on every conclusion path of switchProfileContext — loaded / nothing-to-restore / failed, with the history fetch now in try/finally so a throw can't strand isLoadingHistory or the gate). Error path: an Unreachable verdict must SURVIVE a 3s settle window (keyed LaunchedEffect restarts on every health flip) before it releases — the normal UI then owns offline presentation. Backstop: 12s timeout that RELEASES the gate instead of yanking the sphere (timeout removed from showStartupSphere).
• Narration — terminal-style check lines at the sphere's bottom (✓ state restored / ✓ route · Tailscale / › contacting hermes… / · conversation), monospace labelSmall, all four rows always laid out (pending rows dimmed at 0.28 alpha, animateFloatAsState fade-up) so the column never reflows. Failed shows ✕ hermes unreachable briefly during the fade-out. Rendered only when a connection is configured.
• Why ~15s is real — the wall-clock chain is: Tink keyset hydration before the API client can exist (getApiKey() awaits crypto init, 1–4s on StrongBox) → route resolve (4s per dead candidate probe) → client rebuild → capabilities probe + health probe (repeated after a route swap if the first pass ran against the stale persisted URL) → sessions + last-session messages + personalities fetches. The gate fix makes the wait legible, not shorter; candidate future wins: resolve the preferred role before the first client rebuild, persist the capabilities snapshot, parallelize capabilities/health/personalities after rebuild.

Header/footer polish (same day). Terminal and Settings are pushed destinations (header chrome from Chat/Manage) but had no back affordance — both TopAppBars gain the standard navigationIcon back arrow (popBackStack), including Terminal's PowerFeatureGate variant; RelayStatusStrip pill margins tightened top 2→3dp, bottom 8→4dp per spec. Verified: lint + full unit suite green.

On-device cold-start measurement + the keystore wall (same day). Reported: the new sphere paused on "contacting hermes…" then dumped to disconnected chat. Reproduced over wireless adb (force-stop → launch → timestamped screencaps + logcat on the S25 Ultra, googlePlay build): +0.5s resolver wins lan 192.168.1.100:8642 (HEAD /health 200 — server fine, network fine); +2.4→+15.1s a continuous wall of StrongBox keystore operations — keystore2's own watchdog fired every second (createOperation … Pending: 500ms), each op ~550ms, all serialized behind Tink's process-global lock; +12.65s the 12s gate backstop fired → disconnected chat revealed (exactly matching the report); +15.1s AuthManager init: no stored session_token — the store finally decrypted, and only then could rebuildApiClient()'s getApiKey() return. The API client — and health, capabilities, and chat behind it — sat 15 seconds behind crypto whose only finding was "there is no key" (keyless local setup). Two fixes (branch fix/cold-start-keystore-fastpath):

• Key-less fast path — new plain-SharedPreferences hint (<tokenPrefs>_plain_hints / api_key_present, boolean only, never key material) written by setApiKey/clearApiKey and converged in AuthManager init after the real decrypt. ConnectionViewModel.apiKeyForClientBuild() consults apiKeyKnownAbsent() and skips getApiKey() entirely when the connection is known key-less; used by the cold-start DataStore collector, rebuildApiClient, and rebuildChatApiClient. Defaults to "assume present ⇒ wait", so keyed connections never see an unauthenticated client — the worst case of a stale hint is the old slow behavior. First launch after this update still pays the marathon once (hint unwritten); every cold start after is fast.
• Resolver evidence counts as hermes-online — the gate's startupApiUp now includes activeEndpoint != null: the resolver only publishes a winner after a successful HEAD /health on that route, which lands ~1s in — no reason for the narration to sit on "contacting hermes…" for 14 more seconds waiting for the client-based probe to repeat the same check.

Expected new keyless cold start: client ~+1–2s after first DataStore emission, checks tick through, gate releases on conversation-restored at ~+3–5s. Keyed connections on slow StrongBox still pay the decrypt (the key is genuinely needed) and may hit the 12s backstop — acceptable; the narration holds the screen that long. Verified: lint + full unit suite green; on-device re-measure pending next Studio install.

Splash choreography + OS-splash blend (same day). Two UX nits on the now-fast startup, branch fix/splash-choreography-blend: (1) with every readiness signal satisfiable before the sphere fades in, the checks could appear pre-ticked — "did it actually check anything?". New narration choreography: startupCheckTargets (real states) present through a startupNarrationStage cursor — rows resolve strictly top-to-bottom, the stage row shows a classic ASCII spinner (| / - \, 120ms frames; braille spinners render as tofu in some platform mono fonts) for a ≥350ms beat before its verdict lands, rows below sit dimmed with short labels, and a Failed verdict shows immediately without a beat. The gate's HAPPY path now also waits for startupNarrationComplete (~1.5s total) so the sphere never exits mid-tick; error/timeout releases don't wait. (2) The Android 12+ system splash can't be removed or replaced with live content, but it can blend: dark_background was still the pre-cockpit #1A1A2E (visibly different navy → read as a separate screen) — now #08090D = RelayRefresh.Background exactly; and splash_blank.xml was a pathless vector, which OneUI treats as invalid and falls back to drawing the launcher mark (confirmed in the adb capture despite the theme requesting blank) — it now contains a real fully-transparent rect path. Net: launch should read as one continuous dark surface — OS splash (plain) → sphere fade-in → checks tick → chat. If OneUI still insists on the launcher mark, it now sits on the matching background and fades out via the existing 400ms exit animator — acceptable worst case. Lint + full unit suite green.

Reveal-flash root cause: gate and chat surface judged readiness by different signals (same day — code-confirmed, no device test; a second session owned adb). Reported: a blink of "Connect Standard Hermes" between sphere exit and full chat. Confirmed possible in code: ChatScreen's connect CTA renders from connectionViewModel.chatReady = _chatApiClient != null && _apiServerReachable, but the gate's happy path keyed on startupApiUp, which (since the keystore fix) accepts the route resolver's HEAD /health evidence at ~+1s. _apiServerReachable only flips after rebuildApiClient()'s client-based checkHealth() lands — a few hundred ms later — so the gate could release (narration done, history settled) while chatReady was still false → fade-out exposed the CTA until the verdict caught up. Fix (branch fix/startup-gate-chatready): the happy clause is now chatReady && initialChatSettled && startupNarrationComplete, and the "conversation" check row's Done is keyed on chatReady && initialChatSettled — the narration physically can't finish, and the gate can't release, until the exact signal the chat surface renders from is true. startupApiUp (resolver evidence) still drives the route/hermes rows — it honestly answers "is the server up", just not "is chat presentable". Residual race audited: a late lastSessionId hydration re-triggers history load, but ChatScreen shows its loading spinner (not the CTA) while isLoadingHistory — worst case is a brief spinner, acceptable. Lesson recorded: a readiness gate must consume the same signals the gated surface renders from, not parallel evidence of the same fact. Lint + full unit suite green.

Cold-start variance (camera bug #2): the 30s health-tick cliff (same day, branch fix/health-retry-burst-gate-diagnostic). The demo session measured "loading conversation" at ~6–28s across runs against the same LAN server. Two contributors identified: (1) the takes ran on a fresh reinstall, so run #1 paid the one-time keystore-marathon hint priming (~15s+, expected, self-healing); (2) the structural one — the API health loop is a flat delay(30_000) ticker, so a single transient checkHealth() miss (cold-start race with the route resolver, Wi-Fi settling, mid-route-swap) parked _apiServerReachable=false for a full tick: the gate holds, the 12s backstop dumps to the CTA, and chat heals at the next tick — the ~28s tail. Fix: a bounded fast-retry burst — on a transition into Unreachable, three quick re-probes (2.5s/5s/7.5s), re-armed only by a Reachable verdict, so StateFlow dedup makes repeat failures un-retriggerable and a genuinely down server fails one burst then settles back to the 30s cadence (the 2-consecutive-failures route-re-resolve escalation is untouched). Plus the requested diagnostic: when the timeout (not readiness, not a settled error) is what opens the gate, DiagnosticsLog records a Warning naming the unmet conditions (chatReady/historySettled/narration/health/route) so future variance is explainable from Settings → Diagnostics instead of needing a camera. Lint + full unit suite green.

2026-06-10 — Standard voice retargeted at the dashboard surface + Manage parity (model/keys/profiles) + softened brand blue

Context. Release verification found the just-landed StandardHermesVoiceClient implemented the right upstream contract (/api/audio/transcribe + /api/audio/speak, base64 data-url — hermes-desktop's voice path) but aimed it at the API server (:8642) with a bearer header. Verified against upstream/main (tip d1383a6b1, fetched 2026-06-10 into hermes-agent-pr-prep): api_server.py has no audio routes (/v1/capabilities says audio_api: false; PR #8199 unmerged) — the routes live on the dashboard web server (hermes_cli/web_server.py:1877/2012) behind its cookie-session auth gate. Net effect: standard-only users got an enabled mic and a guaranteed 404 per turn; relay users silently paid a full base64 upload to a 404 before each fallback.

What changed (branch feature/standard-voice-dashboard-surface).

• Voice retarget. StandardHermesVoiceClient now takes a dashboardUrlProvider (Connection.resolvedDashboardUrl, :9119 derived) and an OkHttpClient carrying the same per-connection encrypted cookie jar Manage signs in with (new DynamicDashboardCookieJar resolves the store per-request so connection switches stay correct). Bearer header dropped — meaningless on this surface. 401/404 error copy now points at Manage sign-in / server update.
• Availability model. New StandardVoiceAvailability (Unknown/Ready/SignInRequired/Unreachable/Unsupported) in ConnectionViewModel, fed by probeStandardVoice(): GET /api/status (public) → GET /api/auth/me when gated → HEAD existence check on the audio route (405 = present, 404 = old build). Replaces HermesApiClient.probeAudioApi() (deleted). Probe runs in the health cycle + rebuildApiClient(), refreshes the persisted dashboard snapshot only on material change, and re-runs immediately after Manage sign-in/sign-out (refreshStandardVoice()).
• Route preference. AutoVoiceAudioClient Auto order is now Relay first, then Standard: paired Relay is profile-aware and needs no dashboard sign-in; Standard is the zero-plugin path for vanilla installs. Power users can force either in Voice Settings.
• Voice Settings UX. Stable STT/TTS Route section shows live per-route status (Standard: Ready / sign-in required / unreachable / unsupported; Relay: ready / not configured; Auto: which route it would use) with a "Sign in via Manage" CTA (navigates to the Manage tab) and an "update hermes-agent or pair Relay" hint. Realtime Agent engine now states "Requires a paired Relay" and shows an inline error + guidance when selected without one. Chat mic toast is availability-aware.
• Manage parity with hermes-desktop. New DashboardApiClient methods + UI: Models tab gets "Change main model" (/api/model/options picker → POST /api/model/set, with the upstream expensive-model confirm_required round-trip); new Keys tab (GET /api/env inventory → Set (write-only, password-masked) / Reveal (POST /api/env/reveal, server rate-limited) / Clear (DELETE /api/env with JSON body)); Profiles tab gets New profile (POST /api/profiles, clone-from-default), Describe (PUT .../description), and per-profile Model (PUT .../model, shared picker). Overview gains Models + Keys tiles. Channel-managed env vars stay visible (tagged channel) since the app has no Channels page to defer to.
• Theme. RelayRefresh.Electric softened #111DFF → #4F5BD5 (user feedback: connections card too saturated/"blue" vs text + palette). Drives relaySelectedPanel, dark primaryContainer, light primary.
• Docs. CLAUDE.md dashboard-surface paragraph now lists the audio/model/env/profile routes and the standard-voice auth model.

Verified. :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin, :app:lint, and :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest all green locally. On-device verification needed: Manage sign-in → standard voice turn on an API-only connection; Auto fallback with relay paired; model picker payload shape against the live dashboard (parseModelOptions is tolerant but unverified against real build_models_payload output).

Follow-up (same day). Closed the deferred parity items + re-scoped the blue:

• Skills hub — "Browse hub" on the Skills tab: multi-source search (GET /api/skills/hub/search, results marked installed via the lock-file map), SKILL.md preview before install (/api/skills/hub/preview → detail dialog), install (POST .../install {identifier}) / uninstall (POST .../uninstall {name}) / "Update installed" (POST .../update). All three mutations are async spawns server-side ({ok, pid}) — UI messages say "started — refresh Skills shortly" and install rows stay disabled to prevent double-fires. Dashboard client read timeout raised 30s→45s so the server's 30s search fan-out can't die client-side at the edge.
• SOUL editor — "Edit SOUL" profile action fetches the full file (GET /api/profiles/{name}/soul is untruncated upstream, unlike the relay Inspector's 200KB cap), opens a monospace full-file editor dialog, PUT {content} on save; creates the file when absent.
• Blue re-scoped — the original Electric was preferred elsewhere; reverted Electric to #111DFF and added ElectricMuted (#4F5BD5), applied only to the active connection card (was a full-opacity primaryContainer fill — the actual complaint) as a 0.42-alpha wash. Cockpit selected panels, pills, and light-theme primary keep the vivid brand blue.
• CHANGELOG — [Unreleased] entries added (missed in the first commit batch; the dev-branch convention expects per-PR appends).

Follow-up 2 (same day) — capability card, quiet standard-path UX, hub featured, onboarding copy.

• Capability card — discovered the wizard's StandardSetupResultCard already renders Chat/Manage/Relay readiness lines; completed it with a Voice line instead of inventing a new surface. StandardApiSetupResult gains voiceAvailability, settled in the same setup probe (dashboard status → auth → audio-route HEAD) so the card and the mic gate are correct the moment setup finishes. Wording: Ready → "Speech ready via your Hermes server"; SignInRequired → "Unlocks with dashboard sign-in" (the existing Manage CTA covers it); Unsupported → "update or pair Relay".
• No spurious relay warnings on the standard path (audit). Verified runVoiceRelayPreflight only fires on the Realtime engine (correctly relay-gated). The real offender was Voice Settings: it fetched three relay configs on open and snackbar'd every failure — a standard-only user got two "Relay unreachable" snackbars for a route they don't use. Now gated on relayVoiceReady: fetches skipped entirely, relay-backed sections (Fallback TTS / Voice Output / Realtime config) replaced by one quiet "Voice Providers" card ("speaks through your Hermes server's configured TTS/STT — pair Relay to pick providers from the phone"), STT section shows a quiet line instead of permanent "loading...", and Test Current Engine labels the route honestly.
• Hub featured view — GET /api/skills/hub/sources on dialog open: "Sources: Official (Nous), skills.sh, ..." line + featured skills (from the centralized index) listed before the first search, marked installed via the same lock map. Best-effort: silent on failure.
• Onboarding — the rechrome (55a4227) reworked Welcome (sphere hero + Standard/Advanced paths) and the Connect step (shared ConnectionWizard), but Chat/Manage/Power remained icon + one sentence. They now carry three concrete feature rows each (reusing the Welcome page's row style): Chat = streaming/profiles/voice-no-install; Manage = control/skills-hub/one-sign-in; Power = terminal/bridge/realtime. Copy emphasizes the standard-first story ("no extra install", "signing in once also unlocks voice").

Follow-up 3 (same day) — release polish: floating status pill, gesture ambient mode, media-settings scoping, voice.md standard route.

• RelayStatusStrip is now a floating capsule (insets → 14dp side / 8dp bottom margins → pill clip) instead of a zero-radius bordered bar — the full-width rectangle clashed with rounded display corners. Gate caught a real overload error: Compose padding() can't mix horizontal with top/bottom — use start/end/top/bottom.
• Ambient (fullscreen sphere) lost its top-bar toggle: long-press the conversation background to enter (bubbles keep their copy long-press — they consume first), tap/long-press anywhere to exit, transient "tap to return to chat" pill on every entry. Note: inside a Box nested in a Column, bare AnimatedVisibility resolves to the ColumnScope extension and fails — fully qualify androidx.compose.animation.AnimatedVisibility.
• Media settings confirmed Relay-only (they govern MEDIA:hermes-relay://<token> fetches via MediaSettingsRepository) and now say so on-screen.
• user-docs/features/voice.md intro rewritten: standard (no-Relay) voice via the dashboard audio routes is now the lead story, with a two-route tip block (Auto prefers Relay when paired) and Realtime marked relay-required. Remaining docs debt logged below.

Follow-up 4 (same day) — chat enhancements + release docs. Audit found most of the chat wishlist already shipped (scroll-to-bottom FAB with userScrolledAway auto-follow, session drawer search/pin/archive, not-connected empty state with Connect CTA, stop-during-streaming, tappable suggestion chips). Added the genuinely missing pieces: Quote in reply (bubble long-press now opens Copy/Quote menu when a quote handler is wired; copy-only call sites keep direct copy), Share conversation (top-bar share → Markdown via ACTION_SEND), Manage card "More" overflow for 5+ action rows, and the ambient-gesture tip in Appearance (a11y-discoverable). user-docs: new guide/quick-start.md (2-minute standard path, capability-card table, power-tools in a collapsed details block) registered first in the sidebar; features/dashboard.md Android Manage section rewritten per-section including hub/Keys/SOUL-editing (and the stale "SOUL editing requires the paired inspector" claim fixed); features/voice.md Requirements split standard-route vs relay-route. Release coordination: PR #64 (docs baseline refs → dev) overlaps us on CLAUDE.md/DEVLOG/upstream-contributions/dashboard.md — land #64 first, resolve in our PR. Dependabot PRs target main directly (off-policy); add target-branch: dev to .github/dependabot.yml as a follow-up.

Docs debt (user-docs) for the release: features/dashboard.md lacks the new Manage surfaces (Keys tab, model picker, profile create/describe/SOUL editor, skills-hub browse/featured); guide/getting-started.md (17.5KB) should split into a short Quick Start page + separate Install-options/Advanced pages; features/voice.md body still describes relay-era requirements beyond the new intro.

Next. When upstream PR #8199 lands /v1/audio/* on the API server, add it as the preferred standard route (capabilities already advertise audio_api) and demote the dashboard path to fallback. Remaining deferred parity: MCP manual add-server form (catalog install covers onboarding), per-profile cron/skill scoping in Manage.

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2026-06-05 — Prefer upstream /v1/skills with legacy fallback

Context. Upstream Hermes Agent now has baseline skill/session API surface area, while Axiom's fork still preserves richer Relay-specific /api/* compatibility routes. The Android client should begin consuming upstream-compatible skill listings when present without breaking older fork/bootstrap installs.

What changed. HermesApiClient.getSkills() now tries /v1/skills first, then falls back to /api/skills. Skill parsing accepts upstream OpenAI-style list envelopes ({"object":"list","data":[...]}), legacy fork envelopes ({"skills":[...]} / {"items":[...]}), and direct arrays.

Verification. Added pure Kotlin unit coverage for endpoint order and /v1/skills data parsing. Verified with ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Android/Sdk ./gradlew :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests 'com.hermesandroid.relay.network.HermesApiClientTest' → BUILD SUCCESSFUL. git diff --check passes.

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2026-05-26 — Fix voice-mode crash: ExoPlayer audio session id read off-main (barge-in + legacy TTS)

Report. Discord user, sideload latest: voice chat crashes the instant Hermes starts answering — "I hear just 2 letters and it crashes." Stack: IllegalStateException: Player is accessed on the wrong thread. Current thread: 'DefaultDispatcher-worker-4', Expected thread: 'main' with the Media3 player-accessed-on-wrong-thread doc link and a Suppressed: ... Dispatchers.IO.

Root cause. Dispatchers.IO threads are named DefaultDispatcher-worker-N (IO and Default share one scheduler pool), so the crash is on an IO coroutine. BargeInListener runs its mic reader on Dispatchers.IO and, to attach AcousticEchoCanceler, polls an audioSessionIdProvider lambda. On the legacy /voice/synthesize (Media3) playback path, VoiceViewModel wires that provider to { player.audioSessionId } → exoPlayer.audioSessionId. ExoPlayer is thread-confined; its getAudioSessionId() getter calls verifyApplicationThread() and throws when read off-main. The realtime PCM path is unaffected because it wires the provider to an AudioTrack session id (thread-safe), which is why the bug only hit legacy/fallback setups. Sequence: first sentence starts → runPlayWorker.onFileReady → startBargeInListenerIfEnabled() → IO reader → awaitNonZeroSessionId() → off-main getter → crash ~2 syllables in.

Fix. VoicePlayer.audioSessionId now serves a @Volatile cachedAudioSessionId instead of the raw thread-confined getter. The cache is populated from main-thread Media3 callbacks: an AnalyticsListener.onAudioSessionIdChanged hook (authoritative, fires when Media3 allocates/reallocates the AudioTrack) plus a belt-and-braces read inside the existing onIsPlayingChanged. Reads from any thread are now safe.

Tests. Added VoicePlayerTest coverage: getter reflects the analytics-listener-cached id, never re-invokes exoPlayer.audioSessionId (the off-main call), and defaults to 0 before allocation. Captured the AnalyticsListener in the MockK harness. Verified locally: :app:lintGooglePlayDebug + :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest --tests VoicePlayerTest both green (BUILD SUCCESSFUL).

Next. Landed on dev via PR #60, then shipped as the focused patch release android-v0.8.1 (cherry-picked off the android-v0.8.0 tag, PR #62); main merged back to dev.

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2026-05-24 — Background Hermes runs in Realtime Agent voice (ADR 33)

Context. Realtime Agent ran each Hermes turn synchronously inside the provider event pump (_run_brokered_tool did return await task), so a long research/multi-tool/desktop run froze the whole realtime session until it finished. ADR 33 + docs/plans/2026-05-24-realtime-background-hermes-runs.md define a three-tier model (foreground / promoted / durable) with the relay as an explicit audio-floor owner. Branch feature/realtime-background-hermes-runs.

What shipped (phased, per the plan):

• Phase 0 — idle-tolerance probe + verdict. scripts/realtime-provider-idle-probe.py + an "Idle tolerance" section in docs/realtime-voice-poc.md. Ran live against OpenAI (VOICE_TOOLS_OPENAI_KEY in ~/.hermes/.env): the session survived 10s/20s/30s quiescent windows and returned clean audio on every post-idle turn → verdict hold-floor-ok. xAI has no creds on the dev box, so its verdict is recorded analytically as hold-floor-ok (same turn_detection:None multi-turn model; the implementation closes the pending call rather than holding an open response) — confirm on the relay host. Incidental finding logged: OpenAI now wants session.audio.output.format.rate at session.update (minor _session_update follow-up; session still worked).
• Phase 1 — floor owner. New plugin/relay/realtime_agent/floor.py: pure, single-owner audio floor (provider / relay_tts / android_filler mouths; idle/provider_speaking/hermes_filler/result_pending labels). Wired behavior-preservingly into the broker (acquire/release on AUDIO_DELTA/AUDIO_DONE/RESPONSE_DONE; relay-TTS render holds the floor; filler gated by can_speak). Invariants in test_realtime_floor.py.
• Phase 2 — Tier B promotion (was default off). _run_brokered_tool shields the run and waits promote_after_ms; if still running it detaches to the background, closes the pending provider call with an interim ack, optionally speaks a handoff, and _deliver_background_result speaks the answer once the floor is idle. New events hermes.run.promoted / hermes.run.background_completed + tier/floor on progress; 8 new settings. test_realtime_promotion.py (promote+pump-responsive, short=no-promote, cancel, detach-resume-replays).
• Phase 3 — default-on + Tier C + Android + docs. Flipped promotion_enabled default true (safe: the path closes the pending call rather than holding an open response, so the socket only sees the normal between-turns idle gap). hermes_run_task(mode="background") detaches immediately (tier:"durable"). Settings exposed on GET/PATCH /voice/realtime-agent/config. Android: parse new events → "working on it" chip; Voice Settings → Realtime Agent → Background tasks (promote toggle, spoken-handoff toggle, result-delivery segmented control) → RelayVoiceClient.updateRealtimeAgentPromotion().

Why default-on despite the Phase 0 gate. The implementation closes the pending function call with an interim background ack instead of parking an open provider response, so the worst-case "idle open-response" the gate worried about doesn't occur — the socket sits in the same idle state it does between any two user turns. The probe is retained to confirm per-provider survival; documented in config + ADR.

Verified. Python realtime suite 58 tests green (test_realtime_floor, test_realtime_promotion, both provider suites, routes, profile-voice-config). ./gradlew lint — Kotlin compiles clean; the only 2 lint errors are in the gitignored local.properties (absent in CI). Pre-existing unrelated test_reads_hermes_xai_oauth_credential_pool failure confirmed on origin/dev baseline.

Next. Confirm the xAI idle verdict on the relay host (where xAI creds live); fix the OpenAI _session_update rate field; run the lab smoke on a paired device. Open the PR to dev.

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2026-05-23 — Un-defer the voice/audio test suite (issue #32) + barge-in resume bug

Context. GitHub issue #32 tracked 5 voice/audio unit tests @Ignore'd during the v0.5.1 release because the full :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest task "hung indefinitely." Scope had quietly grown to 8 ignored classes (3 of the "pure-logic, should-work" ones got swept in defensively). Branch fix/voice-test-suite.

Root-cause of the hang. Not Robolectric's classloader (the v0.5.1 hypothesis) — it was BargeInPreferencesTest building its DataStore on a TestScope(StandardTestDispatcher() + Job()) whose scheduler is never advanced. DataStore's reader actor never ran, so repo.flow.first() suspended forever. Fixed by backing the DataStore with a real dispatcher scope (CoroutineScope(Dispatchers.IO + Job())); the runTest{} bodies still drive the suspend calls within the dispatch timeout.

Real product bug found (not just test infra). Un-ignoring VoiceViewModelBargeInTest surfaced a genuine regression: the barge-in "resume after interruption" feature was silently broken. onBargeInDetected() → interruptSpeaking() → startTtsConsumer() restarts the play worker, which immediately hits an empty audioQueue, fires onQueueDrained → clearSpokenChunksState() synchronously (on Dispatchers.Main.immediate) — wiping spokenChunks before the 600 ms resume watchdog reads it. The watchdog always saw an empty tail and dropped the resume. Fixed by snapshotting the un-played tail (pendingResumeTail) synchronously in onBargeInDetected(), the instant the interrupt fires, instead of re-reading live state later.

VoicePlayerTest / Robolectric. No separate source set needed (the issue's proposed Phase 3). The "Robolectric leaks across forks and hangs the suite" symptom was a misattribution of the DataStore hang. With that fixed, VoicePlayerTest runs cleanly in the normal test source set under @RunWith(RobolectricTestRunner) @Config(sdk=[34]) — added robolectric 4.14.1 (testImplementation) + unitTests.isIncludeAndroidResources = true.

Result. All 8 issue-#32 classes un-ignored and green. Full suite: 525 completed, 12 skipped, 0 failed, no hang (~30 s). The 12 skipped are unrelated pre-existing @Ignores (ConnectionStoreTest et al.).

Also fixed (pre-existing failures surfaced while greening the suite):

• CardDispatchSyncBuilder bug — buildSyntheticMessages short-circuited on msg.cards.isEmpty(), silently dropping dispatches whose card was trimmed from the rolling buffer. This directly contradicted the SUT's own docstring (and CardDispatchSyncBuilderTest.buildSyntheticMessages_unknownCardKey_stillEmitsBareEnvelope), which require a bare-envelope audit record in that case. Fixed the guard to gate on cardDispatches.isEmpty() only; the card == null fallback already handles the missing-card path.
• 4 lint errors in sideload-only bridge code compiled into googlePlay. NotificationPermission (AutoDisableWorker) — the real hasPostNotificationsPermission() early-return guard was already correct; the existing @SuppressLint("MissingPermission") just used the wrong ID, so added "NotificationPermission". ForegroundServiceType ×3 (BridgeForegroundService) — the service + its FOREGROUND_SERVICE_*/POST_NOTIFICATIONS permissions are declared only in the sideload manifest; googlePlay deliberately omits them (no device-control, Play-Store compliance), making the code unreachable there. Suppressed with a justification rather than weakening googlePlay.

Verified. :app:testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest green (0 failures); :app:lint green (0 errors).

Next. Commit, merge fix/voice-test-suite → dev, close issue #32.

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2026-05-19 — Experimental Realtime Hermes Voice Agent

Plan. docs/plans/2026-05-19-realtime-hermes-voice-agent.md — add a switchable Android voice engine that brokers a realtime provider session (OpenAI first, xAI ready) while keeping Hermes as authority for profiles, sessions, memory, tool execution, Android bridge safety, confirmations, and cancellation. Stable Hermes chat + voice output remains the default and is untouched.

Surface added.

• Relay broker — plugin/relay/realtime_agent/ package with RealtimeAgentHandler (HTTP + WSS) mounted at /voice/realtime-agent/* next to the existing /voice/realtime/* lab routes. Five HTTP routes (config GET/PATCH, providers/{id}/options GET, providers/{id}/validate POST, session POST) plus a websocket at /voice/realtime-agent/{session_id}. Disabled by default — realtime_agent_enabled=False until an operator opts in via Settings → Voice or RELAY_REALTIME_AGENT_ENABLED=1.
• Hermes tool broker — realtime_agent/hermes_tool_broker.py is the narrow bridge from a realtime provider's function call into the Hermes /v1/runs SSE surface. Only the four hermes_* schemas (hermes_run_task, hermes_get_status, hermes_cancel, hermes_confirm) are visible to the provider — the realtime side can ask Hermes to work, check progress, cancel, or answer a confirmation, but never call Android bridge or skill tools directly. Hermes events are normalized into hermes.* ws events that mirror into the chat timeline so voice mode never has to be exited to see what happened.
• Provider adapters — realtime_agent/providers/{base,openai,xai}.py behind the normalized adapter contract. OpenAI is the first-class implementation; xAI is ready behind the same contract and toggled by configured auth. Both adapters keep all provider-event vocabulary local to the adapter — broker logic switches on the normalized ProviderEvent shape only.
• Android engine selector — VoicePreferences.voiceEngineMode (DataStore-backed, persists across launches) with a clean radio selector at the top of Settings → Voice. The Realtime Agent option carries an Experimental badge and a concise limitation note; defaults always coerce unknown stored values back to the stable engine so a downgraded build cannot strand a user.
• Android client + overlay timeline — RelayVoiceClient.runRealtimeAgent drives the brokered ws end-to-end and surfaces realtime transcripts, Hermes tool state, confirmation prompts, and final responses through RealtimeAgentTimelineMirror into the same overlay + chat surfaces the stable engine already uses. No exit/reload required to see brokered tool work.

What is preserved. /voice/realtime/* lab routes, /voice/output/*, /voice/transcribe, and /voice/synthesize are unchanged. Stable voice mode tests still pass. voice:realtime capability gates both surfaces, so the existing pairing-grant flow covers the new engine.

Validation.

• python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_realtime_agent_* — relay broker + Hermes tool broker + provider adapter tests passing.
• Sibling Python tests (test_realtime_voice_routes, test_profile_voice_config, test_provider_options) still green — stable voice surface is regression-clean.
• :app:compileSideloadDebugKotlin builds clean. Android UI tests live on-device and were not in scope for this pass (no adb requested).

Notes. Realtime providers cannot pre-empt Hermes safety — destructive Android bridge actions still surface as Hermes confirmation prompts and require an operator hermes_confirm ws answer routed through the existing approval flow. Provider disconnect surfaces a voice.error with recoverable=true so the Android client can fall back to stable voice without corrupting the Hermes chat session.

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2026-04-25 (II) — Remote-PC ergonomics pass: PowerShell / process / job / transfer / health tools

Context. A feedback list from a real remote-PC session: desktop_terminal was 502'ing on long-lived launches, no process-management primitives (had to netstat | taskkill manually), no bulk file sync, PowerShell echoing instead of executing, and no daemon-health introspection. The biggest single ask was a detached job/process API with persistent logs. Explicit no-go: program-specific shortcuts (no ComfyUI helper).

Surface added (all routed through the existing desktop channel — no new channels, no hermes-agent core changes):

• desktop_powershell — script text fed to pwsh/powershell.exe via -Command - over stdin. Bypasses the cmd /c "powershell -Command \"...\"" quoting hellscape that was causing scripts to echo instead of execute. Probes pwsh first, falls back to Windows PowerShell on win32; non-Windows hosts without pwsh fail loud rather than degrade silently.
• Process tools — desktop_spawn_detached (returns within ~10ms with {pid, log_path}, child unref'd + detached:true so it survives the relay's 30s RPC ceiling), desktop_list_processes (substring filter), desktop_kill_process (pid or name + force=KILL), desktop_find_pid_by_port (cross-platform via netstat/lsof/ss). Tasklist defaults to /FO CSV without /V — verbose mode reads window titles which can take 30+s on a host with many GUI windows, the same latency landmine that was making desktop_terminal time out.
• Job API (desktop_job_*) — start / status / logs / cancel / list. On-disk layout ~/.hermes/desktop-jobs/<id>/{stdout.log, stderr.log, meta.json} is the source of truth across daemon restarts. desktop_job_logs supports offset + limit (negative offset → from-end) so the agent can paginate forward through a long log without re-reading. Cancel uses taskkill /T on Windows so build trees (npm → node, gradle → java) die fully, not just the immediate shell child.
• File-transfer tools — desktop_copy_directory (Node's fs.cp({recursive:true}) — no xcopy/cp -r shell-out so behavior is uniform), desktop_zip / desktop_unzip (probe + dispatch order: tar > zip/unzip > PowerShell Compress-Archive/Expand-Archive; Windows 10+ ships tar so the same code path works on every platform), desktop_checksum (streamed sha256/sha1/md5 — handles arbitrary file sizes).
• desktop_health — connected client name, host, platform, uptime, advertised tools, last error, recent commands. Answered by a new GET /desktop/health route on the relay — does NOT round-trip through the desktop channel — so it remains callable when the client is wedged on a long tool call. Heartbeat enriched with host/platform/arch/version/pid/uptime_ms and a sticky last_error snapshot stamped from DesktopToolRouter.dispatch's catch arm.

Drift-prevention. chat.ts, shell.ts, daemon.ts all constructed their own copies of the handler map. Replaced with single import from tools/handlerSet.ts (DESKTOP_HANDLERS + DESKTOP_ADVERTISED_TOOLS). Adding the next tool is a one-file change instead of three.

Tests + smoke.

• plugin/tests/test_desktop_health.py (3 tests) covers the new relay endpoint: 200/connected:false when no client, full surface when a desktop.status envelope has been received, 403 on non-loopback. Full Python suite still green (692 passing).
• desktop/scripts/smoke-tools.mjs exercises PowerShell (with literal "quotes" and $dollar to prove the cmd-quote-bypass works), process listing, sha256 checksum, and the full job lifecycle in-process. PS smoke confirmed pwsh selected, exit 0, output untouched. Job lifecycle: start → wait → status → logs → list, all green.
• npm run type-check + npm run build clean. The bin shim (hermes-relay --version / --help) still works; new tools enumerate in the help block via the shared advertise list.

Why no client roundtrip for desktop_health. It's the diagnostic — needs to work when other tools don't. Routing it as a desktop.command would gate it behind the very condition it's meant to inspect. Same pattern as /desktop/_ping: relay-only, loopback-required, sub-2s.

What's deliberately excluded. Program-specific shortcuts (e.g. restart_comfyui) — rejected mid-session; the generic desktop_job_* + desktop_powershell already cover that surface without coupling the relay to one app's quirks. ComfyUI users (or anyone else) can wrap a local .ps1 and desktop_job_start it.

Touchpoints. desktop/src/tools/handlers/{powershell,process,jobs,transfer}.ts (new), desktop/src/tools/handlerSet.ts (new), desktop/src/tools/router.ts (heartbeat enrichment + lastError stamping), desktop/src/commands/{chat,shell,daemon}.ts (consume DESKTOP_HANDLERS), plugin/tools/desktop_tool.py (rewrite — adds 14 new schemas / handlers / dispatch entries, adds _get for relay-only tools, adds _RELAY_ONLY_TOOLS to skip the per-tool _check_tool ping for desktop_health), plugin/relay/server.py (handle_desktop_health + route registration before the wildcard), plugin/tests/test_desktop_health.py (new).

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2026-04-25 — pair --grant-tools / --auto-grant-tools: collapse the pair → shell → daemon dance to two commands

Context. Goal: a CLI-only path from "I just installed the binary" to "Hermes can RC my PC." The historical flow was three commands (pair → shell to capture consent → daemon), and the middle step was a permanent papercut: a fresh user installs via the iwr/iex one-liner, runs pair, runs daemon, gets a consent_missing error pointing at the interactive shell command they hadn't asked for. The gate exists for good reason — a headless binary must never be the surface that first grants tool access — but the gap between that constraint and the user's mental model lived in the wrong place.

Fix. Two new opt-in flags on pair, both deliberately explicit so consent is never implicit:

• --grant-tools — after a successful pair, runs ensureToolsConsent(url) (the same helper shell has always used). TTY prompt with the standard "AGENT-CONTROLLED access" warning, persists toolsConsented: true on the stored session if the user types yes. Pair still succeeds even if consent is declined; the user just gets a hint to rerun on a TTY.
• --auto-grant-tools — folds toolsConsented: true into the same saveSession call that writes the token, no prompt. For CI / provisioning scripts where the operator has decided in writing that this URL is trusted. Auto wins if both flags are passed (no point prompting after the user already committed).

Daemon stays unchanged structurally — its consent gate already accepts toolsConsented: true from the stored session, which is exactly what the new flags write. Only diff in daemon.ts is the error message: the consent_missing path now points users at pair --grant-tools instead of suggesting they run shell for a consent grant they never asked to capture interactively.

Why split into two flags rather than one. A single --grant-tools flag would have to decide "prompt or not" from ambient context (TTY detection), and security-sensitive consent should never be implicit. --grant-tools = "ask me," --auto-grant-tools = "I already decided" — neither path is silent, and a malicious shell history that runs pair without flags can't broaden tool access. The boundary the original pair/shell split protected (scriptable token mint vs. interactive consent capture) is preserved; users who care about that boundary keep getting it, users who don't can opt into the shortcut.

One subtle thing in saveSession. It already implements a merge-onto-prev pattern for grants/ttl/endpointRole/certPin/toolsConsented (line 161–173 of remoteSessions.ts), so calling it a second time with just { toolsConsented: true } from ensureToolsConsent is non-destructive. That's why the interactive --grant-tools path doesn't need to thread the consent flag through pair's mainline saveSession — it can let ensureToolsConsent write its own follow-up save with no risk of clobbering the token, route, or grant set. Only the --auto-grant-tools path folds into the first call (atomic, no race window where the token exists without the consent stamp).

Touchpoints. desktop/src/commands/pair.ts (parse flags + post-pair grant step), desktop/src/cli.ts (BOOLEAN_FLAGS + HELP block + new two-command-bring-up example), desktop/src/commands/daemon.ts (sharper error messages pointing at the new shortcut), desktop/README.md (new "Pair + grant tools in one shot" subsection under First-time pairing + cross-link from Local-tool-access section), CLAUDE.md Key Files row for pair.ts. Type-check clean. Smoke-only verification because there's no test harness in desktop/ yet — the only automated check is npm run smoke which is a Bun-compile + 4-command exec; manual tsx src/cli.ts --help confirmed the new flags + example render correctly.

Not done in this session. No new tests (Bun harness still pending). No service-installer scripts (still deferred to a later alpha — daemon is runnable standalone). The --grant-tools prompt copy is verbatim CONSENT_PROMPT from tools/consent.ts ("rerun with --no-tools to disable") which is slightly off-context when invoked from pair rather than shell/chat — defensible (declining is still valid, user can rerun without the flag) but a context-aware variant would be a small future polish.

---

2026-04-23 (III) — Desktop CLI daemon + pre-release hardening: uninstall, doctor, first-run prompts, version-aware install

Context. The morning session landed Phase A.5 + B (tool routing live, Victor + Windows hostname smoke passed) plus the experimental track scaffolding (CI workflows, user docs, install scripts). Driving question: does the binary support clean and full uninstall/install, and what gaps remain before release? Audit surfaced five gaps — no uninstall script at all, silent overwrites on re-install, hard-errors on hermes-relay pair without --remote, bare hermes-relay on a fresh machine errors instead of walking into pairing, no --doctor diagnostic — plus the deferred daemon subcommand, the single highest-impact "feels-local" win. Shipped all six in two waves.

Wave 1 — hermes-relay daemon

Single focused effort. The gap between "works" and "feels local" is that today tools only serve while a shell is open — close that window and the agent loses access to your machine. Fix: new desktop/src/commands/daemon.ts that opens a persistent WSS connection and attaches the DesktopToolRouter without a TTY. Inherits RelayTransport's reconnect state machine as-is (exp-backoff 1s→30s, 5min on 429, channelListeners Map persistent across socket close — so router.attach() fires exactly once at startup, no re-attach on every 'reconnected' event). Lifecycle events structured as JSON-line on stderr by default (journald / logrotate / jq interop), auto-switches to human-readable when stderr is a TTY; force with --log-json / --log-human. Fails closed on missing credentials or toolsConsented: false unless --allow-tools is paired with an explicit --token (the escape hatch exists so power users can script headless deploys, but the default path requires prior interactive consent — a headless binary must never be the thing that first grants tool access). setImmediate(() => process.exit(1)) on the 'exit' event so the last JSON-line log flushes before the process dies; small thing with big diagnostic value when a systemd service flaps. Live smoke against ws://192.168.1.100:8767 (with the session re-paired post-test): starting → authed (server 0.6.0, ws) → ready (5 tools advertised) in ~120 ms. New BOOLEAN_FLAGS: log-human, log-json, allow-tools.

Service installers (systemd user unit / launchd plist / Windows sc.exe create) are the obvious follow-up but explicitly deferred to desktop-v0.3.0-alpha.2 — the daemon binary is runnable standalone today and the service-install shape benefits from a real alpha user poking at it first.

Wave 2 — pre-release hardening, four parallel agents

1. Uninstall scripts (Agent A). New desktop/scripts/uninstall.{sh,ps1} mirroring install one-liners. 3-tier: default --binary-only (removes binary + user PATH entry, preserves ~/.hermes/remote-sessions.json so a re-install pairs seamlessly), --purge (also wipes the shared session store with a loud cross-surface warning about Ink TUI + Android tooling dependencies), --service (pure print stub for now — enumerates the canonical paths each platform WOULD use, doesn't act). Windows iex-pipe safety: irm ... | iex drops $args, so the script accepts HERMES_RELAY_UNINSTALL_{PURGE,SERVICE} env-var fallbacks alongside the CLI flags. Shell rc files deliberately untouched — mirrors install.sh's "never write user dotfiles" stance. Documented in desktop/README.md + user-docs/desktop/installation.md.

2. First-run prompts (Agent B). New src/relayUrlPrompt.ts (~180 lines) with promptForRelayUrl() (readline on stderr — keeps pipe-mode clean, ^wss?:\/\/\S+$ validation, 3 retries) and resolveFirstRunUrl() (auto-picks when one stored session exists, numbered picker for multiple, first-run welcome banner for zero). Wired into connectAndAuth in shell.ts / chat.ts / tools.ts and resolvePairTarget in pair.ts, each replacing the hard No relay URL error. Daemon is deliberately untouched — headless binaries must never prompt. Welcome copy: "Welcome to hermes-relay. No stored sessions yet — let's pair with a relay server." Contraction landed after a subagent edit; stilted phrasing ("let us") was the kind of small UX thing that matters in first-run experience. --non-interactive still fails fast in all ambiguous cases.

3. hermes-relay doctor (Agent C). New local-only diagnostic subcommand (225 lines). Human format with !! prefix for warnings + hint line at the bottom; --json for support-paste. Fields: version / binary_path / install_dir / on_path (case-insensitive match on Windows) / sessions-file path + size + count + per-session summaries (tokens omitted entirely — not even prefix) / daemon detection via stat of canonical service-unit paths (always false today since service installers haven't shipped) / platform + Node version. Four surgical edits to cli.ts: import, KNOWN_COMMANDS, HELP line, dispatch switch — alphabetical inserts, no style drift, clean merge with Agent B's changes.

4. Version-aware install (Agent D). install.{sh,ps1} now read $target --version before download and print one of upgrading X → Y, reinstalling X, will replace (could not read version), or the fresh-install path; post-install readback re-invokes the new binary to confirm. Pinned-version mismatches (HERMES_RELAY_VERSION=desktop-v0.3.0-alpha.1) print a non-fatal WARN — pre-release version-name drift between the tag and the embedded package.json is expected. 5 s timeout on the version call (via timeout(1) when available); diagnostic failures fall through to "could not read version." Cross-version normalizer strips desktop-v / v prefix + -alpha.N / -beta.N / -rc.N suffix for comparison. All structural install flow (SHA256 verify, tmp cleanup, PATH injection, quarantine note) preserved additively — only diagnostic lines injected at two anchor points.

Team delivery + one lesson

Four parallel general-purpose agents, isolated file ownership. Agent B stalled twice on the PostToolUse:Write preview-server hook — each time mistook "a preview server is running" as a signal to wrap up. Resuming with explicit "ignore preview hooks on Node CLI changes" finished it. Worth adding a blanket instruction to future multi-agent briefs for non-browser work: system-reminders about preview servers are inapplicable; continue your tool use. Cheap insurance.

One smoke-artifact: ~/.hermes/remote-sessions.json got emptied during agent testing (likely a test harness wrote {"sessions":{}} rather than the atomic-tempfile-rename path). Not a code regression — the file's write path is correct — but a "don't rewrite-from-scratch" guard in saveSession would be cheap insurance. User will need to re-pair before the next live daemon smoke.

Cut desktop-v0.3.0-alpha.1

desktop/package.json bumped 0.1.0 → 0.3.0-alpha.1 to align the published package version with the release-track tag. Build clean; node bin/hermes-relay.js --version prints 0.3.0-alpha.1. Once this lands on main and the tag pushes, the CLI release workflow cross-compiles four Bun binaries (win-x64, linux-x64, darwin-x64, darwin-arm64), uploads with SHA256SUMS.txt, and the install.{sh,ps1} one-liners start working for any user.

---

2026-04-23 (II) — Desktop CLI v0.2: shell + local tool routing + multi-endpoint + reconnect + TOFU + devices

Context. A screenshot of the local hermes CLI reframed the scope. The v0.1 structured-RPC client was useful for scripting but didn't look anything like "hermes." Interactive use needed the actual hermes CLI — banner, Victor, skin, session ID, all of it — plus the local-tool-use story from the vault's Desktop Client plan. An initial estimate put the PTY-pipe path at 2–3 days; the existing .claude/tui-preview/server.js harness proved the core was ~100 lines, so the approach pivoted to that.

Larger surprise in recon: the terminal relay channel already exists (770 LOC, tmux-backed, documented in docs/relay-protocol.md §3.4, used by the Android TerminalViewModel). Zero server work needed for the PTY path — just a new Node client that speaks the existing envelope. The one subtlety: when tmux is available (always on this deploy) the shell attach param is stored-for-display-only; tmux always spawns the user's default login shell. To get hermes running we send clear; exec hermes\n as terminal.input ~350 ms after terminal.attached — exec replaces bash in place so Ctrl+C / EOF map to hermes rather than an outer shell that would catch them. Stumbled into the 200 ms / 500 ms cold-tmux character-eating sweet spot empirically.

The five workstreams (all landed)

1. UX polish. Bare hermes-relay → shell (was chat). Contextual banner via new src/banner.ts — Connected via LAN (plain) — server 0.6.0, role fallback to URL scheme when unknown. status extended to render grants: and expires: — captured from auth.ok on handshake (not a new RPC, the data just flows through onAuthSuccess). Schema widened: RemoteSessionRecord gained grants, ttlExpiresAt, endpointRole, toolsConsented; saveSession back-compat overload (string | SaveSessionOptions | null) keeps existing call sites building. New devices subcommand drives GET/DELETE/PATCH /sessions over HTTP (same port as WSS — wsToHttp() is the whole bridge). status --json / devices --json redact tokens by default, opt-in --reveal-tokens.

2. Multi-endpoint pairing (ADR 24). New src/endpoint.ts + src/pairingQr.ts. Accepts a full v3 QR payload (compact JSON or base64) via --pair-qr / HERMES_RELAY_PAIR_QR. Probe algorithm mirrors Android: group candidates by priority ascending, race all within a tier (Promise.any + AbortSignal.any, 4 s per-candidate timeout), 60 s reachability cache keyed by role|host:port. Strict priority — reachability only breaks ties within a tier. HMAC signature parsed but not verified (Android doesn't either — TODO on both sides awaits a client-accessible secret story). Winner's relay.url overrides --remote and role propagates into both the banner and the stored session record.

3. Reconnect-on-drop + TOFU cert pinning. New src/certPin.ts + major edits to src/transport/RelayTransport.ts. Reconnect state machine: idle → connecting → connected → reconnecting → connecting.... Backoff 1s * 2^min(attempt-1, 4) clamped 30 s; 429 → 5 min. Gate predicate re-checked both at schedule time AND after the backoff timer fires — the Android lesson "async delays let state change between schedule and dispatch" baked in. Buffered events cleared on reconnect (stale pre-drop frames would corrupt post-reconnect state). 'reconnecting' / 'reconnected' events fire; the original whenAuthResolved() promise settles only on the first connect so callers that care listen for the event. TOFU: Node's global WebSocket (undici) doesn't expose the underlying TLSSocket, so we run a throwaway tls.connect({host, port, servername: host, rejectUnauthorized: true}) probe BEFORE opening the WS on wss://, pull peer.raw (DER), hash to sha256/<base64> via crypto.X509Certificate.publicKey.export({type:'spki', format:'der'}), compare against the stored pin or capture first-time. One extra TLS round-trip per connect (~10–30 ms) — acceptable. Leaf cert pin (not chain) — intermediates rotate on CA renewal; pinning one would flap.

4. Client-side tool routing (Phase B). Server-side: new plugin/relay/channels/desktop.py (424 LOC, mirrors bridge.py) + plugin/tools/desktop_tool.py (349 LOC, registers 5 desktop_* tools via the existing tools.registry plumbing, same pattern as android_tool.py). Route registration in server.py: generic POST /desktop/{tool_name} dispatcher (vs. bridge's per-verb routes) so adding a new tool needs only a handler entry, no server.py edit. Client-side: src/tools/router.ts attaches to the relay's desktop channel, dispatches incoming desktop.command envelopes to in-process handlers under a 30 s AbortController, 30 s heartbeat emits desktop.status with advertised tool names. Handlers: fs.ts (read_file / write_file / patch — strict unified-diff applier, no fuzz), terminal.ts (bash -lc or cmd /c, SIGKILL on timeout), search.ts (ripgrep with graceful pure-Node fallback, skips .git/node_modules/dist). Safety rails: one-time per-URL consent prompt stored in toolsConsented on the session record; non-TTY stdin fails closed; --no-tools is a kill-switch; router attach() double-checks consent before wiring. Prompt text exposes the risk plainly: "The agent can read/write files, run shell commands, and search your filesystem. This is AGENT-CONTROLLED access. Only use with trusted Hermes installs."

5. Integration. Each parallel agent owned isolated files; conflicts on cli.ts and remoteSessions.ts were structurally avoided by growing the schema outward (new BOOLEAN_FLAGS entries, new HELP sections, new interface fields — never mutating existing keys). Post-landing, connectAndAuth in chat.ts / shell.ts / tools.ts was refactored to return {relay, url, endpointRole} so the --pair-qr winning-endpoint URL can override --remote cleanly across every subcommand. Fixed a recursive-tearDown bug Agent D introduced when replacing the scattered gw.kill() calls (the cleanup function called itself instead of gw.kill()).

Agent-team delivery

Wave 1: three parallel recon agents (server-side bridge/android_tool pattern via SSH, Android client patterns for multi-endpoint+TOFU+reconnect, local desktop/ touchpoint audit). Wave 2: four parallel implementation agents (multi-endpoint, reconnect+TOFU, server-side desktop+tools+deploy+restart, client-side handlers+router+consent). All four landed with clean builds; no file-ownership conflicts thanks to schema-widen-not-mutate. Wave 3: integration (--pair-qr plumbing, tearDown fix, banner wiring). Code review was rate-limited — deferred; build green + non-interactive smoke passed, leaving interactive smoke for on-device follow-up.

Live smoke (non-interactive)

• hermes-relay status after a tools call: expires: in 29d + grants: bridge (in 6d), chat (in 29d), terminal (in 29d), tui (in 29d) — proof that the extended schema flows end-to-end.
• hermes-relay tools --remote ws://192.168.1.100:8767 --non-interactive: 46 toolsets enumerated, 17 enabled; includes the 5 new desktop_* tools registered by desktop_tool.py.
• /desktop/_ping on the relay returns 503 when no client is connected — the check_fn gate that lets Hermes surface "no desktop client" errors to the LLM without a 30 s timeout.

Open for on-device verification

• Interactive shell smoke — does the full Axiom-Labs banner render the way the screenshot shows?
• First desktop-tool call — ask Hermes something like "read ~/.bashrc" and watch the handler fire locally.
• Ctrl+A . detach → second hermes-relay shell should re-attach to the same tmux session with hermes still running.

Two post-landing fixes surfaced during smoke (same-day)

1. Plugin wasn't wired into hermes-gateway. Landed the desktop channel + desktop_tool.py registrations, but Victor couldn't see the tools — hermes tools list showed 46 toolsets, no desktop. SSH recon found two cascading gaps:

• plugin/__init__.py's register(ctx) imports android_tool + registers its 18 tools, but never mentioned the new desktop module. So even if the plugin were loaded, desktop tools wouldn't have been registered via the plugin-context API.
• ~/.hermes/config.yaml had plugins.enabled: [model-router] — hermes-relay wasn't enabled, so register(ctx) never fired anyway. Android's tools were registering via the module-level tools.registry.register(...) fallback inside android_tool.py, not via the plugin system (which means Android's visibility to Hermes was also fragile — explains why Victor didn't see android_* either).

Fix: extended plugin/__init__.py to import tools.desktop_tool and call ctx.register_tool for all 5 desktop_* tools alongside the 18 android_* ones. Added hermes-relay to plugins.enabled via an atomic YAML rewrite (backup first, tempfile + shutil.move). Restarted hermes-gateway. Verified via a direct FakeCtx harness: plugin.register(ctx) lands 23 tools total. Both toolsets now visible to Hermes.

2. Timeout unit mismatch between Python and Node. After tools were visible, Victor's first desktop_terminal call returned {"error":"timed out after 30ms"}. Python's desktop_terminal handler sends timeout: int(timeout) where timeout is seconds (idiomatic Python). Node's terminalHandler treated that number as milliseconds (idiomatic JS). 30 became 30 ms, child process SIGKILLed before hostname could finish. Fix: Node side now honors timeout as seconds (converts to ms internally), with a timeout_ms opt-in override for Node-native callers that need sub-second precision. Also clamped to a 10-minute ceiling.

Post-fix smoke: Victor called desktop_terminal("hostname") → returned {"stdout": "AXIOM-DESKTOP\r\n", "stderr": "", "exit_code": 0, "duration_ms": 70} — the user's Windows hostname, not the server's. 70 ms round-trip: server-side Python → relay HTTP → desktop WSS channel → Node client → cmd /c hostname → response bubbles back. Phase B end-to-end proven, no hermes-agent core changes needed.

Two lessons worth saving

1. Cross-language wire specs need explicit unit conversion on one side. Python defaults to seconds; JS defaults to milliseconds. Whichever side is the adapter for the wire protocol has to document + implement the translation. The adapter lives on the Node side (since desktop_tool.py's tool schema is the source of truth).
2. Plugin entry points matter. Having registry.register(...) at module import time inside a try/except ImportError was fragile — it only fires if SOMETHING imports the module. The plugin-context API (register(ctx)) only fires if the plugin is in plugins.enabled. Both paths existed but neither was wired to the gateway. Moving registration to plugin/__init__.py::register(ctx) + enabling the plugin in config is the canonical path.

---

2026-04-23 — Desktop CLI thin-client v0.1 (@hermes-relay/cli)

Context. The broader ask from the vault's Desktop Client.md decomposes into two independent pieces: (A) "one Node binary with CLI + TUI modes that talks to a remote Hermes over WSS" and (B) "per-tool dispatch routing so local tools run on the client while the brain stays on the server." This session ships A — with CLI mode specifically — and defers B to a separate hermes-agent PR on fork/tool-relay. The two are decoupled: the CLI consumes the existing tui WSS channel and tui_gateway subprocess shape without any server-side change.

Architecture decision — same channel, different renderer

Agent 1 (server-side explore via SSH) confirmed plugin/relay/channels/tui.py spawns python -m tui_gateway.entry and the subprocess emits pure JSON-RPC events (message.delta, tool.start/complete/progress, thinking.delta, reasoning.delta, status.update, error, approval.request, clarify.request, sudo.request, secret.request, background.complete, btw.complete, plus subagent.*) with zero ANSI in payloads. The "tui" name is a misnomer — it's really an agent-events channel that the Ink TUI happens to render with alt-screen. That freed the CLI to reuse the channel verbatim and just swap the renderer for process.stdout.write. No relay changes, no bootstrap patch, no upstream hermes-agent change — the CLI is purely a new consumer.

Agent 1 also surfaced tools.list RPC: returns {toolsets: [{name, description, tool_count, enabled, tools:[...]}]} scoped to the session's enabled toolsets. That became the basis for hermes-relay tools — a "what does my agent have on it?" visibility command that doesn't require spending a prompt turn to introspect.

Where the code landed — desktop/ at repo root

Parallel to app/ (Android). Self-contained npm package @hermes-relay/cli with:

• bin/hermes-relay.js — #!/usr/bin/env node shim, 12 lines, imports ../dist/cli.js#main() and bubbles errors. npm handles the Windows cmd-shim generation automatically.
• src/cli.ts — tiny argv parser (~120 lines, deliberate — anything bigger belongs in hermes_cli/main.py per the upstream stance) + subcommand dispatcher. Known commands: chat (default), pair, status, tools, help. Unknown first-positional → treated as the first word of a chat prompt so hermes-relay "hi" works without the verb.
• src/commands/chat.ts — REPL + one-shot + piped-stdin unified under one function. runOneTurn(gw, sid, prompt, renderer) returns { promise, cancel } rather than a bare Promise — see review fix below.
• src/commands/{pair,status,tools}.ts — single-purpose verbs. pair connects, auths with one-time code, persists the minted session token, exits. status is purely local (no network). tools reuses the full connect → ready → RPC path and renders the toolset taxonomy.
• src/renderer.ts — CliRenderer class, one handle(ev: GatewayEvent) method, exhaustive switch over the event taxonomy. Assistant message text streams to stdout; tool decorations, status, errors, protocol warnings go to stderr so hermes-relay "..." > out.txt captures just the reply. Respects NO_COLOR / FORCE_COLOR / process.stdout.isTTY for ANSI. --json mode emits one JSON.stringify(ev) per line for scripting.
• src/pairing.ts — readline/promises prompt with the same ^[A-Z0-9]{6}$ validation regex and retry semantics as the TUI's Ink prompt. Identical UX, substitutable substrate. Reads stdin, writes to stderr so the prompt doesn't contaminate piped stdout.
• src/credentials.ts — strict precedence: --token → HERMES_RELAY_TOKEN → --code → HERMES_RELAY_CODE → ~/.hermes/remote-sessions.json → interactive prompt. Matches the TUI's resolveCredentials() in entry.tsx exactly.

Vendored from ui-tui (not re-implemented)

The TUI smoke at hermes-agent-tui-smoke/ui-tui/ already owned a clean transport interface and event type surface. We vendored rather than re-implemented — copied verbatim with a header note, same imports, same file paths under src/:

• transport/Transport.ts — the interface
• transport/RelayTransport.ts — WSS envelope protocol (docs/relay-protocol.md §3.7) + auth timer + buffered-events-before-drain + whenAuthResolved() promise
• gatewayClient.ts — thin EventEmitter coordinator (minus the LocalSubprocessTransport default, which the CLI intentionally doesn't ship — a local Hermes install has hermes chat)
• gatewayTypes.ts, types.ts — type-only
• remoteSessions.ts — atomic tempfile+rename, mode 0600, fail-closed to empty. Same file path (~/.hermes/remote-sessions.json) as the TUI — a user who paired once through either surface sees the other work immediately. Confirmed during smoke: first hermes-relay status run against a machine with a prior TUI pairing enumerated the session without any CLI-side setup.
• lib/{circularBuffer,gracefulExit,rpc}.ts — pure utilities

Only material delta from source: lib/rpc.ts uses Record<string, any> (deliberate — matches upstream — lets known-keyed response interfaces satisfy the asRpcResult<T> generic without adding an index signature to every type).

The vendor-for-now stance is documented in each file header. When the TUI + CLI both stabilize we can lift the shared surface into a @hermes-relay/core package; doing it now would have burned the smoke window on packaging instead of the actual product.

Packaging — one binary, pre-built, Node ≥21

Agent 3's research mapped the idiomatic Node CLI pattern (codex-cli, continue/cn, opencode, vite, next, prisma, eslint): one binary with subcommands, pre-build TS → JS, ship compiled dist/ not tsx at runtime, files whitelist, prepublishOnly for the safety net. We matched that. Notable package.json choices:

• engines.node >= 21.0.0 — needed for the built-in global WebSocket. Older Node needs --experimental-websocket; that path is unsupported. On the Windows 11 / Node 24.14.0 dev machine the WebSocket is just there, no ws/undici runtime dep.
• Zero runtime deps, four devDeps (@types/node, rimraf, tsx, typescript). Install size is trivial.
• bin: { "hermes-relay": "./bin/hermes-relay.js" } — one entry. npm install -g on Windows generates .cmd + .ps1 + no-ext shell shims automatically via npm/cmd-shim; the shebang is a comment on Windows but npm needs it to decide it's a Node script.
• files: ["bin","dist","scripts","README.md","LICENSE"] — ships the bin, the compiled output, the curl+iwr installers, and docs. Source stays off the tarball.
• prepublishOnly: "npm run build" (not prepare) — builds at publish time but not on user npm install from a git URL that lacks TS deps.

scripts/install.sh + install.ps1 ship alongside for a curl -fsSL .../install.sh | sh or irm .../install.ps1 | iex one-liner. Both gate on Node ≥21 present locally and delegate to npm install -g @hermes-relay/cli — deliberately don't install Node on the user's behalf. Mirrors rustup's shape.

Smoke test — live relay, real events

Agent 1 minted a one-time pairing code (F3W7EY, 10-min TTL) before expiry, and the dev machine already had a long-lived session token from prior TUI work (the cross-surface reuse described above). Full end-to-end test against ws://192.168.1.100:8767 (hermes-relay 0.6.0, commit 675670e, hermes-agent 0.10.0 on axiom branch):

• hermes-relay status → enumerated the pre-existing session (79d2cf41…8d8c, server 0.6.0, paired ~1h ago). Zero network.
• hermes-relay tools --remote ws://192.168.1.100:8767 → full WSS connect → auth → tui.attach → gateway.ready → tools.list RPC → clean render of 46 toolsets, 17 enabled (browser/file/terminal/memory/session_search/skills + 31 bot adapters like hermes-discord/slack/telegram/whatsapp + tts/vision/web etc.). One round-trip, ~3 s wall time including subprocess spawn.
• hermes-relay chat "..." --remote ... --json → full event trace on stdout: session.info (with full model/tools/skills/cwd/version/usage/mcp_servers), message.start, thinking.delta, status.update, message.complete. Scriptable via jq.
• echo "..." | hermes-relay ... → piped-stdin path reads to EOF and treats as one prompt, same event flow.

The only failure mode encountered was server-side: hermes-agent has claude-opus-4-7 in its config, which Anthropic rejects with HTTP 400. The CLI surfaced it cleanly as a status.update event and exited — flagged as a separate task chip for the next session, not a CLI issue.

Review fixes (code-reviewer agent, high-confidence only)

Three landed, one false alarm:

• SIGINT race in the REPL turn loop (real bug, fixed). Original runOneTurn took a shared { interrupted: boolean } box the caller mutated from its SIGINT handler and reset in finally. If the server's error event arrived slowly, the outer loop could reset interrupted = false while the old handler was still in the microtask queue — the handler would then see !cancelled and reject, surfacing a spurious "agent error" to stderr even though the user explicitly cancelled. Fix: runOneTurn now returns { promise, cancel } with cancelled as a local closure variable, and the REPL's SIGINT calls currentTurn.cancel() rather than mutating shared state. Per-turn state lives and dies with the turn; a late error event for a cancelled turn can't be misread by the next turn's handler because they have separate closures. Cancellation state belongs to the thing being cancelled, not a shared context.
• status --json leaked full bearer tokens to stdout (real — security). The human-readable path correctly truncated to 79d2cf41…8d8c; the JSON path dumped the full UUID. Fix: redact by default in JSON too, opt in with --reveal-tokens. Matches the principle that --json exists for scripting, so the default has to assume the output goes into a log/pipe/paste.
• .d.ts.map / .js.map referenced src/ that isn't in the published tarball (real — packaging). tsconfig.build.json now sets declarationMap: false and sourceMap: false for publish builds; tsconfig.json keeps them on for local dev.
• Argv parser "loses URL when followed by short flag" claim — false alarm. Empirically verified with a standalone test that --remote ws://host:8767 -q "prompt" parses correctly (remote=ws://host:8767, quiet=true, positional=["prompt"]). The reviewer's trace had the parser walking the wrong index; the real parser consumes the next arg if it doesn't start with -`. Left as-is.

Team delivery

Three parallel Wave-1 explorers (server-side SSH + tui_gateway + pairing code mint; ui-tui code map + shareable-vs-TUI file classification; npm packaging research + published-tool reference harvest) → synthesis → implementation (one batch; vendoring + new files) → smoke → code-reviewer sweep → three fixes + rebuild + re-smoke. End-to-end working in one session.

Vault note. Updated the project vault's Desktop Client.md status from "concept/backlog" to "v0.1 CLI shipped — tool routing remains the open piece." The vault's core design (new desktop.command channel, per-tool routing table in model_tools.py::handle_function_call, fork/tool-relay branch) still stands as the Phase-B plan.

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2026-04-22 (III) — Desktop TUI MVP Phases 1–3 landed

Context. The Desktop TUI over WSS plan was approved (see docs/plans/2026-04-22-desktop-tui-mvp.md). Three implementation phases ran as parallel agents on two repos:

• hermes-relay feature/desktop-tui-mvp (this repo).
• hermes-agent feat/tui-transport-pluggable (Codename-11 fork off axiom).

Phase 1 — tui channel on the relay (landed in commit 849bd2e)

Python handler at plugin/relay/channels/tui.py spawns a tui_gateway subprocess per connected WebSocket and transparently pumps line-delimited JSON-RPC between the socket and the subprocess's stdio. Clean SIGTERM-then-SIGKILL teardown on tui.detach or WS close. 14/14 unittests in plugin/tests/test_tui_channel.py. Auth grants extended to include tui with a 30-day cap (auth.py _default_grants). Router registered at ChannelMultiplexer. Resize RPC method confirmed as terminal.resize after spot-checking tui_gateway/server.py:1508 — the Phase 1 guess stood.

Phase 2 — Pluggable transport in ui-tui/ (hermes-agent 4a7d026)

Extracted gatewayClient.ts into a Transport interface (ui-tui/src/transport/Transport.ts) with two impls: LocalSubprocessTransport (current behavior) and RelayTransport (new — WSS + envelope wrap/unwrap). entry.tsx factory picks transport from HERMES_RELAY_URL / --remote. No Python changes — tui_gateway/server.py is byte-identical. 190/190 new transport tests pass; the 4 pre-existing terminalSetup.test.ts failures are unrelated (SSH-session mock drift, documented by the Phase 2 agent).

Phase 3 — Glue: CLI flag + session storage + smoke harness (this session)

hermes-agent side:

• hermes_cli/main.py: added top-level --remote <url>, --pair / --pairing-code <code>, --token <token> flags and a new _launch_remote_tui() short-circuit that skips the local tui_gateway spawn entirely and forwards credentials as HERMES_RELAY_* env vars to the Node TUI. Gives a helpful "pair first" error when no credentials exist.
• ui-tui/src/remoteSessions.ts (new, ~160 LOC): ~/.hermes/remote-sessions.json storage — getSession / saveSession / deleteSession / listSessions. Atomic tempfile → rename write, mode 0o600. Fail-closed on any read/parse error. Cert pin SHA-256 inlined into the same file under cert_pin_sha256.
• ui-tui/src/transport/RelayTransport.ts: added onAuthSuccess(cb) observer + getAuthInfo() getter + sendResize(cols, rows) method.
• ui-tui/src/entry.tsx: loads a stored session token before constructing RelayTransport, persists the minted token after auth.ok, and wires a process.stdout.on('resize') pump that forwards cols/rows as tui.resize envelopes.

hermes-relay side:

• scripts/tui-smoke.sh + scripts/tui-smoke-teardown.sh: non-interactive harness that stops any running relay, starts a dev relay (port 8767, no SSL), waits for /health, mints a pairing code via POST /pairing/register, and prints the exact command to run on the desktop. Verified end-to-end here — relay came up, health returned 200, code minted, handoff printed.
• .gitignore: exclude .smoke-relay.pid / .smoke-relay.log runtime artifacts.

Deferred: TOFU cert pinning. The current RelayTransport uses Node's global WebSocket (undici), which doesn't expose the server certificate. Doing cert pinning properly requires switching to the ws npm package + constructor cert inspection — too invasive for the MVP. Storage slot is reserved in remote-sessions.json under cert_pin_sha256 so adding pin capture later is a one-file change to RelayTransport (or a new TlsCertPinnedTransport). TLS verification against system CAs is still on by default, so the "production" risk here is MITM-by-CA-compromise — an acceptable baseline for v0.8.0-alpha. Defer to v0.8.1 as a hardening follow-up.

Green criteria

• python -m py_compile hermes_cli/main.py → OK
• cd ui-tui && npm run type-check → clean
• cd ui-tui && npm test → 204 passing (190 → 204, the 14 net-new tests cover remoteSessions + RelayTransport.onAuthSuccess / sendResize); 4 pre-existing terminalSetup.test.ts failures unchanged
• python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_tui_channel → 14/14 OK
• bash scripts/tui-smoke.sh → relay up, health 200, pairing code minted, handoff printed

Open items (post-MVP)

1. profiles surfacing. The relay's auth.ok already carries a profiles[] array (see docs/relay-protocol.md §1.3). The Node TUI currently ignores it. Wire it into the transport log + expose as a /profiles slash-command listing so the user can pick a profile on --remote mirrors the local HERMES_PROFILE flow.
2. Reconnect + resume_session_id. On WS drop, RelayTransport currently just tears down. Phase 2 already stashed resume_session_id on the protocol — Phase 4 adds exponential-backoff reconnect that re-attaches to the same subprocess if the relay still has it alive (the relay keeps subprocesses for a short grace period after a client disconnects — TBD).
3. Single-binary packaging. Currently the user needs Node 20 + this repo's ui-tui/ checkout. Ship as npm install -g @codename-11/hermes-tui-remote or pkg-bundle for Windows/Mac.
4. Upstream PR candidates. The Transport refactor is defensible on its own (decouples UI from runtime). Good PR candidate for NousResearch/hermes-agent once validated end-to-end.
5. TOFU cert pinning (deferred from this session — see note above).

Next

Interactive smoke test from a separate terminal:

bash scripts/tui-smoke.sh
# (copy the printed code)
cd ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/ui-tui && \
  HERMES_RELAY_URL=ws://localhost:8767 \
  HERMES_RELAY_CODE=<CODE> \
  node --loader tsx src/entry.tsx

Or via the CLI: hermes --remote ws://localhost:8767 --pair <CODE> once hermes-agent feat/tui-transport-pluggable is installed.

---

2026-04-22 (II) — Power-user override philosophy: three tightenings + the Transport Security badge reason-derivation fix

Context. On-device testing of the UX pass surfaced a specific defect — the active card's Security section showing "Insecure (network unknown)" while actually paired over LAN — plus a broader question: do we allow power-user override with subtle warning (no forced confirm)? The answer codified in this commit is three-tier:

Tier	Rule	Examples
1 — Forced confirm (once per install)	Crosses a security boundary OR flips global policy.	First insecure-toggle enable, first bridge enable, first unattended bridge enable, first run of send_sms / call, new: AllInsecure pairing
2 — Subtle warning, no confirm	Reversible, informational, or risk is informed by design (e.g. secure fallback exists).	Mixed-state pairing (secure fallback present), Never-expire TTL, Plain badge on active route
3 — Per-action Yes/No confirm (not persistable)	Genuinely destructive short-term action.	Revoke session, Remove connection, Kill terminal

Today's commit lands four changes that operationalize this framework.

(a) Transport Security badge — derive reason from active endpoint role

The defect. TransportSecurityBadge has long had a reason: String? parameter whose labels were "Insecure (LAN)" / "Insecure (Tailscale)" / "Insecure (dev)" / "Insecure (network unknown)". The reason only got populated when the user toggled "Allow insecure connections" ON via the InsecureConnectionAckDialog and explicitly picked a reason. But if the user pairs from a plain-ws:// LAN QR directly, they never hit that toggle — the connection is already ws:// — so the reason stays blank and the badge falls through to "Insecure (network unknown)". The app had the information (ConnectionManager.activeEndpoint.role = "lan"), it just wasn't reading it.

The fix. insecureReasonLabel(reason, activeRole) now prefers role over stored reason:

• activeRole == "lan" → "Plain (on LAN)"
• activeRole == "tailscale" → "Plain (on Tailscale)"
• activeRole == "public" → "Plain (on public URL)" (this is the actually-concerning case)
• activeRole unknown, reason == "lan_only" → "Plain (LAN only)" (user-stated intent)
• Both unknown → "Plain (no TLS)" (neutral fallback, not scary)

Also: ConnectionViewModel.applyPairingPayload now auto-stamps PairingPreferences.insecureReason at pair time based on which endpoint got selected. lan → "lan_only", tailscale → "tailscale_vpn", public/unknown → leave blank (those cases deserve user thought). Only stamps when the current stored reason is blank (never clobbers user choice). Clears stale reason when upgrading to a secure endpoint so a connection that moves LAN → Tailscale doesn't carry a zombie "Plain (LAN)" label.

Copy polish. Swapped "Insecure" → "Plain" everywhere user-facing (the badge labels, the two "Insecure connection" / "Allow insecure connections" strings inside the Advanced section's insecure-toggle subsection). The new vocabulary matches the UX pass's amber-not-red treatment — "Plain" is factual, "Insecure" was connotatively red.

(b) Bridge destructive-verb "Don't ask again" per verb

Confirmation fatigue is real. A user who has approved send_sms 50 times has effectively consented — forcing confirm #51 trains them to click through without reading. New trustedDestructiveVerbs: Flow<Set<String>> in BridgeSafetyPreferences; BridgeSafetyManager short-circuits the confirmation overlay when the incoming verb is in the trusted set (still logs to the activity log — the trail is preserved). The DestructiveVerbConfirmDialog gets a Don't ask again for "{verb}" checkbox, off by default every dialog open, so the user has to actively opt in per-action.

Kill-switch precedence (verified by tracing send_sms through the full dispatcher): master-disable wins over blocklist wins over per-verb trust. A trusted verb in a blocklisted app still 403s. A trusted verb under a disabled master toggle never fires. Deny never sets trust — denying is not consent.

BridgeScreen surfaces a "Trusted actions · N actions bypass confirmation" row under the existing safety section with a Reset button (guarded by its own confirm dialog). The escape hatch is findable without deep-linking.

(c) AllInsecure pairing — per-install acknowledgment

When every endpoint in the scanned QR is plain (no secure sibling), ConnectionWizard.ConfirmStep renders an ack checkbox above the Pair button. gateIsSatisfied = allInsecureAckSeen || ackThisPair for AllInsecure only — Mixed and AllSecure flow through else → true and see no gate. Once the user acknowledges once, PairingPreferences.allInsecurePairAckSeen persists per-install and the checkbox never shows again. Matches the insecureAckSeen precedent for the Allow-insecure toggle.

Final copy: "I understand this pairing sends traffic in plain text — visible to anyone on the network." Concrete — explains the consequence ("visible to others"), not just the transport ("plain text"). No legalese.

Why Mixed doesn't get this gate. Mixed by definition has a secure fallback in the same list — LAN + Tailscale means the phone auto-switches to Tailscale when LAN fails, so the user is covered on any network. The existing amber "Mixed — secure fallback available" warning card is sufficient. Only the AllInsecure case (no secure sibling) crosses a trust boundary the user needs to acknowledge once.

(d) Vocabulary cleanup

Two "Insecure" stragglers caught by the review sweep inside ActiveConnectionSections.kt:

• "Insecure connection — traffic is not encrypted" → "Plain connection — traffic is not encrypted"
• "Allow insecure connections" → "Allow plain (unencrypted) connections" (toggle label — functional copy, but "plain" keeps the app's vocabulary consistent without being dismissive of the real risk)

Team delivery

Three parallel implementation workstreams (isolated file ownership) + one review sweep. One transient cross-file compile break caught mid-flight — in-progress changes to BridgeSafetyManager referenced a method the BridgeScreen edit hadn't yet wired up; the AllInsecure workstream stashed + restored BridgeScreen to isolate its test. Final combined state compiles clean on both flavors without intervention. Lesson logged: when two parallel workstreams touch the same concept (Bridge infrastructure + Bridge UI), one of them needs to own both files, even if the actual diff per file is small. The Bridge workstream ended up owning both; the AllInsecure stash was defensive and correct.

Logcat sanity

Pulled full ADB logcat for the test session as a sanity check. Zero errors from app code. The only Hermes-app warning was the HermesNotifCompanion: Buffered notification (pending=50) cold-start log — notifications arriving before the WSS multiplexer connects, buffered until capped. This is the designed behavior of the notification listener's cold-start gap; worth a follow-up to confirm no useful data is silently lost on systems with high pre-pair notification volume.

---

2026-04-22 — Connection UX self-narration: Route / Relay sessions vocabulary, contextual security, per-route chips

Context. On-device testing of the 2026-04-21 connection-settings unification surfaced five concrete UX observations, all sharing one theme: the UI has the right information but isn't narrating it. (1) Add-Connection still had a perceptible lag before the QR scanner opened. (2) On a multi-endpoint QR with LAN + Tailscale, pairing step 2 flashed an amber "Insecure (dev)" badge and a red warning card — making users think they were stuck with insecure forever, even though the Tailscale fallback was right there in the same list. (3) The active card had the right structure post-unification but no narration — sections stacked without headers, Advanced surfaced manual URLs without a "most people don't need this" framing. (4) "Paired Devices" sounded like Bluetooth to anyone outside the project; the actual concept is server-side relay sessions. (5) Priority labels on endpoint rows were p0 / p1 / p2 — developer-speak.

Root cause of the insecure-scare. ConnectionWizard.kt:1183 computed isInsecureRelay = relayUrl?.startsWith("ws://") where relayUrl was synthesized from payload.endpoints[0] alone (first-in-QR = LAN). Both the amber top badge and the red warning card fired from this single boolean. The code had the other endpoints, it just never inspected them — so a secure Tailscale sibling was invisible to the warning logic.

Design. Introduce one shared vocabulary, apply it end-to-end:

Noun	Replaces	Notes
Route	"Endpoint" in user copy	Code identifiers (EndpointCandidate, observeDeviceEndpoints) keep the old term — just strings change
Relay session	"Paired device"	Screen.PairedDevices + the Kotlin class stay for deep-link stability
Active / Fallback	implicit in chip state	State-based chips on the active card (post-connection semantics)
1st choice / Fallback / Fallback 2	p0 / p1 / p2	Ordinal labels on pairing step 2 only (pre-connection semantics)
Secure / Plain	"Encrypted" / "Insecure"	Green 🔒 / amber 🔓 — amber, not red, so the Mixed case doesn't feel like a crisis

Active card gains four labelMedium section headers — Connection health, Routes (N), Advanced, Security — each with a one-line bodySmall caption above the body: "Tap any row for details", "The app picks the fastest reachable network automatically…", "Manual setup — most people don't need this after QR pairing", etc. Section-header-with-caption is now the structural pattern for any expandable subsection in the app.

Where the code landed.

• ui/components/TransportSecurityBadge.kt — new TransportSecurityState enum (AllSecure / Mixed / AllInsecure) with a tri-state overload. Binary-boolean callers untouched (back-compat is explicit — the new overload sits alongside the old, and the shared RenderBadge private composable keeps the visual language identical).
• ui/components/ConnectionWizard.kt — ConfirmStep now computes securityState from the full endpoints list (anySecure + anyInsecure booleans over relay.url.startsWith("wss") / api.tls / relay.transportHint). Top badge wired to the tri-state. Warning card is when (securityState) — AllInsecure keeps the legacy red copy (slightly reworded), Mixed shows an amber-tinted info card with per-role copy ("$plainLabel is plain ws:// — fine at home or the office, not on public Wi-Fi. $secureLabel is encrypted (wss://)…"), AllSecure omits the block entirely. EndpointPreviewRow rewritten with per-row Secure/Plain pill + humanized ordinal (1st choice / Fallback / Fallback N).
• ui/components/ActiveConnectionSections.kt — Paired Devices row renamed to Relay sessions (both the label and the subtitle copy); logic unchanged.
• ui/screens/ConnectionsSettingsScreen.kt — four new section-header-caption pairs inside the if (isActive && activeConnectionViewModel != null) gate. New private SectionHeader + SectionCaption helpers. Expander toggle swapped from "Show endpoints (N)" to "Show routes" (count lives on the header above — no double-counting).
• ui/components/EndpointsCard.kt — populated-state intro caption, new FallbackChip() composable (outlined neutral), when { isActive → ActiveChip … else → FallbackChip() } so every row has a chip.
• ui/screens/PairedDevicesScreen.kt — top-bar title + empty + error copy renamed. New intro paragraph ("Each row is a phone that has paired with this server…"). Info icon next to "Channel grants" opens a dialog explaining that chat/bridge/voice are per-feature permissions with independent expiries.
• ui/RelayApp.kt — Screen.PairedDevices nav title renamed ("Relay sessions", Kotlin class stays). onAddConnection now pre-allocates a UUID synchronously, navigates, then fires beginAddConnection(preAllocatedId = id) in the background — the lag fix.
• viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt — beginAddConnection(preAllocatedId: String? = null) — existence check for idempotence, otherwise preserves the legacy placeholder-reuse scan path byte-for-byte.
• Seven vocabulary stragglers in files the initial implementation pass didn't touch: ConnectionInfoSheet.kt (both the collapsible label + the "Endpoint preference" info row), SessionTtlPickerDialog.kt ("revoke it from Paired Devices" → "…from Relay sessions"), SettingsScreen.kt (the "Paired devices" category row), EndpointsCard.kt (menu item "Prefer this endpoint" → "Prefer this route"). All caught by the review sweep.

Subtle decisions worth flagging.

Why two different framings for endpoint state. Pairing step 2 uses ordinal labels (1st choice / Fallback) because at that moment the user is committing to an ordering — "which one should the phone try first?" is the only meaningful question. The active card uses state chips (Active / Fallback) because once connected, ordinal position doesn't matter — what the user cares about is "which one is live right now?" Using the same vocab on both surfaces would force one or the other to lie about its real meaning. Letting each surface use the framing that matches its moment is the "say what you mean" principle applied to UX copy.

Why amber, not red, for Plain / Mixed. The previous UI used errorContainer red for every ws:// case, which conflated "dev hack" with "security emergency." Plain ws:// on LAN is the normal home-network case — the trust model is the network perimeter, not TLS. Red connotes danger; amber connotes caution. The Mixed card stays amber too, because the composite state ("your LAN is plain but your fallback is secure") isn't dangerous — it's well-designed defense in depth. Red is reserved for AllInsecure without a secure fallback.

Tri-state badge API back-compat. The new TransportSecurityBadge(state: TransportSecurityState, size) overload sits alongside the existing TransportSecurityBadge(isSecure: Boolean, reason: String?, size). All three call sites were independently verified to compile and render identically — the old overload delegates to the same RenderBadge private composable, so visual language is guaranteed identical across surfaces. No migration churn for the handful of callers outside the pairing flow.

Add-Connection lag — why this fix is correct. The previous architecture (await beginAddConnection().join() → navigate(...)) was structurally correct — you want the placeholder connection bound before the pair wizard starts reading activeConnectionId, because applyPairingPayload reads connectionStore.activeConnectionId.value as a one-shot at submit time. But the read happens on user-action callbacks (confirm QR / manual submit), which are many seconds after navigation — plenty of time for the background coroutine's three DataStore writes to complete. Pre-allocating the UUID synchronously means the navigation knows the id; the ViewModel catches up reactively. The mutex + existence check handle double-tap idempotence.

Delivery. Four-stage pipeline this time: three exploration passes up front (each mapping a different surface in parallel — ConfirmStep layout, active card body, add-connection code path), three implementation workstreams (one per file cluster, isolated ownership to avoid collisions), one review pass at the end for the vocabulary-consistency sweep. The review caught seven stragglers the implementation passes couldn't have seen (their file scope was deliberately narrow). That's the pattern: wide exploration, narrow implementation, wide review.

---

2026-04-21 — Connection-settings unification: kill the singular screen, active card owns everything

Context. Pre-ship scan for v0.7.0 surfaced a UX fault line that had been accruing since v0.3: the app had two screens with nearly identical names (ConnectionSettings singular, ConnectionsSettings plural) reached from two different Settings-top surfaces (Active Connection quick-look card vs. "Connections" category row), covering overlapping surfaces of functionality. Users hitting "Active Connection" from Settings landed on a 1429-line detail screen with pair / manual URL / TLS / manual pairing code; users hitting "Connections" landed on a 564-line card list with rename / re-pair / revoke / remove per card. Both said "Active" somewhere; both claimed to be the authoritative connection home. Neither was.

Design. One screen, one mental model. The plural ConnectionsSettings screen stays — it's the multi-connection-aware home and structurally correct. The singular ConnectionSettings (and its route, and its onNavigateToConnectionSettings param chain, and the Active Connection quick-look card on Settings that led to it) all delete. Everything the singular screen did — pair QR entry, manual URL config, insecure toggle, manual pairing code fallback, status rows with tap-for-info-sheet — folds into the active card on the plural screen as expandable body sections:

1. Status section — 3 tappable rows (API / Relay / Session), always visible on the active card. Replaces the Settings-top quick-look card verbatim. Tap → same info sheets. Relay-row tap while Stale → immediate reconnect + toast.
2. Endpoints expander — unchanged from before; just repositioned below the status rows.
3. Advanced expander — manual URL config (API + relay), insecure toggle with Ack dialog, manual pairing code fallback (full 3-step flow with 15s auth watcher + snackbar). Collapsed by default — the canonical path is the per-card "Re-pair" button above.
4. Security posture strip — transport badge, Tailscale chip, hardware keystore badge, Paired Devices row. Always visible on the active card.

Non-active cards stay flat — just title + subtitle + action row. List density is preserved.

Where the code landed.

• ui/components/ActiveConnectionSections.kt (new, ~650 lines) — owns the three active-card-only bodies (ActiveCardStatusSection, ActiveCardAdvancedSection with three private subsections, ActiveCardSecurityPosture) plus the ManualPairStep helper lifted from the deleted legacy screen.
• ui/screens/ConnectionsSettingsScreen.kt (rewritten, ~580 lines) — now renders the full active-card body inline via the new sections, with screen-scope hoisting for info sheets + insecure-Ack dialog (so LazyColumn disposing the card mid-scroll can't silently dismiss an open sheet).
• ui/screens/ConnectionSettingsScreen.kt (deleted, was 1429 lines).
• ui/RelayApp.kt — drops the composable(Screen.ConnectionSettings.route) block, the data object ConnectionSettings entry in the Screen sealed class, and the onNavigateToConnectionSettings lambda wired into SettingsScreen. Adds onNavigateToPairedDevices to the plural screen's composable call.
• ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — deletes the Active Connection quick-look Card block (~90 lines), the onNavigateToConnectionSettings param, and the 7 collectAsState calls (apiReachable / apiHealth / authState / apiUrl / relayUrl / relayUiState / relayRowState + relayFeatureEnabled) that were only used by that card.
• user-docs/reference/configuration.md + user-docs/guide/getting-started.md — nav paths updated throughout: every Settings → Connection → X becomes Settings → Connections → [active card] → X or ...→ Advanced → X.

Subtle decisions worth flagging.

LazyColumn item disposal vs. modal state. The Card is a LazyColumn item. If the user scrolls it off-screen while a status-row info sheet is open, the item gets disposed and any remember { mutableStateOf(false) } inside it is gone. So showApiInfoSheet / showRelayInfoSheet / showSessionInfoSheet / showInsecureAckDialog are all hoisted to ConnectionsSettingsScreen scope. Dialog confirmation still wipes card-scope state if the card is still alive; screen scope survives scroll regardless. Card-scope remember is retained only for per-card modals that logically can't exist cross-card (rename / revoke-confirm / remove-confirm dialogs).

Endpoint-flow cold-start gap. observeDeviceEndpoints() is a cold flow { ... } that suspends on getOrCreateDeviceId() before the first emission. During that gap, endpoints == emptyList() and the Endpoints expander hides — which is correct for the Endpoints-only content but NOT for the Status section or Advanced section, which should be unconditionally visible on the active card. The guard is split: outer if (isActive && activeConnectionViewModel != null) gates the deep body; the inner if (endpoints.isNotEmpty()) only gates the Endpoints expander. Surfaced during exploration as the one thing to warn a new developer about — worth documenting.

Why InsecureConnectionAckDialog is hoisted through a callback rather than owned by the Advanced section. The dialog would work if owned by the card — but if the card scrolls off mid-open, the dialog dismisses silently. The Advanced subsection fires onInsecureAckRequested() which opens a screen-scope boolean; the dialog renders in the screen's root composition. Survives scroll, survives recomposition, one source of truth.

Mutex-free reconnect-on-entry. Both SettingsScreen and ConnectionsSettingsScreen call reconnectIfStale() in LaunchedEffect(Unit). The VM method no-ops if a reconnect is already in flight, so the duplicate call is free and actually helpful — firing on Settings entry means the subpage arrival already has a warm reconnect attempt rather than triggering one on its own arrival.

Delivery. Three parallel exploration passes up front — one to inventory the 1429-line singular screen's features by category (inline / advanced / duplicate / dead code / state deps / dialogs / nav entry points), one to map the plural screen's current active-card rendering + expansion patterns + constraints, one to trace every caller of the route and parameter chains that would need rewiring. All three returned line-numbered reports quickly, which made the synthesis + implementation step mechanical. Worth the pattern for any similar "delete-and-fold" refactor.

Post-refactor vertical map for connection management:

Settings
├── Active Agent card                 (unchanged — summary chip, opens AgentInfoSheet inline)
├── Inspect Agent card                (unchanged — Profile deep-link)
└── [Connections] category row
    └── ConnectionsSettings subpage
        ├── Non-active card           (title + subtitle + action row — flat)
        └── Active card               (everything above, PLUS inline deep body:)
            ├── Status section        (API / Relay / Session rows → info sheets)
            ├── Endpoints expander    (conditional on endpoints.isNotEmpty())
            ├── Advanced expander
            │   ├── Manual URL        (API + Relay URL + Save & Test)
            │   ├── Insecure toggle   (with first-enable Ack dialog)
            │   └── Manual code       (3-step fallback flow)
            └── Security posture      (transport + Tailscale + hardware + Paired Devices row)

Two top-level entries. One subpage. One active card. Every connection action reachable in a deterministic drill-down. No naming collisions, no duplicate surfaces, no wondering which "Connection" the Settings tap will land on.

2026-04-21 — relayReady gate + KDoc nested-comment trap

Context. Two unrelated passes in one session. (1) Voice mode and Bridge commands both depend on the WSS relay, but the app had no unified signal for "relay is actually functional" — a user with no relay paired would tap the Mic and get a cryptic failure, or the Bridge master toggle would happily enable an accessibility service whose commands would never arrive. (2) While running a ship-readiness scan for v0.7.0, the compile failed with "Unresolved reference 'isReady'" at MainActivity.kt:67 — a symptom that took some digging to trace to its real cause.

relayReady design. Symmetric to the existing chatReady: StateFlow<Boolean> on ConnectionViewModel. Three-input combine over connectionManager.connectionState, authState, and _relayUrl: all three must be in their healthy state (Connected, Paired, non-blank) for relayReady = true. Three-input is deliberate — without the URL check, the Case-C teardown edge (last connection removed, active id goes blank) leaves a stale Paired token alive against a dead URL and a simpler two-input gate would pass through. Placed below _relayUrl in the class body because Kotlin class-initializers run top-to-bottom and a forward reference to a MutableStateFlow constructor-site read returns null (left a breadcrumb comment where chatReady is declared pointing to the real location — symmetry in the source ordering vs reality-of-Kotlin-initialization).

UI wiring. Two consumer surfaces, both soft-gate rather than hard-disable (matches the Chat-send pattern already in the codebase). ChatScreen's mic button dims to onSurfaceVariant @ alpha=0.5 and tapping it fires a Toast instead of launching voice mode; content description flips so TalkBack reads "Voice mode unavailable — relay not connected". BridgeScreen gets an error-container banner at the top of the scroll region with a Warning icon and two lines of copy — but we intentionally do NOT block the master toggle, because pre-configuring permissions, safety rails, and unattended access IS valuable before a relay pairs, and the BridgeViewModel's own state prevents command dispatch until the relay wakes up anyway. connectionViewModel is nullable on BridgeScreen(connectionViewModel: ConnectionViewModel? = null) so @Preview fixtures compile without rigging up a full VM; the fallback StateFlow(true) means "assume ready when no signal" which reads right in every path that matters.

The compile trap. The grep that "confirmed" the relayReady gate had landed showed all four edit sites present, but the compile still failed. Symptom: MainActivity.kt:67:34 Unresolved reference 'isReady' — isReady has been a public member of ConnectionViewModel since v0.4 so this was confusing. Ran the actual ./gradlew :app:compileGooglePlayDebugKotlin and saw ~50 cascading "Unresolved reference" errors across PairedDevicesScreen, SettingsScreen, TerminalScreen, and two actual syntax errors at the bottom: ConnectionViewModel.kt:390:62 Missing '} and ConnectionViewModel.kt:2630:1 Unclosed comment.

Root cause: the relayReady KDoc contained the line * - WSS not Connected → transport is down; any /voice/* or bridge. Kotlin supports nested block comments. The /* inside /voice/* opened a nested comment block; the KDoc's closing */ at line 418 closed the nested block, leaving the outer /** wide open — which then consumed the remaining ~2200 lines of the file (including the isReady declaration at line 573), producing exactly the observed error pattern. Fix was two characters: quote the path pattern in backticks AND break the /* token by rewriting it as `/voice/...`. One edit, rerun compile, BUILD SUCCESSFUL.

Lesson. "/*" inside Kotlin KDoc is a comment-opener, not a literal pattern. Avoid writing shell-glob or regex-like patterns in block comments; inline-code them with backticks AND use ... instead of * when possible. This is the third documented Kotlin-vs-Java comment trap in this codebase — nested comments plus no error at parse-start plus a cascade of misleading symbolic errors is a uniquely confusing failure mode. Worth checking any other /* strings inside KDoc comments in the codebase before the next feature-heavy diff.

Not touched (out of scope). Everything on the v0.7.0 release checklist — version bump, CHANGELOG flip from [Unreleased] to [0.7.0] — 2026-04-21, release-PR cut. On-device verification through Android Studio is needed before proceeding with the release commits.

2026-04-20 — Connection pairing audit: orphan placeholders, scan-auto-start, inline switcher

Context. Two reported symptoms: (1) the top-bar "connection" chip was showing New connection… as the active connection label, (2) a suspected double-pair. Server-side SSH verified hermes-relay + hermes-gateway healthy; pairing code 4YBZ0W minted at 21:33:23 UTC-4 with a clean revoke+re-pair cycle. The device logcat buffer had already rolled past the pair event, so diagnosis was a code-path audit + screenshot evidence.

Root cause — orphan placeholders. ConnectionViewModel.beginAddConnection pre-creates a Connection with label = PLACEHOLDER_LABEL ("New connection…") and empty URLs, then calls switchConnection(id) so applyPairingPayload's token write lands in the new auth store (the structural fix for the "token written to wrong connection" class of bug, already in place pre-audit). Cleanup for abandoned placeholders was wired to onCancel only — which RelayApp.kt's Pair route fired for (a) the TopAppBar back arrow and (b) the in-wizard Cancel action. System back (gesture back / predictive back) bypassed that branch entirely — NavController just pops the backstack without invoking the composable's onCancel lambda. Gesture back at some point left the placeholder in storage. On next app open, ConnectionViewModel.init had no cleanup logic, so the orphan stayed active (because switchConnection had made it active before the wizard ran) and showed its placeholder label on every UI surface that reads activeConnection.label.

Fix 1 — defensive init sweep. Added an orphan-cleanup coroutine in ConnectionViewModel.init, fired after the legacy-seed migration completes. Sweeps for pairedAt == null && apiServerUrl.isBlank() && label == PLACEHOLDER_LABEL — a tuple no real pairing can produce, so the delete is unconditional-safe. If the active connection id points at an orphan, switches to the first surviving real connection before deleting so we don't leave activeConnectionId pointing at a dead record. Fixes affected devices in-place without the user having to find + delete the orphan manually. Logs each removal at INFO so future investigations have a paper trail.

Fix 2 — BackHandler on PairScreen. Two-line fix in PairScreen.kt: BackHandler(enabled = true) { onCancel() }. Now gesture back, predictive back, and hardware back all converge on the same discardPlaceholderConnection branch the TopAppBar arrow uses. Prevents new orphans from being created going forward.

Fix 3 — auto-start scan on Add connection. The wizard at ConnectionWizard.kt:146 always started at WizardStep.Method (the chooser). The reported issue — "didn't open the pair flow automatically" — was exactly this: "Add connection" has one obvious next step (scan QR), forcing a two-tap path through the Method chooser is needless friction. Added an autoStart: String? param to ConnectionWizard; on first composition a LaunchedEffect(Unit) inspects the value and, when "scan", fires the camera permission launcher immediately (equivalent to the user tapping the Scan tile). Screen.Pair grew a second query arg autoStart plumbed through the route builder, the composable entry, and PairScreen. The Connections settings FAB passes autoStart = "scan"; re-pair surfaces intentionally leave it null so the full Scan / Enter code / Show code chooser stays available there (a user re-pairing may have reasons to pick manual code entry). Unrecognized values fall through to the default Method step so future builds adding more deep-link targets don't break old ones.

Fix 4 — remove the top-bar chip, fold switcher into the Agent sheet. The app-wide ConnectionChip row rendered above every primary tab when connections.size >= 2. Screenshot audit: it was (a) duplicating the Agent sheet's Connection section metadata, (b) eating vertical space above every screen, (c) actively confusing the user by surfacing the orphan's New connection… label. Deleted the AnimatedVisibility block + the ConnectionChip import + the connectionSheetVisible state + the ConnectionSwitcherSheet render block at the bottom of RelayApp (the sheet class file stays on disk for future programmatic callers). Added a new inline switcher block to ConnectionInfoSheet.kt's AgentInfoSheet — collects connectionViewModel.connectionStore.connections + activeConnectionId, renders a radio list using the existing ProfileRadioRow component (same visual pattern the Profile and Personality sections already use), visible only when connections.size >= 2. Tapping a non-active entry fires switchConnection + a confirmation toast. Switching is now reachable from the same tap the user already uses to switch Profile or Personality, which addresses the reported gap that connection switching wasn't properly wired into the top-bar agent name drawer.

Scope discipline. The rename-on-pair logic at ConnectionViewModel.kt:1266 is correct — its guard current.label == PLACEHOLDER_LABEL && current.apiServerUrl.isNotBlank() is what's SUPPOSED to rename a placeholder once the scan populates the URL. The orphan didn't reach that guard because the pair never completed — apiServerUrl stayed blank, so the rename path never triggered and the placeholder stayed labeled. No fix needed there.

Not touched (out of scope):

• Phase B upstream rich-card adapter work — still held pending real usage.
• Session-sync story for card dispatches already shipped earlier today (ADR 26 / CardDispatchSyncBuilder).

2026-04-20 — Card-dispatch session sync (completes ADR 26)

Context. Immediately after shipping Phase A of the CARD:{json} pipeline, went back for the deferred session-sync piece. The value proposition: card dispatches in send_text / slash_command modes already reach the server (they go through sendMessage), but open_url dispatches NEVER do — the intent launches locally and the server is blind to it. Even for send_text/slash_command the server only sees the reply text, not the structural link back to the card that prompted it — so after a server restart or reconnect the LLM can't say "you approved the Run shell command? card" without guessing.

Design. Mirror VoiceIntentSyncBuilder beat-for-beat. Every HermesCardDispatch grows a syncedToServer: Boolean = false flag (identical spelling to VoiceIntentTrace.syncedToServer). New CardDispatchSyncBuilder in viewmodel/ (pure function, JVM-testable) walks history, builds an index of card.id ?: "idx:$index" → card, then for each unsynced dispatch synthesizes an OpenAI-format assistant+tool pair. Namespaced the synthetic tool name as hermes_card_action so the upstream tool dispatcher — which could look at the session's history on a cold-start replay — has zero chance of trying to execute a card audit record as if it were a real android_* call.

Arguments envelope. Chose a fat structured object: card_key + action_value (always), plus card_type + card_title + action_label + action_mode + action_style when the card and action are still in the message. The LLM can describe the interaction naturally from any of those keys, which matters because the card itself may have been trimmed from the rolling context window by the time the LLM reads the synthesized trace. Fallback path (card no longer in message history) emits just the key + value — still a valid audit record, just less descriptive.

Wire splice. The API client's voiceIntentMessages parameter was left unrenamed — it's already a generic JsonArray? of synthetic messages, and renaming would ripple across HermesApiClient (out of scope for this PR). Instead ChatViewModel.startStream builds BOTH arrays (voice intents first, cards second — preserves chronological order within each stream; cross-stream ordering doesn't matter to the LLM since cause-and-effect is preserved within each) and concatenates into one, passing through the existing slot. Guarded with hasUnsynced on both builders so the common no-op turn allocates nothing.

Commit timing. Matches voice intents exactly — markVoiceIntentsSynced and markCardDispatchesSynced both fire after the API client accepts the request. If request building throws, both streams stay unsynced and retry on the next turn. If the request succeeds but the SSE stream fails partway through, the server-side session has already absorbed the synthetic messages and won't re-receive them — correct for at-least-once delivery semantics.

Tests. CardDispatchSyncBuilderTest covers six cases: empty history, dispatches-but-no-cards, single success pair, skip-already-synced, orphan dispatch (card trimmed), idx-form fallback key, and hasUnsynced boolean. Pure JVM tests — no Robolectric, no MockK, same JUnit style as VoiceIntentSyncBuilderTest.

What closes from ADR 26. The "deferred session sync" item in the tradeoff list is now shipped and the ADR is updated accordingly. Phase B (upstream Discord/Slack adapter parity) remains held until real phone-side card usage surfaces concrete fidelity issues worth translating for.

2026-04-20 — Rich cards in chat + dev-branch CI relaxation

Context. Two asks in the same session. (1) Dev-branch CI was blocking WIP pushes on test failures that were transient or irrelevant to the commit — tests take a long time, fail noisily on in-progress work, and are a drag on the "commit early, commit often" loop the dev-branch model exists to enable. Lint failures are rare enough that keeping them strict is acceptable. (2) The chat feed only knew how to render prose + tool-progress cards + attachments; the goal was Discord-embed-style rich cards for skills and agent commands — approval prompts, link previews, weather, calendar, generic skill output — with a pattern that could extend to Discord/Slack adapters upstream later.

CI — the change. Added continue-on-error: ${{ github.ref != 'refs/heads/main' && github.base_ref != 'main' }} to the test job in ci-android.yml and the unit-tests job in ci-relay.yml. The expression reads as "if this build is NOT heading toward main (push to main OR PR targeting main), mark the job green even if tests fail." Tests still run — reports and annotations upload as always — they just don't red-gate the dev merge queue. When the dev → main release-merge PR goes up, base_ref == 'main' flips the expression to false and the same job is strict again, so nothing sneaks into a tagged release untested. Lint stays unconditionally strict on both branches (lint debt compounds and is cheap to fix at commit time).

Cards — the design. Upstream research first: gateway/platforms/base.py exposes no rich-content abstraction at all (just send() / send_image() / edit_message()). Discord uses zero discord.Embed(). Slack uses Block Kit only for the exec-approval dialog. Only lead is the REQUIRES_EDIT_FINALIZE attribute + its DingTalk AI Cards reference, which acknowledges rich-card surfaces exist but doesn't abstract them. So: no prior art to copy, one Slack pattern (exec-approval) worth mirroring, and free rein on the envelope shape.

Chose to reuse the MEDIA: marker pattern rather than invent structured SSE events. Reasons: (a) works unchanged across every streaming endpoint we support — /v1/runs, /api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream, /v1/chat/completions — which the structured-event path would not (chat/completions has no event channel); (b) ships today with zero server dependency; (c) the HermesCard data model is stable regardless of wire format, so if we later want structured events the parser fans out and nothing else changes. Marker is CARD:{json} on its own line, single-line JSON (escape newlines in string fields as \n), greedy \{.*\} so nested braces in fields / actions survive.

Cards — the data. HermesCard(type, title?, subtitle?, body?, accent?, fields[], actions[], footer?, id?). type is a dispatcher key — skill_result, approval_request, link_preview, calendar_event, weather are the built-ins, unknown types render via a generic title+body+fields+actions fallback so new types don't break older phone builds. accent is semantic (info / success / warning / danger) not raw hex so the renderer pulls from colorScheme. fields are simple label/value rows. actions are tappable buttons with label / value / style (primary / secondary / danger) / mode (send_text default / slash_command / open_url). @Serializable with ignoreUnknownKeys = true so server schema evolution doesn't break parse.

Cards — the parser. Mirrors the MEDIA: path byte-for-byte in structure: dedicated cardLineBuffer + dispatchedCardMarkers fields, scanForCardMarkers called from onTextDelta, tryDispatchCardMarker as the line inspector, finalizeCardMarkers called from both onTurnComplete and onStreamComplete, extractCardsFromContent on history reload. clearMessages wipes the state. Cards are synchronous (no async fetch like media), so they attach straight onto ChatMessage.cards instead of going through a callback-to-ViewModel roundtrip.

Cards — the renderer. HermesCardBubble.kt is a Material 3 Card with a 3dp accent stripe on the leading edge (same visual language as the voice/phone-action accent bar in MessageBubble), Icon + Title/Subtitle header, optional markdown body, fields as label/value rows (monospace heuristic on values that look like paths or commands), FlowRow of action buttons, muted footer. Tapping an action triggers ChatViewModel.dispatchCardAction(messageId, cardKey, action) which stamps a HermesCardDispatch on the owning message before doing the side effect — so the card collapses into a "Chose: X" confirmation even if sendMessage or the ACTION_VIEW intent throws. The stripe color and header icon both branch on type / accent, so the visual distinction between an approval card and a weather card is immediate.

Approval-request card parity with Slack. Slack's send_exec_approval uses a Block Kit section with 4 buttons: Allow Once (primary), Allow Session (default), Always Allow (default), Deny (default, though semantically destructive). Our approval_request card uses the same 4-button shape with style: "primary" on Allow Once and style: "danger" on Deny — so a future upstream Phase B contribution is a translation pass (gateway/rich_cards.py → Slack blocks / Discord embeds / markdown fallback), not a data-model rethink. Phase B was not shipped in this session — scope-capped to phone-side Phase A by design.

What's still on the table. Server-side session sync of card dispatches (analogous to VoiceIntentSyncBuilder for voice intents) so the LLM remembers "user approved shell command X" across a server restart. And the Phase B adapter-side upstream PR — both deferred to future sessions.

2026-04-19 — Docs site: mobile hero fix + MorphingSphere on codename-11.github.io

Context. Two issues on the VitePress docs home at codename-11.github.io/hermes-relay/: (1) on mobile the 9:16 phone-frame video overflowed its container and the hero text/CTAs sat on top of the video, (2) goal: embed the freshly-extracted MorphingSphere somewhere tasteful on the docs site with a "looking around" loop and mouse-proximity reactivity.

Mobile hero — the fault. VitePress's VPHero sets .image-container to width: 320px; height: 320px below 640 px and 392×392 at 640–960 px, with .image { margin: -76px -24px -48px } negative margins meant to visually overlap a round illustration. That shape works for a 320-square picture, not for a portrait phone frame that's ~433 px tall at 200 px wide. The frame overflowed the square and the .main block (text + actions) got pulled up through the overflow zone.

Mobile hero — the fix. Two edits. custom.css adds a @media (max-width: 959px) override that clears the .image negative margins and makes .image-container height: auto; width: auto; max-width: 100%. HeroDemo.vue replaces three breakpoint widths (280/240/200 px at three steps) with width: clamp(180px, 62vw, 280px) + max-height: 70vh — one fluid rule, plus a safety rail so a tall narrow viewport (folded Z-fold, tall Android) can't push the Get Started button below the fold.

Sphere placement. Option A (hero corner) would compete with the phone video. Option C (nav logo) is subtle but a tiny 32×32 canvas can't show enough detail to read as "alive." First pass went with option B — a dedicated band between hero and features (home-features-before slot) at 56×26 / 720×220 px. Second pass moved it directly above the "Install in 30 seconds" block by collapsing both slots into home-hero-after: () => [h(SphereMark), h(InstallSection)]. Third pass (same session, after reviewing the first render): the 9:16 phone-shape frame put a tiny sphere inside a tall envelope — the algorithm's baseRadius = 0.60 × min(rows/2, cols×charAspect/2) means the sphere was only ~20% of canvas width by design, leaving 200+ px of dead space above and below the visible blob. Fix: keep the 58×34 mobile density but switch the canvas aspect to 1:1 square with clamp(280px, 48vw, 420px) width. At square, the charAspect (34/58 ≈ 0.586) makes maxRadiusFromRows == maxRadiusFromCols, so the sphere fills both axes equally and the data ring extends to ~93% of the frame. Gap killed, sphere is now the focal object of the band.

Gaze without bounce. First pass translated the whole canvas toward the cursor via ctx.translate(offsetX, offsetY) — effective as a "tracking" cue but read as a bounce: the sphere body should stay anchored, only the eye should move. Cleaner fix required algorithmic access to the light direction, so added three new SphereFrame fields to MorphingSphereCore.kt: lightAngleBiasX, lightAngleBiasY, lightAngleBlend (all default 0f). The light-angle computation now blends between the natural t * lightSpeedX + noise rotation (blend = 0) and the caller's bias (blend = 1). Mirrored into sphere.js with ?? 0 coalescing. Defaults preserve byte-identical behavior for existing callers — the Android composable, the parity test (MorphingSphereCoreParityTest), and the JS parity harness (parity-check.mjs) all stay green because none of them set the new fields.

Gaze math. The algorithm computes lx = sin(lightAngle1) * 0.65 and ly = cos(lightAngle2) * 0.65. To make the bright spot face a direction (cursorDx, cursorDy) normalized to the unit circle, solve: lightAngle1 = asin(cursorDx), lightAngle2 = acos(cursorDy). SphereMark.vue computes these per frame from the cursor vector, blends with a slow fbm wander for idle gaze, and ramps lightAngleBlend from 0.35 (idle wander) up to 0.90 (cursor near). The 0.35 floor is deliberate — below it, the autonomous fbm barely registers as gaze because natural light rotation drowns it out; at 0.35 the bias owns enough of the angle that the eye reads as looking around rather than being illuminated randomly.

Fourth pass — jitter fix. First draft fed raw pointer inputs straight into asin/acos every frame. Hovering felt jerky because (a) pointermove fires at event-driven cadence with big gaps between events, not once per animation frame, and (b) asin'(x) = 1 / √(1 − x²) blows up as x → ±1, so small input steps near the edges produced disproportionately large angle jumps. Fix: two EMAs on the raw inputs before they hit the trig — 180 ms time constant on lookVx / lookVy, 280 ms on proximity (proximity wants a bit more hang-time so rapid hover-in/hover-out doesn't thrash the state machine). The alpha = 1 − exp(−dt/tau) form is frame-rate-independent — same responsiveness on a 144 Hz monitor as 30 fps. Also capped the asin/acos inputs at ±0.9 to stay off the asymptotic slope at the boundaries; effective gaze range drops from lx ∈ ±0.65 to ±0.585, an imperceptible loss for a large smoothness win.

Fifth pass — scroll-watching + rectangular detection. Goal: (a) the detection field to cover the full page width at the container's height (rectangular band, not circle), and (b) the sphere to watch the reader scroll toward install when they haven't interacted yet — "looking straight down at install" when the install section is in view. Implementation:

• Added a userHasInteracted flag, flipped on the first pointermove. Once true it stays true for the session.
• Scroll-watching mode (not interacted yet): compute scrollOffsetY = viewportH/2 − sphereCenterY in viewport coordinates. When the reader scrolls down, the sphere rises in the viewport and scrollOffsetY grows positive — feeding rawLookVy = scrollOffsetY / (viewportH * 0.6) into the gaze math rotates the bright spot to the bottom of the sphere. Proximity locked to 0.75 so the smoothed gazeBlend settles at 0.35 + 0.55·0.75 ≈ 0.76 — enough to read as intentional gaze without slamming into full Listening-state intensity. Horizontal component held at 0 so the eye doesn't drift left/right while watching scroll.
• Cursor-tracking mode (post-interaction): gaze direction is still the unit vector from sphere center to cursor. Proximity is now purely vertical band-based — 1.0 when |mdy| ≤ containerHeight/2, falling off linearly over 0.6 × containerHeight beyond each edge. No horizontal falloff at all — cursor anywhere from x = 0 to x = viewportWidth in the vertical band gets full proximity. That matches the "fill width" spec and feels natural because the eye already targets cursor direction regardless of distance; proximity just gates intensity / state / blend strength.
• Drift fallback (interacted + pointer off the page): both mode blocks skip, raw inputs stay at 0, smoothed EMA relaxes toward 0, autonomous fbm drift provides the gaze. The sphere effectively "loses track" and wanders.

The three modes compose cleanly because they all feed through the same smoothed-EMA → asin/acos → lightAngleBias pipeline. Transitions between modes just change the raw targets; EMA + tweens handle everything else.

Sixth pass — unified target + install-anchored scroll. Ultrathink pass: the scroll reference point was wrong, and the cursor↔drift mode flip at the band boundary was causing visible eye freakout when hovering near the edge. Two changes:

• Unified target pipeline. Dropped the userHasInteracted flag and the fbm-drift fallback mode. Scroll-tracking is now the always-on baseline; cursor-tracking overlays on top via cursorWeight. rawLookVy = cursorVy × cursorWeight + scrollVy × (1 − cursorWeight) — one coherent target, no two sources competing for the EMA to smooth. The boundary freakout was fundamentally a discontinuous target function: two signals with possibly opposite directions feeding a single smoother only looks smooth if they agree at the transition. They didn't. Now there's only one target curve, and the EMA just smooths motion along it.
• Install-anchored scroll reference. Replaced viewportH/2 − sphereCenterY with an Install-element anchor via document.querySelector('.install-section'). installGap = installRect.top − viewportH is the runway until install enters view; scrollVy ramps linearly from 0 (install still more than 50 % viewport-height below the fold) to 1 (install just touching viewport bottom). By the time install first becomes visible, the eye is already looking straight down at it — the animation leads the scroll rather than chasing it. With the old viewport-center reference, scrollVy only saturated to ±1 when the sphere was nearly off-screen, which meant "fully looking down" happened after the sphere had already scrolled away. Fallback when the install element isn't on the page (other routes) uses viewport-center so the gaze still follows scroll.
• Widened the cursor falloff from 0.6 × container height to 1.0 × height. Over 180 ms EMA with a narrow falloff, the crossfade from cursor to scroll target happens inside the EMA's bandwidth and reads as a jump; widening it to 1.0 × height spreads the mathematical transition over enough cursor travel that the EMA can smooth it out fully.

Seventh pass — eye legibility. Gaze tracking worked but the bright spot wasn't standing out as the eye. Analyzed the math: brightness = (1 - li) · distBrightness + li · directionalLight + heartbeatFx. For Idle, lightInfluence = 0.35, so 65% of sphere brightness comes from position (pearl shading, bright at center, dim at edges) and only 35% from the light direction. Worse, at the sphere's geometric center the surface normal is (0, 0, 1) so directionalLight ≈ lz, and lz = √(1 − lx² − ly²) is always positive — the center stays bright regardless of where the eye is pointing, which visually flattens the eye-to-shadow contrast. Fix: new shadowStrength field on SphereFrame (mirror in sphere.js, default 0). Multiplies distBrightness by (1 − shadowStrength · (1 − directionalLight)) — lit side (directionalLight = 1) scales by 1.0, shadow side (directionalLight = 0) scales by 1 − shadowStrength. Picked the factor to act on distBrightness rather than directionalLight because boosting the light side's directional term (or gamma-sharpening it) would flatten the 3D pearl shading everywhere — the shadow-side multiplier dims only the unlit hemisphere, keeping the shading on the lit side intact while doubling eye-to-shadow contrast. Docs SphereMark.vue uses 0.6 (dark side at 40% of legacy distBrightness). Android composable doesn't set it — legacy pearl shading preserved byte-for-byte, parity test stays green.

Sphere reuse — no duplication. The Vue component imports directly from ../../../../preview/web/sphere.js. Vite resolves the relative path through the repo root; sphere.js is pure (no DOM, no side effects) so SSR doesn't choke. This keeps MorphingSphereCore.kt → sphere.js as the single algorithm seam — same math on Android, preview harness, and docs site. No mirror, no copy to sync.

"Looking around" + mouse reaction. Two behaviors layered onto the existing SphereFrame inputs without touching the core algorithm:

• Autonomous drift. Low-frequency fbm noise (nowSec * 0.05 + 2.1, same fbm the core uses for its light jitter) produces a (dx, dy) in ±1 range. Applied as a canvas translate() of up to 14 px. Gives a subtle gaze loop that never repeats visibly.
• Proximity. Pointer tracked on window; distance from mouse to canvas center normalized against a 320 px "reach radius" → proximity ∈ [0, 1]. Blends cursor-pull with autonomous drift (cursor dominates near, drift dominates far), ramps intensity tween (0 → 0.7), and retargets state Idle → Listening above 0.35 proximity, back to Idle below 0.15 (hysteresis band prevents flicker). Listening's params have higher lightInfluence and tighter core — reads as "the agent is paying attention."

Perf / a11y. IntersectionObserver pauses the fillText loop when the band is scrolled off-screen (still advances time so state tweens stay in sync on re-enter — cheaper than rebuilding state but skips the expensive draw). prefers-reduced-motion freezes t and zeroes the gaze offset so the band stays readable but static. aria-hidden on the canvas — the sphere is decorative, no screen reader value.

VitePress SSR — <ClientOnly> was the wrong tool. First attempt wrapped the component in <ClientOnly> as "SSR defense." Turned out to be the bug: <ClientOnly> only mounts its children after its own onMounted fires, which is later than the parent component's onMounted — so canvasEl.value and containerEl.value were null when we tried to start the rAF loop. The first render call bailed early without scheduling the next frame, killing the loop permanently. Fix: drop the wrapper (a <canvas> tag is inert on SSR, no side effects) and make render() re-schedule itself whenever refs or canvas dimensions aren't ready yet. One transient null no longer turns into a dead loop.

2026-04-19 — MorphingSphere: pure-core extraction + browser preview + runtime parity proof

Context. The sphere had grown into a 494-line Compose file with Android Paint + Typeface + nativeCanvas.drawText wired into the same function that did the math. That made it impossible to iterate on the algorithm without building to a device — and blocked any future port to a non-Android surface (user site, Hermes TUI, Compose Desktop). Branch claude/ui-dev-preview-exploration-vKvzr split the file into a pure algorithm + a Compose renderer and added a zero-dep browser harness; this session added the parity proof.

Layout — three artifacts, one seam.

• MorphingSphereCore.kt (new, 412 lines) — kotlin.math only. Owns SphereState, SphereParams, SphereColors, SphereFrame, SphereCell, paramsFor(), colorsFor(), forEachSphereCell(). No Android, no Compose, no Paint.
• MorphingSphere.kt (494 → ~45 lines of renderer + @Preview decorators) — Compose Canvas binding. Swapped legacy Paint + Typeface + nativeCanvas.drawText for rememberTextMeasurer() + Compose drawText. Owns animation state (animateFloatAsState, rememberInfiniteTransition) and feeds a SphereFrame into the core per tick.
• preview/web/sphere.js — line-for-line JS mirror of MorphingSphereCore.kt. Math.imul + |0 to match Kotlin's Int overflow in the hash, ((x % n) + n) % n for Kotlin's floored-positive .mod(), Math.trunc for .toInt() truncation-toward-zero.

Browser harness. preview/web/index.html — live HTML+canvas, python3 -m http.server --directory preview/web, no build step. Panel exposes State / Voice mode / Voice amp / Intensity / Tool burst / Pause / reset t, plus a Layout section (Cols, Rows, Fill %, Aspect, Char size) added this session with a phone 9:16 preset that pins canvas aspect to 0.5625 to match Compose @Preview(widthDp=360, heightDp=640). Hitting 1..6 cycles state; Space pauses.

Runtime parity proof. Line-by-line code audit was first, but proving parity needs evidence, not inspection. Added:

• preview/web/parity-check.mjs — Node harness running sphere.js at the 8 Compose @Preview fixtures (Idle/Thinking/Streaming/Error/Compact/Listening/Speaking-low/Speaking-peak), emitting two FNV-1a 32-bit checksums per fixture. struct hashes only (row, col, charCode) — discrete, robust to Float/Double precision drift. full hashes the same plus color/alpha rounded to 3 decimals.
• app/src/test/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/MorphingSphereCoreParityTest.kt — JVM unit test (no Android deps, runs on testGooglePlayDebugUnitTest), mirrors the JS harness exactly: same 8 fixtures, same FNV-1a impl via Kotlin UInt, same %.3f formatting via Locale.ROOT, same tuple layout.

Result. 8 / 8 structural checksums match. 8 / 8 zone histograms match (inside/glow/ring counts identical). 6 / 8 full checksums match — Listening and Speaking-low drift on color/alpha at the 3rd decimal, which is expected Float (Kotlin) vs Double (JS) mantissa precision in compound expressions like (colR + lightBoost + warmth).coerceIn(0, 1). Speaking-peak avoids the drift because amp=0.95 puts lerp() results near the endpoints where Float mantissa has room.

Decision. MorphingSphereCore is declared the single source of truth going forward. The Compose MorphingSphere composable keeps its public API (same params, same defaults) so call sites — VoiceModeOverlay, the chat empty state — need no changes. Future edits to the algorithm go in MorphingSphereCore.kt, mirror into sphere.js, and MorphingSphereCoreParityTest catches drift between sides.

Reusable surface. The core is now droppable into:

• A terminal TUI (Hermes CLI) — swap Compose drawText for ANSI-colored print, keep everything else.
• The user site (codename-11.dev) — reuse sphere.js directly with an HTML <canvas> host.
• Compose Desktop — reuse MorphingSphere.kt unchanged once the host project adds the ui/components dir to its source set.

Worktree gotcha. git worktree add doesn't copy .gitignored files. local.properties (SDK path + keystore creds) has to be recreated in any new worktree before gradle tasks run. For the parity test a minimal sdk.dir=... is enough — signing creds stay in the main checkout.

2026-04-19 — Multi-endpoint pairing + first-class Tailscale (ADR 24 + 25)

Branches: Wave 1 + Wave 2 landed on dev. ADRs 24 and 25 written and committed. Docs pass (this entry) closes the work out.

Shipped.

• ADR 24 — Multi-endpoint pairing. plugin/pair.py now emits an ordered endpoints array (lan / tailscale / public / operator-defined roles) in a new hermes: 3 QR schema; hermes: 2 stays the default when no endpoints are present. New CLI flags --mode {auto,lan,tailscale,public} and --public-url <url> drive candidate emission; --mode auto autodetects LAN IP + Tailscale status and composes them with an optional public URL. plugin/relay/qr_sign.py canonical form preserves array order and role strings verbatim — HMAC round-trip test pins this against future refactors. plugin/relay/server.py handle_pairing_mint / handle_pairing_register accept the optional endpoints body field. Phone side: new data/Endpoint.kt (EndpointCandidate / ApiEndpoint / RelayEndpoint / displayLabel()), data/PairingPreferences.kt per-device endpoint store, ui/components/QrPairingScanner.kt parses the new field with a v1/v2 synthesizer for back-compat, auth/AuthManager.kt persists the endpoint list on auth.ok, and viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt stages endpoints at pair time. Wave 2 Kt-Probe added ConnectionManager.resolveBestEndpoint() + NetworkCallback re-probing and RelayUiState.activeEndpointRole.
• ADR 25 — First-class Tailscale helper. New plugin/relay/tailscale.py with status() / enable(port) / disable(port) / canonical_upstream_present() — all shell out to the tailscale CLI with short timeouts, return structured dicts, never raise. New plugin/relay/tailscale_cli.py argparse wrapper + scripts/hermes-relay-tailscale shell shim mirroring the hermes-pair pattern. install.sh gains optional step [7/7] offering Tailscale enablement; honours TS_DECLINE=1 / TS_AUTO=1.
• Dashboard Remote Access tab (Wave 2 Dashboard-R4). plugin/dashboard/plugin_api.py + React UI + committed dist/index.js — operator can enable/disable the helper, mint multi-endpoint QRs, and inspect which modes are active without dropping to a shell.
• Docs pass. New docs/remote-access.md (263 lines) — decision matrix + per-mode setup recipes + troubleshooting. Updated docs/security.md with a "Remote connectivity" subsection + top-of-list Tailscale recommendation. Updated docs/relay-server.md with TS_AUTO / TS_DECLINE env vars, the dashboard plugin proxy-route table, and a Tailscale-helper subsection. Updated docs/spec.md §3.3 + §3.3.1 for v3 QR schema + endpoints array. Updated README.md "What's new" with the one-line connect-from-anywhere pitch. Updated CHANGELOG.md [Unreleased] with Added / Changed / Backward compatible subsections. Updated CLAUDE.md Key Files + Integration Points (hygiene pass only).

Key architectural decisions (restated from the ADRs).

1. Strict priority, not reachability-weighted. Priority 0 wins when reachable; reachability is a tiebreaker among equal priorities, never a promoter across priority boundaries. Matches DNS SRV semantics — nothing new to debate, and keeps operator intent authoritative.
2. Open-string role, not a closed enum. wireguard, zerotier, netbird-eu, etc. render as generic "Custom VPN ()" without a release. HMAC canonicalization preserves the exact emitted string.
3. Tailscale helper auto-retires on upstream merge. canonical_upstream_present() probes hermes gateway run --help | grep tailscale; once PR #9295 lands, the helper prints a log line pointing at the canonical flag and exits 0. Same removal pattern as hermes_relay_bootstrap/ after PR #8556.
4. No second crypto layer. The operator already owns both endpoints and the transport (Tailscale / Caddy / WireGuard / Cloudflare Tunnel) is TLS-terminated by the operator's chosen path. Adding Noise / libsignal over WSS would add complexity without defending any threat in the trust model.

What's next.

• Monitor upstream PR #9295 for merge. When it lands, verify canonical_upstream_present() detection works on a vanilla hermes-agent install, update the helper to print the retirement log line, and schedule the helper's removal PR (one file + the install.sh step + the shim).
• Android Studio build + ./gradlew lint pass before the multi-endpoint work gets pushed from the Kotlin side. No Python blockers.

Blockers. None. Awaiting the lint + build pass on the Kotlin changes before the feature branches merge into dev.

Same-day follow-up — --prefer priority override + regression fix

Two commits landed on dev after the initial ADR 24 + 25 bundle:

• feat(pairing): --prefer priority override on all pair surfaces (e914810). Adds explicit "promote this role to priority 0" control so operators can force a specific endpoint path without re-ordering defaults globally. Surfaces: CLI hermes-pair --prefer tailscale, the /hermes-relay-pair skill (SKILL.md updated), and a dropdown below the Endpoint Preview card on the dashboard's Remote Access tab. Open-vocab role string; case-insensitive matching; unknown role emits a stderr warning and keeps natural order. 6 new BuildEndpointCandidatesPreferTests cover the happy paths and edge cases. Dashboard bundle rebuilt to 61.3 KB.

• fix(relay): restore profile PUT handlers clobbered by ADR 24 commit (ee653d4). The ADR 24 bundle (fae8ccd) had an Edit that replaced a wider chunk of plugin/relay/server.py than intended while adding the endpoints passthrough to handle_pairing_mint / handle_pairing_register — collaterally deleting ~479 lines of handle_profile_soul_put / handle_profile_memory_put + _extract_write_content. CI — Relay went from 2 pre-existing failures (test_profile_discovery, unrelated) → 27 on the bundle push → back down to the same 2 after the fix. Restored by resetting server.py to the pre-ADR-24 state (47667bd) and re-applying only the intended ~30-line endpoints passthrough. Full suite: 673 pass / 6 skipped locally. Same bug class as the AuthManager.profilesUpdatedEvents collateral wipe caught mid-deploy — worth a note in any future "agent-assisted refactor" guidance: tight old_string anchors + verify-by-compile after every agent's work.

• Server deploy (~/.hermes/hermes-relay/ on dev, PID restarted for hermes-relay + hermes-gateway + hermes-dashboard) verified at each step: {"status": "ok"} health, tailscale.status() returning the live your-host.tailnet.ts.net / 100.64.0.100, and POST /api/plugins/hermes-relay/pairing {"mode":"auto","prefer":"tailscale"} returning [(0, 'tailscale'), (1, 'lan')] over the wire. Pre-existing test_profile_discovery failures on Linux CI runners (Windows-local passes) are a separate in-progress item — not introduced by this work.

• Docs sync pass. docs/remote-access.md → added "Promoting a role to priority 0 — --prefer" subsection under Combining modes. user-docs/features/connections.md → new "Multi-endpoint pairing" section (end-user facing). user-docs/guide/getting-started.md → new "Connecting from Anywhere (Tailscale, VPN, Public URL)" section between Relay Server and Verify Connection. CHANGELOG.md [Unreleased] gains --prefer under Added + the PUT-handler restore under Fixed.

2026-04-18 — Profile Inspector UI (v0.7.0)

Branch: feature/profile-inspector-ui. Kotlin-worker slice of the v0.7.0 Profile Inspector feature — Python worker runs in parallel and owns the /soul + /memory relay endpoints. Two feature commits + docs.

Shipped (Kotlin).

• RelayProfileInspectorClient + wire models. New read-only HTTP client for the four inspector endpoints (/api/profiles/{name}/config, /skills, /soul, /memory) mirroring RelayHttpClient's constructor shape (OkHttp, lazy bearer-token provider, ws:// → http:// URL flip). All four fetch methods return Result<T> and hop to Dispatchers.IO before any network I/O — reinforcing the v0.6.0 post-mortem fix for NetworkOnMainThreadException in the voice client. Profile names are URL-encoded before being spliced into the path so names with spaces / non-ASCII characters don't blow up the route. Wire models (ProfileConfigResponse, ProfileSkillsResponse, ProfileSoulResponse, ProfileMemoryResponse) are @Serializable with snake_case → camelCase mapping via @SerialName. Optional wire fields (truncated, readonly, enabled) default to safe values so pre-v0.7.0 relays that omit them deserialize cleanly.
• ProfileInspectorScreen (4 tabs). Config renders as a collapsible JSON tree (nested objects click to expand, monospace leaf values, 120-char truncation). SOUL is a scrollable monospace box with byte-size caption + truncation banner when the server flags the content as sliced; absent SOUL renders an empty-state with the expected path. Memory is a list of expandable cards per entry (filename + size in the header, content revealed on tap, per-entry truncation banner). Skills groups by category with a "(disabled)" label on skills where enabled=false. Top-bar Refresh icon fires loadAll(); each pane has its own inline Retry button on error state. PullToRefresh was skipped in favour of the explicit Refresh icon + per-section Retry — matches PairedDevicesScreen's "still-experimental PullRefresh" note.
• ProfileInspectorViewModel. Four independent LoadState<T> flows — one per section — so a slow /memory fetch never blocks the already-arrived /config tab. Lazy (no fetch until loadAll()) and stateful per-section (refreshSection(InspectorSection.Config) re-fetches just that tab). Profile name comes in via SavedStateHandle so a process-death restore inspects the same profile. The VM is keyed off the profile name in the nav backstack so entering a different profile produces a fresh VM rather than reusing stale state.
• ProfileInspectorCard in Settings. Sits directly under ActiveAgentCard so the "active agent → inspect it" reads naturally top-to-bottom. When no profile is selected, the card renders at 50% alpha with "No active agent" and becomes a no-op — kept visible (not hidden) so the feature stays discoverable before a pair-and-pick happens.
• Screen.ProfileInspector nav destination. Typed String path arg, registered via a tiny ViewModelProvider.Factory that pulls SavedStateHandle out of CreationExtras so nav args propagate into the VM constructor cleanly. Back navigation pops the destination and the VM is GC'd with it.

Key architectural decisions.

1. Four independent load states, not one "screen state". Each section's flow transitions Idle → Loading → Loaded/Error independently. One combined state would have meant the fastest-arriving tab gets blocked by the slowest — unnecessary UX cost given the 3 - 4 tabs the user flips between.
2. URL-encoded profile-name splice, not an OkHttp path segment. We use URLEncoder.encode(..., "UTF-8").replace("+", "%20") before splicing into the literal path string, then build the HttpUrl from the full string. OkHttp's addPathSegment would re-encode and produce double-encoding for profile names with % already in them (pathological but possible). A single round of encoding is the safe choice.
3. ViewModel keyed on nav arg. viewModel(key = "profile-inspector-$name", ...) means the same profile navigated to twice yields the same VM (back-stack reuse), but switching to profile B produces a fresh VM — avoids the "I opened inspector for axiom, changed profiles, reopened and saw axiom's data" class of bug.

Deferred.

• Pull-to-refresh gesture. Explicit Refresh button is enough for v0.7.0; if users ask for the gesture we'll revisit once Material3's PullToRefreshBox graduates out of experimental.
• Edit-in-place. Inspector is strictly read-only by design. Editing is still "SSH to the server and $EDITOR config.yaml" territory. A "Copy to clipboard" affordance on each section is a possible follow-up if users ask for it.
• MockWebServer integration tests. testImplementation doesn't include MockWebServer and the spec forbids adding deps for this slice — we covered wire-contract parsing + URL encoding + required-field enforcement via JVM-local tests, and the client's actual network path is exercised by the on-device relay smoke test.

Upstream dependency. Soul and Memory endpoints land via the parallel Python worker on the same branch. The Kotlin side is fetch-and-render — if either endpoint returns a 5xx / 404 before the Python change merges, the relevant tab just shows a Retry error state and the rest of the inspector keeps working.

2026-04-18 — Profile metadata + read-only config API (v0.7.0 groundwork)

Branch: feature/profile-config-readonly. Kotlin-worker slice of the v0.7.0 groundwork (Python-worker slice runs in parallel, owns the relay-side wire contract). Three feature commits + docs.

Shipped (Kotlin).

• Extended Profile data class. Added three optional fields — gatewayRunning: Boolean, hasSoul: Boolean, skillCount: Int — mapped via @SerialName to the snake_case wire keys (gateway_running, has_soul, skill_count) the relay will emit in auth.ok profiles entries. All three default to safe zero-values so pre-v0.7 relays deserialize cleanly. AuthManager.parseAgentProfiles reads them with booleanOrNull / intOrNull fallbacks — malformed values fall through to defaults rather than crashing the pairing handshake.
• Runtime-metadata indicators in the agent sheet. Each Profile row in AgentInfoSheet now carries a 6 dp status dot (green when gateway_running, grey otherwise), an optional "N skills" chip (hidden when skill_count == 0), and an optional "SOUL" badge (primary-container, hidden when has_soul is false). Gateway-off profiles stay selectable at 50% alpha — the probe is best-effort, and a stale dot shouldn't lock a user out. ProfileRadioRow grew three optional params (contentAlpha, leadingDotColor, secondaryTrailing slot) without changing the Default/personality-row call sites. Also added an inline "Profile SOUL overrides personality while active" caption under the personality section when a profile-with-SOUL + non-default personality are both selected, mirroring the existing caption in the Profile section.
• Persisted selectedProfile per Connection. New ProfileSelectionStore — its own DataStore (profile_selections) keyed by connectionId — lets each Connection remember its last-picked profile across app restart. ConnectionViewModel.selectProfile writes through. Connection switch clears _selectedProfile first (so a stale A pick never dangles on B) then loads B's persisted name and resolves it against agentProfiles once the post-switch auth.ok repopulates the list. removeConnection calls store.clear(connectionId) after the switch-away to avoid racing the unmounted store.

Key architectural decisions.

1. Name-based persistence, not Profile-object persistence. The persisted value is the profile name: String, resolved at read time against the server's fresh agentProfiles list. Profiles can be renamed, removed, or re-modelled on the server between app launches; persisting a full Profile snapshot risks silently using a stale model override. Resolution-at-read yields null when the name no longer exists, and the UI falls through to the Default row.
2. Dedicated DataStore. profile_selections is separate from relay_settings so clearing or migrating one doesn't threaten the other. A new per-connection key prefix (selected_profile_<id>) lets us clear-per-connection cleanly on removal.
3. Gateway-off profiles remain selectable. Spec explicitly allows the user to pick a profile whose gateway probe is grey. Rationale: the probe is best-effort, can miss a recent restart, and hard-disabling a row based on a stale probe would confuse users who just ran hermes profile use and haven't restarted the relay.

Deferred.

• Migration of any old "ephemeral" pick into the new store. N/A — the prior behaviour was to always reset on restart, so there's nothing to migrate from. First boot on v0.7.0 starts clean; next selectProfile call writes through.
• UI for inspecting the gateway-running timestamp. Useful for debugging stale probes but noise for the common path. Track in a future dashboard pass if it's actually asked about.

Upstream dependency. The three new profile fields are optional on the wire and fall back to defaults, so this PR is safe to land ahead of the Python-worker relay change. Pairing against a pre-v0.7 relay continues to work — the phone just renders every dot grey and hides every badge.

2026-04-18 — v0.6.0: Multi-Connection + Agent Profiles

Branch: feature/multi-profile-connections. Landing as v0.6.0. Two orthogonal pieces of work that compose into a three-layer agent model (Connection → Profile → Personality), plus a top-bar + Settings UX consolidation.

Shipped.

• Multi-Connection (docs/decisions.md §19). Renamed the original internal "profile" concept to Connection — a paired Hermes server. ConnectionStore persists N connections in DataStore with the active one, migration seeds connection 0 from the existing hermes_companion_auth_hw store (zero re-pair, transparent to the user), SessionTokenStore takes a prefsName parameter so each Connection gets its own EncryptedSharedPreferences file, AuthManager gains a connectionId ctor. Switch is a heavy context swap: cancel in-flight SSE, disconnect relay WSS, rebind provider StateFlows (RelayHttpClient / RelayVoiceClient re-read lazily), rebuild HermesApiClient, reconnect, reprobe capabilities, reload sessions + personalities + profiles, restore per-Connection last-active session. Top-bar Connection chip + ConnectionSwitcherSheet for switching; Settings → Connections for CRUD (rename, re-pair via ConnectionWizard, revoke, remove). Per-connection scope: sessions, memory, personalities, skills, profiles, relay cert pin, voice endpoints, last-active session. Global scope: theme, bridge safety prefs, TOFU cert-pin map, notification companion state.
• Agent Profiles (docs/decisions.md §21). Directory-scan + overlay. Relay walks ~/.hermes/profiles/*/, reads each profile's config.yaml + SOUL.md, and advertises the list in auth.ok as {name, model, description, system_message} (plus a synthetic "default" entry for the root config). Phone sends model override + system_message from SOUL.md on chat turns when a profile is selected. Gated by RELAY_PROFILE_DISCOVERY_ENABLED=1 (default on). Shipped as overlay-not-isolation: memory, sessions, .env, skills, and cron jobs still ride the Connection's default gateway. For full isolation, run the profile's own gateway on its own port and pair as a separate Connection.
• Consolidated agent sheet. Deleted standalone ProfilePicker.kt and PersonalityPicker.kt top-bar chips in favor of a single bottom sheet opened from the top-bar agent name. Sheet holds Profile list, Personality list, and session info + analytics (message count, tokens in/out, avg TTFT). Scrollable. Toast confirmations on switch. Reclaims top-bar real estate and reduces the visual layer count (one tap instead of two chips).
• Settings "Active agent" card — top-of-Settings summary of the current Connection / Profile / Personality with a openAgentSheet nav arg that navigates to Chat and auto-opens the sheet. Closes the "how do I change my agent" discoverability gap for Settings-originating users.
• Polish pass (7031115). Pair wizard URL-scheme cross-validation (inline hint when API field has wss://); pair-stamp of the active Connection's metadata on successful auth (no stale state after re-pair); ConnectionStatusBadge top-aligns on multi-line rows; Settings treats paired + briefly-disconnected Connection as Connecting (amber) rather than Disconnected (red).

Key architectural decisions.

1. Directory-scan for profiles. First pass parsed a fictional top-level profiles: / agents: list in config.yaml. Upstream has never used that shape — profiles upstream are isolated directory instances at ~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/, each with its own config, .env, SOUL.md, memory, sessions, and (optionally) its own gateway daemon. Old path always returned empty on real installs. Rewrite: walk ~/.hermes/profiles/*/, read config + SOUL, report what's really there. See the "Earlier (abandoned) design" paragraph in docs/decisions.md §21 and commits 0303a4f / b9d2914 / ec7559c.
2. Overlay-not-isolation for v1. A profile overrides model + system_message; everything else (memory, sessions, skills, API keys) rides the Connection's gateway. Rationale: a real per-profile isolation layer is "run the profile's gateway as its own service and pair it as a separate Connection" — we already have the plumbing for that via Multi-Connection. Building a second isolation layer inside one gateway would double the attack surface for no UX win.
3. Three-layer model = Connection → Profile → Personality. Connection picks the server. Profile picks the agent directory on that server. Personality picks a system-prompt preset within the agent's config. Hierarchy flows top to bottom; picking a Connection resets Profile (Profile is ephemeral and server-scoped). docs/decisions.md §8 now carries a terminology-note block making this explicit, since the §8 title still says "Profiles" in the legacy sense.
4. Kept scope intentionally small for v0.6.0. No per-Connection Profile persistence, no gateway-running probe, no mode where one Connection hosts multiple profile-gateways behind one pairing. Those are §21 follow-ups (see Deferred).

Deferred to v0.7+.

• True per-profile isolation via separate Connections. Doc how hermes -p <name> platform start api --port 8643 + pair-as-new-Connection achieves this today, in user-docs.
• Persisted profile selection per Connection. Currently resets on app restart and Connection switch. ~30-line extension: add lastSelectedProfileName to the Connection data class and restore on switch.
• Gateway-running probe (hermes-desktop-inspired). Would let the Connection health indicator distinguish "server unreachable" from "paired, awake, responding" without waiting for a first request to fail. Low-priority; the existing probe behavior is adequate for v0.6.0.

Docs pass.

• CHANGELOG.md — new [0.6.0] section above the existing (v0.5.x-work-in-progress) entries.
• docs/spec.md — Chat top-bar section rewritten around the three-chip reality; auth.ok profiles[] field documented.
• docs/decisions.md — §8 gained a terminology-note block pointing forward to §19 and §21.
• user-docs/features/connections.md, profiles.md, personalities.md — top-bar chip references updated to the agent sheet. index.md feature grid picked up Connections + Profiles rows.
• user-docs/guide/chat.md — Personalities section expanded into "Agent Sheet — Profile + Personality" + Connection Chip subsection. getting-started.md gained a "Multiple Hermes servers" tip pointing at features/connections.md.
• user-docs/architecture/decisions.md — new ADR-14 (Multi-Connection) + ADR-15 (Agent Profile picker) mirroring docs/decisions.md.
• README.md — new "What's new in v0.6.0" block above the feature list; added a feature bullet for multi-Connection + profiles.

2026-04-18 — Dashboard pairing: /pairing/mint schema rework + grants render fix

Context. Observed: a silent pairing failure scanning QRs minted by the dashboard's "Pair new device" flow. Logcat showed the app attempting pairing with serverUrl=http://192.168.1.100:8767 (relay's port, not API's) and an empty relay block (relayUrl= and code= both blank), causing applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset to bail with "empty code, returning early — authState NOT reset" and the WSS never handshook.

Root cause. handle_pairing_mint in plugin/relay/server.py was written as if the QR was relay-only: it defaulted top-level host/port/tls to server.config.host/port (which is the RELAY's bind — 0.0.0.0:8767), put the freshly-minted pairing code in top-level key, and emitted only session metadata inside the relay block (ttl_seconds, grants, transport_hint — no url, no code). But the wire format documented at docs/spec.md §3.3.1 and implemented by QrPairingScanner.kt expects top-level = API server (port 8642 default) with relay.{url,code} nested. The CLI path (pair.py → build_payload at line 762) was correct; the endpoint was the outlier. The dashboard plugin's "editable pair URL" feature (commit d7e5fc8) inherited the broken semantics because its request body forwards host/port/tls verbatim to the endpoint.

Fix. handle_pairing_mint now mirrors the CLI shape exactly:

• Top-level host/port/tls default from RelayConfig.webapi_url (parsed via urllib.parse.urlparse; host resolved through pair._resolve_lan_ip so localhost / 0.0.0.0 become the machine's LAN IP, which is what the phone needs)
• Body overrides: host / port / tls / api_key
• relay_block["url"] derived from _relay_lan_base_url(server.config.host, server.config.port, tls=bool(server.config.ssl_cert)) — the relay knows its own WSS address
• relay_block["code"] carries the minted value (used to live at top-level key; key is now the optional API bearer)

Regression test at plugin/tests/test_pairing_mint_schema.py — 8 AioHTTP cases pinning the payload shape that QrPairingScanner.kt parses, including that the minted code lands in relay.code (not top-level key) and top-level port defaults to 8642 (not 8767). All pass. Test file uses unittest per CLAUDE.md — pytest tripped on conftest.py's responses import on the server venv.

Doc sync. docs/spec.md §3.3.1 already documented the correct wire format — this fix brought the server code back into line. Bumped the Updated stamp from 2026-04-13 to 2026-04-18 and added a line under Implementation references pointing at handle_pairing_mint + the new regression test. CLAUDE.md Key Files rows for plugin/relay/server.py + plugin/dashboard/plugin_api.py updated to reflect the API-server-at-top-level semantics.

Deployment hazard discovered along the way. The server had two parallel checkouts: ~/hermes-relay/ (a dev clone, looked authoritative because SYSTEM.md lists ~/ as the project root) and ~/.hermes/hermes-relay/ (the actual symlinked install per CLAUDE.md). Running git pull in the wrong one updated nothing visible — restart-and-check reported stale version. Verified via systemctl --user cat hermes-relay | grep WorkingDirectory that the installed path is the .hermes/ copy; then pulled + restarted on that one. Also noticed the installed repo was on a long-dead feature/dashboard-plugin branch with 10 local WIP commits (bisect diagnostics from the dashboard build-up). Switched to main (fast-forward clean, 45 commits) after confirming the local feature branch's meaningful work was already on origin/main through the merged PR. The dead branch stays in local refs for history; origin has no matching ref.

Bonus fix in the same branch. Dashboard's Relay Management tab was crashing with minified React error #31 (object with keys {chat, terminal, bridge}) when rendering the paired-sessions list. RelayManagement.jsx:172 wrapped a dict-shaped s.grants in a 1-element array then rendered each entry as a React child — Badge doesn't accept objects. Fix: Object.keys(s.grants) when the value is dict-shaped so Badge children are always channel-name strings. Rebuilt plugin/dashboard/dist/index.js via npm run build (the dashboard loads the pre-built IIFE verbatim, source edits without a rebuild are invisible).

Branch + PR. fix/pairing-mint-schema — two commits (4f0affa, ca50524), pushed, deployed to ~/.hermes/hermes-relay/, restarted, verified live curl /pairing/mint round-trip produces the correct shape. PR open at the origin-suggested URL — merge to land in v0.6.0.

Principle. The original endpoint divergence would have been caught immediately by a schema round-trip test between the server's minted payload and the Android parser's data class. Added that test now as guardrail, not post-mortem — the two implementations will drift again eventually, this time CI yells instead of a silent field-mapping failure.

2026-04-18 — v0.5.1 release prep: lint iterations + VoicePlayerTest deferred

PR #31 (feature/voice-quality-pass → main, v0.5.1 candidate) — CI iteration, no app-behavior changes beyond the preceding v0.5.1 feature commits.

Lint round. PR CI first failed on three latent Android lint errors, fixed one-at-a-time because Android lint prints only the first failure before aborting:

1. UnsafeOptInUsageError at VoicePlayer.kt:88 — Media3 ExoPlayer.audioSessionId is @UnstableApi. Fix: class-level @OptIn(UnstableApi::class). First attempt used Kotlin's @OptIn (implicit import) which Android lint's UnsafeOptInUsageError rule does not recognize; had to explicitly import androidx.annotation.OptIn to get the AndroidX variant. This distinction is non-obvious from the error text.
2. Second lint pass then surfaced FlowOperatorInvokedInComposition at RelayApp.kt:421 and :424 — pre-existing on main, masked behind the first-failure abort. Fix: wrap .map { } chains in remember(repo) { repo.settings.map { ... } } so the Flow is stable across recompositions.
3. The rule to run ./gradlew lint locally before pushing — instead of burning CI iterations — was codified in CLAUDE.md step 4 of "Typical Dev Loop" plus a cross-session feedback memory. Both changes land in PR #31.

Test round — VoicePlayerTest deferred. The voice-quality-pass branch added VoicePlayerTest.kt with mockkConstructor(ExoPlayer.Builder::class) + mockk<ExoPlayer>(). Both trip MockK's Objenesis instantiator into loading Media3's ExoPlayer class, whose static init chain references android.os.Looper — unavailable in JVM unit tests. CI hung for 7+ minutes before being cancelled.

Tried three fixes:

1. Factory seam on VoicePlayer — added exoPlayerFactory: (Context) -> ExoPlayer = ::defaultExoPlayer constructor param so tests inject a mock directly instead of instrumenting Builder. Production behavior identical; listener attach moved from .also { player -> } to init { } so it binds to the stored exoPlayer field. This is kept — clean code win regardless of test outcome.

2. Robolectric 4.14.1 dependency + @RunWith(RobolectricTestRunner::class) + @Config(sdk = [34]) — gives the test JVM shadow Android framework classes. Standalone ./gradlew test --tests VoicePlayerTest passed in 2m53s, but the full unit test suite hung indefinitely. Reverted — see below.

3. forkEvery = 1 on the unit test task to isolate Robolectric's classloader per test class — hypothesis was that Robolectric's shadow framework was bleeding into sibling test JVMs and deadlocking them on coroutine/async code. Full suite hung anyway. Reverted.

Decision. @Ignore VoicePlayerTest for v0.5.1 with strong tracking — kdoc TODO + this DEVLOG entry + deferred_items.md + a GitHub issue linking to commit 456f91e which is the last state where Robolectric was wired. Follow-up PR will likely move VoicePlayer tests into a separate source set (src/robolectricTest/kotlin/) with its own Gradle Test task so it doesn't contaminate the main suite's JVM. Kept the VoicePlayer factory seam refactor (pure win). Reverted Robolectric dep + testOptions config to keep main lean for v0.5.1; the follow-up PR adds them back with the source-set split.

Principle. Any ignored or deferred test must be documented in TODO so it isn't forgotten. Honored via four tracking surfaces (code, DEVLOG, memory, GitHub issue). The alternative — blocking v0.5.1 on test-infra iteration — isn't a better outcome because the app works on device and the tests for it were written on a bad premise (trying to unit-test Media3 without Android framework on the classpath).

Next session. Open the follow-up PR to finish the Robolectric wiring: separate source set, dedicated Gradle task, CI step calling the new task. Then un-@Ignore VoicePlayerTest.

2026-04-18 — Silence auto-stop + bootstrap middleware fix

Context. A review of STT / silence detection in the voice stack post-barge-in found the uplink mic path has no endpointing at all — VoiceRecorder uses MediaRecorder with AudioSource.MIC (no AEC/NS, no VAD), and stopListening() has exactly one caller: ChatScreen.kt:1319 on mic release. The VoicePreferences.silenceThresholdMs preference was wired to a Settings slider and persisted to DataStore but never consumed by any code. Cosmetic setting. Worst case was Continuous mode: after TTS finishes, it re-arms the mic and waits forever for a manual stop — ambient noise gets included, user walks away, recording goes on indefinitely.

Decision. Wire the existing preference. Cheapest of the four options considered (wire silenceThresholdMs → AudioSource.VOICE_RECOGNITION → second Silero on uplink → server-side VAD via gpt-4o-transcribe). The other three stay on the shelf; this one is self-contained in the ViewModel.

Implementation.

• Promoted voicePreferences to a VM field (previously captured only inside initialize's closure).
• Added silenceWatchdogJob + startSilenceWatchdog() — snapshots silenceThresholdMs at turn start, polls VoiceRecorder.amplitude every 150 ms, reuses RESUME_SILENCE_THRESHOLD = 0.08f as the silence floor (same floor the post-barge-in resume watchdog already uses — one tuning knob, not two). Grace window: auto-stop only fires after at least one above-floor frame, so "user taps mic, doesn't speak" never insta-closes the turn.
• Skip in HoldToTalk — the physical release is the authoritative stop there, auto-stop on silence while the user is still holding would be surprising behavior.
• Cancelled in stopListening(), interruptSpeaking(), and onCleared().

No UI change needed — the Settings slider and "Auto-stop listening after this much silence" copy already exist. The slider is now load-bearing instead of cosmetic.

Bootstrap crash (separate fix, same day). Teammate debugging a different project hit 'tuple' object has no attribute 'freeze' on gateway startup. Root cause in hermes_relay_bootstrap/_command_middleware.py: maybe_install_middleware() was doing app._middlewares = (*existing, middleware) — replacing the aiohttp FrozenList with a plain tuple. When AppRunner.setup() later called _middlewares.freeze(), tuples don't have that method and the gateway crashed. Switched to in-place app._middlewares.append(middleware) — the FrozenList is still mutable at middleware-install time (freeze happens later in setup). Also updated the test mock to use [] instead of () so it matches real aiohttp behavior. 31/31 tests pass.

Deferred (from the silence-detection discussion).

• Uplink AudioSource.VOICE_RECOGNITION — engages Android's built-in NS/AEC tuned for STT. Single-line change, needs a release to validate on the Samsung.
• Second Silero on the uplink path — real VAD-based endpointing instead of raw-amplitude. Barge-in infra is already there to copy.
• gpt-4o-transcribe / OpenAI Realtime — server-side endpointing + lower latency, but bigger pivot. Park until we hit real limits with the amplitude approach.
• "Off" option on the silence slider — the current slider range is 1000–10000 ms with no way to disable. Future UI change if a user wants fully manual control (e.g., pause-to-think flows). Treating thresholdMs <= 0 as "off" is already supported in the watchdog for when that UI lands.

Next session. Rebuild and smoke-test Continuous + TapToTalk at the default 3s threshold. Validation: (1) natural pauses mid-utterance don't prematurely auto-stop at 1s/2s thresholds — if they do, tune the floor up or add a longer default; (2) the watchdog never fires when the user is manually holding for HoldToTalk; (3) ambient noise in a moderately-noisy room (TV, fan) doesn't prevent auto-stop because amp never drops below 0.08. If (3) bites, that's when AudioSource.VOICE_RECOGNITION becomes non-optional.

2026-04-17 — Voice barge-in (agent-team single-session, stacked on voice-quality-pass)

Motivation. After the voice-quality-pass work (see entry below), conversation mode still lagged ChatGPT / Claude app in a specific way: you can't interrupt the agent by speaking. You have to wait for the full response, or tap the mic to force a new turn — neither of which matches the "normal turn-taking" pattern users expect from modern voice UIs. The industry-standard recipe is duplex audio + VAD + AEC + hysteresis + optional resume-from-sentence-boundary. All five pieces implementable on Android if you accept that AEC quality varies across OEMs (the trap that kills most naive attempts).

Design session. A "quick win" barge-in implementation was requested, but the real engineering is the false-positive defense stack — the VAD is the easy part, fighting AEC variance across Samsung / Pixel / Motorola devices is the hard part. Landed on a three-layer defense: (1) AcousticEchoCanceler attached to the ExoPlayer audio session, (2) VAD hysteresis requiring 2–3 consecutive speech frames (on top of the Silero library's own attack/release windows), (3) soft ducking on single-frame positives before hard cutoff, so a stray frame only briefly dips the volume. Plus a compatibility-warning UI strip for devices without AEC so users know why quality varies.

The feature was also designed to match the existing voice-settings pattern — always-visible toggle with a sensitivity picker and a resume sub-toggle, not a hidden flag. This keeps the control surface discoverable and lets the setting be tuned per user preference rather than requiring a global "works for everyone" default that doesn't exist on Android's mic landscape.

Plan written to docs/plans/2026-04-17-voice-barge-in.md, 6 work units (B1 prefs, B2 VAD, B3 duplex listener, B4 integration, B5 UI, B6 ducking helpers) + Doc2. Branched from feature/voice-quality-pass rather than origin/main because barge-in architecturally depends on V4's supervisor-scoped cancellation + pendingTtsFiles cleanup, V5's VoicePlayer.audioSessionId exposure (needed for AcousticEchoCanceler.create()), and V3's sentence-chunk tracking (needed for resume-from-next-sentence). Merges after voice-quality-pass lands; stacked PRs.

Execution. Worktree at ../hermes-android-barge-in from feature/voice-quality-pass. Branch feature/voice-barge-in. Seven commits on top of the plan:

• Wave 1 (parallel, disjoint files). B1 c4fadf3 BargeInPreferences DataStore + B2 3d011d9 Silero VAD engine + B6 de925c8 VoicePlayer ducking helpers. Three subagents, clean touch surface. B2 agent discovered the library's actual frame-size constraint at 16 kHz is {512, 1024, 1536} (plan said 640 — that was wrong, from an older library version), pinned 2.0.10 not 2.0.8 (latest stable), added jitpack repo to settings.gradle.kts since android-vad isn't on Maven Central, and noted the library exposes threshold via a Mode enum (OFF / NORMAL / AGGRESSIVE / VERY_AGGRESSIVE) not a float — so our user-facing Off/Low/Default/High picker has to invert ("aggressive" means less sensitive in the library). Parallel agents also hit a staging race where one agent's git commit initially swept another's files; recovered via git reset + explicit pathspec. Noted for future parallel-worktree playbooks — always commit with explicit pathspecs when multiple agents share a tree.
• Wave 2 (parallel, disjoint files). B3 48259e1 duplex listener + B5 c65f1fe Voice Settings UI. B3 agent introduced an AudioFrameSource interface seam so tests can inject a scripted frame queue without Robolectric — AudioRecord is a final class with native state, impossible to mock cleanly without the seam. Also added a readerDispatcher param so runTest virtual time controls the reader loop deterministically. B5 agent found no existing VoiceSettingsViewModel and created one following the BridgeViewModel pattern; chose SingleChoiceSegmentedButtonRow for the 4-option sensitivity picker (matching the ChatSettingsScreen precedent, not a dropdown). Section heading "Barge-in" chosen over "Interruption" because every other Voice Settings section is feature-named ("Text-to-Speech", "Speech-to-Text"). AEC compatibility badge renders always (not gated on toggle enabled) so users see the device capability before they flip it.
• Wave 3 (serial, VoiceViewModel integration). B4 3e39663. Threaded currentChunkIndex through V4's play worker without touching V4's supervisor topology — added MutableStateFlow<Int> on the VM and wired it via V4's existing onFileReady callback lambda, so the top-level runTtsPlayWorker contract stays unchanged. Chunk tracking is layered in VM-owned lambdas, not the workers. For the "user still speaking" cancel signal on the resume watchdog, the agent used VoiceRecorder.amplitude (perceptually-scaled StateFlow, already exposed) rather than re-subscribing a fresh AudioRecord — simpler and cheaper, since the recorder is already hot from the barge-in pre-warm. Added three @VisibleForTesting internal test seams (startBargeInListenerForTest, seedSpeakingStateForTest, drainTtsQueueForTest) so the coordinator's 7-case test matrix runs without pushing real MP3s through the V4 pipeline. Found one additional race: a synthesize call in flight when interrupt fires can complete after the cancel signal and add a file to pendingTtsFiles that the immediate cleanup misses — closed via the supervisor's finally block (same pattern V4 established).
• Wave 4. Doc2 (this entry) — DEVLOG, CHANGELOG [Unreleased] gains an Added section above the voice-quality-pass Changed section, docs/spec.md Phase V gets barge-in bullets, user-docs/features/voice.md gains a "Barge-in (interrupt the agent)" section and updates the Tap-mode description (the existing "tap to interrupt" is now one of three ways to interrupt).

Results — expected and TBD. Net change on top of voice-quality-pass: ~3,000 insertions / 5 deletions across 16 files. New tests: VAD engine (scripted frame sequences), duplex listener (via AudioFrameSource seam), ducking helpers, preferences round-trip, and the 7-case VoiceViewModel coordinator suite. On-device smoke test still pending — key things to validate: (1) toggling barge-in on + speaking during TTS cuts playback within ~100 ms on headphones, (2) 600 ms of silence after interrupt resumes from next sentence if resume is enabled, (3) devices without AEC show the compatibility warning badge and (presumably) trigger more false positives in practice. Plan to leave barge-in default-off through first release; telemetry or field use will inform whether the default changes.

Deferred. Same Up1 from voice-quality-pass — upstream PR exposing VoiceSettings in hermes-agent/tools/tts_tool.py::_generate_elevenlabs. Not blocked by barge-in. Also deferred: live sensitivity reactivity mid-Speaking (the coordinator rebuilds VAD on next listener start rather than re-applying sensitivity on an already-running listener — simpler, and users flipping sensitivity during a turn is a niche workflow).

Open questions for next session.

1. Does the ducking feedback feel natural on-device, or should we skip the maybeSpeech stage entirely and just hard-cut on hysteresis pass? The 30 % ducking level is a guess.
2. Should the resume watchdog be shorter than 600 ms? A breath is more like 300–400 ms; 600 ms might feel sluggish. Tune after the smoke test.
3. Telemetry for AEC-unavailable devices — if a non-trivial portion of users see the badge, is the UX degraded enough that we should gate-off barge-in entirely on those devices, rather than just warning?
4. Integration with voice-intent direct-dispatch (from 2026-04-15): if the user barges in with "cancel" during a destructive-action countdown, does that route through the existing cancel handler or the new barge-in path? Probably needs a small coordination test.

Next session. On-device smoke test. If quality holds: rebase onto main after voice-quality-pass merges, open stacked PR feature/voice-barge-in → main. If quality is poor on the device: tune RESUME_SILENCE_THRESHOLD, hysteresis consecutive-frame counts, or default-off sensitivity preset.

---

2026-04-17 — Voice quality pass (agent-team single-session)

Motivation. Ongoing voice-mode testing with an ElevenLabs-configured Hermes backend surfaced a cluster of quality issues that individually read like different bugs but shared compounding root causes: voice output noticeably switching between crisp and muffled, volume drifting between sentences, audible pauses mid-response, and the occasional jumbled-letter spell-out when the agent emitted markdown, URLs, or tool-annotation tokens. ChatGPT- and Claude-app-class voice experiences don't exhibit this — diagnosis focused on what they do differently.

Diagnosis chain (2026-04-16). Traced the voice pipeline end-to-end across the Windows checkout, the relay's plugin/relay/voice.py, and the upstream ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/tools/tts_tool.py on hermes-host. Five compounding layers:

1. Server config used eleven_multilingual_v2 — ElevenLabs' expressive long-form model, which re-interprets prosody per call. Wrong model for a chunked per-sentence pipeline; every sentence is a fresh TTS context with independent encoder gain and EQ. Accounts for the bulk of the "clear↔muffled" perception.
2. Upstream _generate_elevenlabs() (tts_tool.py:222) passes no VoiceSettings — all defaults, including stability that's fine for long-form but too low for chunked output. use_speaker_boost (auto-normalizing) is off. Accounts for inter-chunk volume drift.
3. Upstream has _strip_markdown_for_tts() (tts_tool.py:1053) but it's only called from the CLI stream_tts_to_speaker() path. text_to_speech_tool(), which our relay calls, does NOT run the stripper. Our relay's /voice/synthesize passes raw assistant text to ElevenLabs — tool-annotation tokens like `💻 terminal` and URLs like https://github.com/foo/bar get spoken character-by-character. Accounts for jumbled letters.
4. VoicePlayer.play(file) on Android tore down and rebuilt a MediaPlayer per sentence — codec context reset, audio-track re-init, audible seam/pop. Accounts for playback-layer portion of the muffled switching.
5. VoiceViewModel.startTtsConsumer was strictly serial: synthesize → play → awaitCompletion → next synthesize. Every sentence boundary cost one full network round-trip. Accounts for the inter-sentence pause.

Plan written to docs/plans/2026-04-16-voice-quality-pass.md covering 8 work units across 5 waves, scoped to a single feature branch in a worktree.

Execution (2026-04-17). Worktree at ../hermes-android-voice from origin/main. Single branch feature/voice-quality-pass. Six commits on top of the plan:

• Wave 0 (operator, pre-session). Cfg1 — ~/.hermes/config.yaml on hermes-host flipped from eleven_multilingual_v2 → eleven_flash_v2_5; hermes-gateway.service restarted. Voice ID unchanged.
• Wave 1 (parallel, disjoint files). V1 3618bcd relay TTS sanitizer + V5 b24a37e ExoPlayer gapless playback. Two subagents, completely disjoint touch surface (plugin/relay/* vs app/src/.../audio/VoicePlayer.kt). No conflicts. V5 agent flagged that the plan's ConcatenatingMediaSource is deprecated in Media3 1.x and used addMediaItem on a single persistent ExoPlayer instead — same effect, current API.
• Wave 2. V2 a13dc3b — client-side sanitizeForTts mirroring V1's regex set, applied per delta before sentenceBuffer append, with multi-delta code-fence deferral (a pendingRawDelta: StringBuilder that buffers until opening/closing fence counts balance). V2 agent caught a real subtle bug: the plan's Python [emoji1 emoji2 ...] character class translates badly to java.util.regex, which operates on UTF-16 code units — non-BMP emojis would match individual surrogate halves and leave orphan low-surrogates in the output. Switched to (?:A|B|C|...) alternation groups. Kotlin testability pattern used top-level internal functions (matching existing extractNextSentence) rather than @VisibleForTesting class members.
• Wave 3. V3 f916b22 — MIN_COALESCE_LEN=40 + MAX_BUFFER_LEN=400 secondary-break escape + 800 ms idle-delta timer. Spiked ICU4J BreakIterator.getSentenceInstance() per the plan's suggestion but rejected it: its locale-sensitive abbreviation handling is unpredictable on partial buffers left by V2's sanitizer, and it can't be parameterized with the streamComplete/coalescing semantics without reinventing the loop on top of it. Extended hand-rolled regex is deterministic and cheap. Secondary-break pattern requires comma-followed-by-whitespace so "3,000" survives. Added @Volatile streamComplete: Boolean on VoiceViewModel, set by startStreamObserver when the assistant stream flips isStreaming=false, reset in turn-start / exitVoiceMode / interruptSpeaking. The idle-flush timer passes streamComplete=true to extractNextSentence for that call only — does NOT mutate the class flag, because the SSE stream may still be live and the next delta should return to conservative coalescing.
• Wave 4. V4 8fcec6b — startTtsConsumer split into two supervisorScope-rooted coroutines joined by Channel<File>(capacity=2). Synth worker runs one file ahead. V4 agent chose Option B (explicit Channel) over the plan's recommended Option A (rely on ExoPlayer's internal queue for backpressure) because VoicePlayer.mediaItemCount isn't public and V4 was guardrailed out of touching V5's work. Play worker still calls awaitCompletion() per file (V5's queue-drained semantic), so ExoPlayer's internal queue never exceeds 1 — a single queuing layer, not redundant. Found and guarded a real race: ttsConsumerJob?.cancel() is non-blocking, so a synthesize call in flight can complete AFTER cancel was signalled and add a file to pendingTtsFiles that interruptSpeaking's immediate cleanup would miss. The supervisor's finally { deletePendingSynthFiles() } catches late arrivals. Consumer is now cancellable+restartable — interrupt/exit cancel the job, clean up files, and immediately call startTtsConsumer() for the next turn.
• Wave 5. Doc1 (this entry) — DEVLOG, CHANGELOG [Unreleased], spec Phase V section updated to reflect the new architecture.

Deferred. Up1 — upstream PR exposing VoiceSettings (stability / similarity_boost / use_speaker_boost) in hermes-agent/tools/tts_tool.py::_generate_elevenlabs. Useful once merged but not blocking; the flash model already reduces inter-chunk variance enough that the missing settings don't dominate the remaining gap.

Results — expected and TBD. Net change: +2,998 / -197 lines across 15 files. New tests: 33 relay sanitizer unit tests (all green) + 4 new client test files (sanitization parity, chunking semantics, prefetch pipelining timing + cancellation cleanup, ExoPlayer queue behavior — verified by reading, not by gradle test per project convention). On-device smoke test (3-sentence response, 1 code-block response, 1 multi-paragraph response) still pending; subjective before/after to be captured in the PR description.

Rebase note (2026-04-17). This branch was rebased onto main at v0.5.0 (from earlier base b811da1). Conflicts resolved: a single-import collision in VoiceViewModel.kt (kept both supervisorScope + contentOrNull), DEVLOG + CHANGELOG prepends (combined both days' entries in reverse chronological order, this entry placed above the v0.4.1 bridge polish entry since VQP is the newer work on 2026-04-17), and a docs/spec.md auto-merge. No code logic changed during rebase.

2026-04-18 — Dashboard plugin

Context. The upstream Dashboard Plugin System landed on hermes-agent's axiom branch in three commits (01214a7f plugin system, 3f6c4346 theme, 247929b0 OAuth providers). The gateway now scans ~/.hermes/plugins/<name>/dashboard/manifest.json at startup and exposes registered plugins as tabs in its web UI. Since ~/.hermes/plugins/hermes-relay already points at our plugin/ subtree (from install.sh), we can ship a relay-specific dashboard plugin by only adding a plugin/dashboard/ subtree plus a few relay HTTP routes — no hermes-agent fork needed. The four deferred-audit items that only the relay knows about — paired-device state, bridge command history, push delivery (future), media-registry tokens — map cleanly onto four tabs of a single plugin.

Decision summary.

1. Single plugin with internal shadcn Tabs, not four plugins. Manifest allows one tab.path per plugin; four plugins would fragment the nav. Recorded as ADR 19 in docs/decisions.md.
2. Pre-built IIFE bundle committed to git. Upstream's example plugin uses plain React.createElement (no build), but four non-trivial tabs are painful to maintain that way. Source lives under plugin/dashboard/src/, bundled with esbuild to a single ~16 KB IIFE at plugin/dashboard/dist/index.js. Dashboard never runs the build — operators get a ready-to-serve bundle.
3. Loopback-only for the new relay routes. /bridge/activity, /media/inspect, /relay/info are gated the same way /bridge/status and /pairing/register already are. The plugin backend runs inside the gateway process (also localhost) and calls the relay at http://127.0.0.1:8767/... — no bearer minting. Also added a loopback-exempt branch on /sessions so the plugin proxy can list paired devices without one.
4. Dashboard backend is a thin proxy. plugin/dashboard/plugin_api.py exposes five routes at /api/plugins/hermes-relay/* and forwards to the relay. No business logic in the plugin — relay stays source of truth.
5. Push Console is a real tab, stub data. Keeps the four-tab nav layout correct for when FCM lands; swapping in real data is additive.

Implementation (Wave-by-wave).

• Wave 1 (relay state plumbing). 2212fbc — feat(relay): add MediaRegistry.list_all for dashboard inspector added the lock-guarded snapshot method that strips absolute paths, returns basename-only file_name fields, and filters expired entries by default (+8 unit tests). 777a06a — feat(relay): add bridge command ring buffer for dashboard activity feed added the BridgeCommandRecord dataclass + deque(maxlen=100) on BridgeHandler, wired append/update into handle_command() / handle_response(), and taught get_recent() to redact params keyed on {password, token, secret, otp, bearer} (+9 unit tests covering append, update, timeout path, redaction, ring-buffer eviction).
• Wave 2 (relay HTTP routes). 4370806 — feat(relay): add /bridge/activity /media/inspect /relay/info for dashboard added the three loopback-gated handlers in plugin/relay/server.py adjacent to /bridge/status (factored through a _require_loopback() helper), plus the tiny handle_sessions_list loopback-exempt branch so the dashboard proxy can list paired devices without a bearer. Route tests extend test_bridge_activity.py + test_media_inspect.py and a new test_relay_info.py covers the aggregate status shape.
• Wave 3 (dashboard plugin body). b51940c — feat(dashboard): add plugin_api.py proxy to relay HTTP added the FastAPI router with five routes (/overview, /sessions, /bridge-activity, /media, /push), a shared _proxy_get() helper, and structured 502 translation on relay connect-error / timeout / 5xx so the UI can show "relay unreachable" (+10 unit tests in plugin/dashboard/test_plugin_api.py). 087149e — feat(dashboard): add React UI for four relay tabs added the plugin/dashboard/{src,dist}/ subtree — JSX sources under src/ (index + four tab components + lib/api.js + lib/formatters.js), esbuild toolchain (package.json + build.sh), and the committed ~16 KB IIFE bundle at dist/index.js that registers as window.__HERMES_PLUGINS__.register("hermes-relay", …) via the SDK global.
• Wave 4 (manifest wiring). 78c209e — feat(dashboard): add plugin manifest + plan file added plugin/dashboard/manifest.json — name: "hermes-relay", label: "Relay", icon: "Activity" (from the 20-name Lucide whitelist), tab.path: "/relay", tab.position: "after:skills", entry: "dist/index.js", api: "plugin_api.py". Verified the existing ~/.hermes/plugins/hermes-relay symlink resolves dashboard/manifest.json correctly.

Files touched (this session — Doc1 wave only).

• CHANGELOG.md — new [Unreleased] "Added — Dashboard plugin" bullet group
• DEVLOG.md — this entry
• README.md — one-line mention under Quick Start
• CLAUDE.md — plugin/dashboard/ added to Repository Layout; four Key Files rows under a new "Plugin — Dashboard" group
• docs/spec.md — "Dashboard plugin" subsection appended to §10 Hermes Integration Points
• docs/decisions.md — new ADR 19 "Dashboard plugin: single plugin with internal tabs + pre-built IIFE bundle"
• docs/relay-server.md — three new rows in the HTTP Routes table + loopback-branch note on /sessions
• user-docs/features/dashboard.md — new user-facing page
• user-docs/.vitepress/config.mts — sidebar nav entry for dashboard.md

Deferred.

• Push Console needs FCM. The tab renders a static "FCM not configured" banner from GET /api/plugins/hermes-relay/push. Swapping in real data is additive — only PushConsole.jsx + plugin_api.py::get_push change. Tracked under the deferred_items memory entry.
• Session revoke button is a placeholder. The Relay Management tab exposes "Revoke" buttons per paired device but they currently log to the console — the plugin proxy would need a new DELETE /api/plugins/hermes-relay/sessions/{prefix} route forwarded to the relay's existing DELETE /sessions/{token_prefix}. Blocked on deciding the auth story (loopback-only? dashboard session token?). Keeps the UI placement correct for when the proxy route lands.
• Session extend button not yet built; would follow the same proxy pattern against PATCH /sessions/{token_prefix}.

Next session. Restart hermes-gateway on the server, verify GET /api/dashboard/plugins includes hermes-relay, load the dashboard UI, and exercise all four tabs against a live paired phone. Screenshot the tabs so real images can replace the placeholder captions in user-docs/features/dashboard.md.

No blockers.

---

2026-04-17 — v0.4.1 Bridge page polish pass

Motivation. The Bridge tab had accreted cards without an information hierarchy — the master toggle, a separate status card, the permission checklist, unattended access, a standalone keyguard warning chip, and the safety summary all sat at the same visual weight, and tapping the master Switch when Accessibility wasn't granted was a silent no-op (stock Android disabled-switch behavior). Unattended Access lacked a master dependency, and once ON there was no in-app affordance while the user was on another tab. The LLM also had to learn reactively that commands wouldn't reach apps on a sleeping/locked device (via keyguard_blocked errors) instead of being told upfront.

What landed on feature/v0.4.1-integration:

• Bridge card hierarchy rewrite. New order: Master → Permission Checklist → [Advanced divider] → Unattended Access → Safety Summary → Activity Log. Master toggle copy now leads with "Master switch —" and carries a MASTER pill so its parent-gate role is legible at a glance. The old BridgeStatusCard was dropped from the layout (its status rows already live inside the master card); the component file stays in-tree for now.
• Master-toggle feedback fix. Tapping the Switch when HermesAccessibilityService isn't granted now surfaces a snackbar ("Accessibility Service must be enabled first.") with an "Open Settings" action that deep-links to ACTION_ACCESSIBILITY_SETTINGS, instead of the previous silent-drop disabled-switch behavior. The master-toggle info dialog also gained a paragraph attributing the "Hermes has device control" persistent notification to the master switch.
• Unattended Access gated on master. UnattendedAccessRow's Switch is enabled = masterEnabled and shows "Requires Agent Control — enable the master switch above first." when master is off. The standalone KeyguardDetectedChip was inlined as a KeyguardDetectedAlert Surface band inside the Unattended Access card so the credential-lock warning lives next to the thing that triggers it. Unattended scary-dialog copy no longer implies the unattended toggle owns the persistent notification — attributes it correctly to the master switch.
• UnattendedGlobalBanner — in-app banner vs. system chip split. New 28dp amber strip renders at the top of RelayApp's scaffold on every tab when master + unattended are both on (sideload only). Theme-aware amber (amber-on-dark vs. dark-amber-on-pale in light mode), pulsing dot, "Unattended access ON — agent can wake and drive this device" copy, chevron → navigates to the Bridge tab. The existing WindowManager BridgeStatusOverlayChip continues to handle the backgrounded-app case (foreground-gating of the chip is in flight on a sibling branch). Net: banner when the user is IN Hermes-Relay, system chip when the app is backgrounded.
• Agent-awareness upgrades to PhoneSnapshot. Three new fields: unattendedEnabled, credentialLockDetected, screenOn. PhoneStatusPromptBuilder.buildBridgeLine() appends explicit guidance so the LLM knows upfront whether commands will land while the user is away, instead of finding out reactively via keyguard_blocked responses.
• Bug fixes bundled in. Permission checklist Optional pill no longer wraps mid-pill on narrow titles (switched to FlowRow + softWrap=false); runtime-permission rows (Mic, Camera, Contacts, SMS, Phone, Location) now fall back to Settings.ACTION_APPLICATION_DETAILS_SETTINGS when a permission has been permanently denied, instead of silently no-opping.

Next. On-device verification of the reordered layout, master-snackbar, global banner, and PhoneSnapshot fields on the Samsung S24 / Android 14 sideload build. After that, version bump to v0.4.1 release tag via bash scripts/bump-version.sh 0.4.1 → push tag → CI.

No blockers.

---

2026-04-16 — v0.4.1: Tiered permission checklist + JIT permission-denied surfacing

Motivation. Two v0.4.x fast-follows from ROADMAP.md, scoped to ship together because they share the same UX axis ("the user understands which permission is missing and what to do about it"). Until now the Bridge tab's checklist was a flat 4-row layout that lumped optional and required perms together, and android_search_contacts / android_send_sms / android_call / android_location failures bubbled up as opaque error strings — the LLM had to pattern-match the phrasing to figure out it was a permission issue. Both surfaces now make the missing-permission state legible to humans AND to the agent.

What landed.

• Tiered checklist UI (BridgePermissionChecklist.kt rewrite). Four explicit sections — Core bridge (required), Notification companion (optional), Voice & camera (optional), Sideload features (optional, sideload-only). Each row uses a rememberLauncherForActivityResult(ActivityResultContracts.RequestPermission) for runtime dangerous perms and the existing intent helpers for special perms (Accessibility, Notification Listener, Overlay, Screen Capture). Optional rows render a "Optional" Material 3 pill so users don't perceive them as urgent. Section headers use a primary-coloured label + caption + thin divider. Hides sideload-only sections on googlePlay via the existing BuildFlavor.isSideload gate.
• BridgePermissionStatus extended with microphonePermitted, cameraPermitted, contactsPermitted, smsPermitted, phonePermitted, locationPermitted. refreshPermissionStatus() probes each via ContextCompat.checkSelfPermission. Re-runs on every Lifecycle.Event.ON_RESUME (existing pattern).
• Manifest verification. All required <uses-permission> declarations were already in place: RECORD_AUDIO + CAMERA in app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml, READ_CONTACTS + SEND_SMS + CALL_PHONE + ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION (+ ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION) in app/src/sideload/AndroidManifest.xml. No manifest changes needed for this PR.
• ResolveResult typed-union shipped in plugin/tools/resolve_result.py — Found(value) / NotFound(detail) / PermissionDenied(permission, reason) dataclasses with a from_bridge_response(response, *, found_value=None) constructor that classifies a bridge response as one of the three variants. Reads both canonical (code / permission, v0.4.1) and legacy (error_code / required_permission, pre-v0.4.1) wire-key spellings so the rollout is forwards/backwards compatible across mixed-version installs.
• Bridge response envelope extended in BridgeCommandHandler.kt::respondFromResult to emit the canonical code + permission aliases ALONGSIDE the existing error_code + required_permission fields. LocalDispatchResult parsing also accepts either spelling. The phone now produces {"ok": false, "error": "...", "code": "permission_denied", "permission": "android.permission.READ_CONTACTS", "error_code": "permission_denied", "required_permission": "android.permission.READ_CONTACTS"}.
• Tier C agent-tool wrappers upgrade permission errors to JIT structured responses. android_location / android_search_contacts / android_send_sms / android_call in plugin/tools/android_tool.py now run their bridge response through _maybe_jit_permission_response after the HTTP round-trip. On code: permission_denied the wrapper returns {"ok": false, "error": "User has not granted Contacts permission (android.permission.READ_CONTACTS). They can enable it in Settings > Apps > Hermes Relay > Permissions. Tool: android_search_contacts.", "code": "permission_denied", "permission": "..."} — deterministic LLM-readable copy with the exact Settings deep-link path embedded.
• Voice-mode JIT chip in VoiceModeOverlay.kt. New PermissionDeniedChip composable surfaces above the mic button when the most recent voice intent dispatch returned errorCode == "permission_denied". Tap deep-links to Settings.ACTION_APPLICATION_DETAILS_SETTINGS for BuildConfig.APPLICATION_ID (so both flavors land on their own package's permission page). VoiceUiState.permissionDeniedCallout: PermissionDeniedCallout? carries the chip state. buildPermissionDeniedCallout(label, result) reads the structured permission field off result.resultJson and builds a copy line ("I need Contacts to Search contacts here. Tap to open Settings."). Cleared on chip tap and on the next mic-tap (fresh turn).
• Voice TTS on permission_denied was already in place from the 2026-04-15 voice fixes session — speakDispatchResult already says "Permission needed. {hint}" in this branch. The chip is purely additive.
• 17 new Python tests in plugin/tests/test_resolve_result.py. Covers the ResolveResult classifier, both canonical/legacy/mixed wire-key spellings, success passthrough, non-permission error passthrough, and JIT upgrades for all four Tier C wrappers. All 17 pass; existing 39 Tier-C tests still pass with no regressions.

Branch. feature/tiered-permissions (forked from main, with feature/bridge-notifications-permission merged in first per the spec — that branch's POST_NOTIFICATIONS row sits inside the new Core-bridge tier without modification). Pushed to origin, PR-ready.

Files touched (summary).

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/BridgePermissionChecklist.kt (rewrite — tiered layout)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/BridgeViewModel.kt (status fields + probes)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/BridgeScreen.kt (6 new permission launchers, wired into checklist)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/handlers/BridgeCommandHandler.kt (canonical alias emission, dual-key parse)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/VoiceViewModel.kt (PermissionDeniedCallout state, buildPermissionDeniedCallout, clearPermissionDeniedCallout)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/VoiceModeOverlay.kt (PermissionDeniedChip composable + signature param)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt (chip-tap callback wiring deep-link to Settings)
• plugin/tools/resolve_result.py (NEW — typed-union dataclass hierarchy + classifier)
• plugin/tools/android_tool.py (_maybe_jit_permission_response helper + 4 wrappers updated)
• plugin/tests/test_resolve_result.py (NEW — 17 unit tests)
• ROADMAP.md, CHANGELOG.md, DEVLOG.md (this entry)

Notable decisions.

1. Did not introduce a server-side resolver layer. The prompt suggested Python resolvers like resolveContactPhone, but the actual contact resolution lives in Kotlin (ActionExecutor.searchContacts). Implementing the spec verbatim — Python ResolveResult types — still gave value as the agent-tool wrapper's classifier of bridge responses, which is the layer that needed the structured permission-denied surfacing for the LLM. The Kotlin ContactResolution sealed-class equivalent already exists from 2026-04-15.
2. Both wire-key spellings emitted by the phone (canonical + legacy). Forwards/backwards compatibility across the v0.4.x APK rollout window. Drop the legacy aliases after v0.5.0 once the 0.4.0 APKs are estimated to be off the field.
3. JIT chip uses errorContainer colour, not a notification-style banner. Voice mode is a focused single-purpose modality; banner-treatment would compete with the destructive-countdown row. Chip is explicit and tappable but doesn't block the voice flow.
4. Optional rows use a neutral status tint when not granted. Original layout used error-red for any not-granted row, which made optional perms feel urgent — the v0.4.1 layout treats neutral-grey + optional-pill as the "this is fine if you skip it" affordance.
5. Sideload-only rows hidden entirely on googlePlay rather than rendered as disabled. Showing a permission row for a manifest entry that doesn't exist would confuse users and potentially flag review on the Play track.

Verification.

• python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_resolve_result — 17 tests pass.
• python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_android_call plugin.tests.test_android_send_sms plugin.tests.test_android_search_contacts plugin.tests.test_android_location — 39 existing tests still pass.
• python -m py_compile plugin/tools/resolve_result.py plugin/tools/android_tool.py — clean.
• Kotlin code reviewed for type correctness and import resolution; no gradle build per project convention (built from Android Studio).

Next session. On-device retest of the tiered checklist + JIT chip flow on Samsung S24 / Android 14 sideload APK. After that, version bump to v0.4.1 + cut release.

---

2026-04-15 — Bootstrap command middleware (slash-command hallucination fix)

Motivation. When a user types /help or /model into the Android app's chat, the message reaches the LLM verbatim on vanilla upstream hermes-agent installs because APIServerAdapter doesn't connect to the GatewayRouter. The LLM hallucinates a plausible-sounding wrong reply. The upstream fix lives in gateway/platforms/api_server_slash.py (Stage 1 PR), but vanilla installs won't get it until that PR merges. This session implements the bootstrap-middleware sibling that ships the fix now.

What was built:

• hermes_relay_bootstrap/_command_middleware.py (~420 LOC) — aiohttp middleware that:

  • Intercepts POST /v1/chat/completions and POST /v1/runs (zero-cost skip for all other paths)
  • Runs auth check (adapter._check_auth) before any command logic
  • Extracts the user message from each endpoint's body format
  • Resolves against hermes_cli.commands.resolve_command() from the central command registry
  • Stateless commands (/help, /commands, /profile, /provider) are dispatched locally using the same helpers as upstream
  • Stateful commands (/model, /new, /retry, etc.) return a deterministic decline notice
  • Unknown and CLI-only commands fall through to the LLM
  • For /v1/chat/completions: returns synthetic SSE stream (role + content + finish + [DONE]) or JSON chat.completion
  • For /v1/runs: injects message.delta + run.completed + sentinel into adapter._run_streams queue, returns {"run_id": ..., "status": "started"} with 202, so the events endpoint drains the queue normally
  • Feature-detects: if gateway.platforms.api_server_slash exists (upstream PR landed), middleware is skipped
  • Fail-open: any exception falls through to the original handler

• hermes_relay_bootstrap/_patch.py — added _maybe_install_command_middleware() call in the __setitem__ hook alongside the existing route injection, using the same timing window where app._middlewares is still mutable.

• hermes_relay_bootstrap/__init__.py — updated docstring to document both injection layers (routes + middleware).

• plugin/tests/test_command_middleware.py (31 tests) — unit tests for message extraction, command resolution, response builders, feature detection, plus full aiohttp integration tests via TestClient/TestServer covering both endpoints, streaming, auth rejection, and fall-through behavior.

Test results: 31 new tests pass. Full existing suite (450 tests) still passes with no regressions.

Android client impact: None. The synthetic responses match the exact shapes the client already parses (chat.completion.chunk for completions SSE, message.delta/run.completed for runs events).

Next: Merge to main via PR, then deploy to server (git pull && systemctl --user restart hermes-gateway). Phone re-pair after restart.

---

2026-04-16 — v0.4.1 unattended access mode (sideload-only)

Motivation. First v0.4.1 fast-follow off the ROADMAP. Use case: walking away from the phone and letting the agent finish whatever task is in flight without the screen having to stay manually awake. Without unattended access, every bridge action that lands on a sleeping screen silently no-ops because dispatchGesture runs against the dimmed UI.

Scope landed on feature/unattended-access:

• UnattendedAccessManager (new file under bridge/) — process singleton holding the SCREEN_BRIGHT wake lock + orchestrating KeyguardManager.requestDismissKeyguard. Hosts a WakeOutcome enum (Success / SuccessNoKeyguardChange / KeyguardBlocked / Disabled) and two StateFlows (enabled, credentialLockDetected). Initialized once from HermesRelayApp.onCreate. The host Activity is registered in MainActivity.onResume and cleared in onPause so we don't leak it past the lifecycle.
• DataStore additions to BridgeSafetyPreferences — unattendedAccessEnabled (the user opt-in) and unattendedWarningSeen (latch for the one-time scary dialog). Both default false. Setters keep KEY_SAFETY_INITIALIZED in sync so user-clear-blocklist semantics are preserved.
• BridgeViewModel exposure — unattendedEnabled, unattendedWarningSeen, credentialLockDetected StateFlows; setUnattendedAccessEnabled(boolean) + markUnattendedWarningSeen(). An init-time collector mirrors the persisted setting into UnattendedAccessManager.setEnabled() so the dispatch fast-path can read state synchronously without DataStore. onScreenResumed now also re-probes the keyguard state.
• UnattendedAccessRow component — Compose card with the toggle, a one-time scary AlertDialog (security model + credential-lock limitation + how to disable), and a persistent Card chip when the device has a credential lock detected. Only rendered inside BridgeScreen when BuildFlavor.isSideload is true.
• Bridge dispatch pre-gate — BridgeCommandHandler.dispatch calls UnattendedAccessManager.acquireForAction() after the safety-rails pass and before the action when block, for any path NOT in the new READ_ONLY_PATHS set. KeyguardBlocked outcome short-circuits with HTTP 423 + error_code = "keyguard_blocked" + a final = true flag so the LLM doesn't blindly retry against the lock screen.
• classifyGestureFailure() — small helper on ActionExecutor that wraps gesture-dispatch failure messages with a keyguard-aware hint when the live keyguard state is locked. Tap / swipe / drag / long_press failure paths use it. BridgeCommandHandler.classifyBridgeError now routes "keyguard"-bearing strings to the keyguard_blocked error_code so both pre-gate and gesture-failure paths converge on the same structured response.
• BridgeStatusOverlayChip variant — added an unattended: Boolean parameter so the chip can render in an amber-dot "Unattended ON" variant. BridgeStatusOverlay.setChipVisible gained an unattended argument and a tear-down-and-rebuild path when the flag flips between attached state. BridgeViewModel's overlay-toggle collector now combines master / overlayPref / unattendedEnabled and forces the chip on whenever unattended is active even if the user disabled the regular overlay preference.
• Lifecycle hardening — Master-toggle-off and relay-disconnect both call UnattendedAccessManager.release(). The persisted unattendedAccessEnabled value is preserved across master toggle cycles (the user's "I want unattended when bridge is on" preference shouldn't be wiped by every disconnect).
• Manifest — DISABLE_KEYGUARD declared in app/src/sideload/AndroidManifest.xml. WAKE_LOCK already lives in the main manifest for the existing PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK gesture scope and covers SCREEN_BRIGHT acquires too — no new top-level permission.

Tests landed. app/src/test/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/ UnattendedAccessManagerTest.kt covers state transitions (enabled ↔ disabled, credential lock detection from isDeviceSecure, acquireForAction outcomes for the four reachable cases without a real PowerManager: Disabled / SuccessNoKeyguardChange / Success / KeyguardBlocked) using MockK to stub Context.getSystemService and reflection to reset the singleton between tests. Also added BridgeSafetySettingsTest.kt to lock in the false-by-default contract on the two new preference fields.

Decisions documented (NOT re-litigated this session):

• No WiFi-disconnect failsafe. Tailscale / VPN invalidate the "leaving WiFi = leaving LAN" assumption; relay-disconnect detection
  • auto-disable timer cover the gap.
• Default auto-disable timer stays at 30 minutes. No unattended-mode override.
• Credential lock limitation is structural — Android does not let third-party apps dismiss PIN / pattern / biometric. Surface it via the warning dialog + persistent chip + keyguard_blocked rather than try to work around it.

Wake-lock flag note. SCREEN_BRIGHT_WAKE_LOCK has been deprecated since API 17 in favor of Window.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON / Activity.setTurnScreenOn(true). We accept the deprecation warning under explicit @Suppress annotations because the Activity-bound alternatives don't apply to a background bridge that doesn't own its own window — the bridge runs from a foreground service, gestures are dispatched via AccessibilityService, and the only "UI surface" we own off-Activity is the WindowManager overlay chip which can't drive screen wake-up. Same story for requestDismissKeyguard — it's API 26+ (our minSdk is 26 so always available) and reachable only when an Activity is registered, hence the MainActivity.setHostActivity plumbing.

Files touched:

• new: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/UnattendedAccessManager.kt
• new: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/UnattendedAccessRow.kt
• new: app/src/test/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/UnattendedAccessManagerTest.kt
• new: app/src/test/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/data/BridgeSafetySettingsTest.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/HermesRelayApp.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/MainActivity.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/data/BridgeSafetyPreferences.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/BridgeViewModel.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/BridgeScreen.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/BridgeStatusOverlay.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/DestructiveVerbConfirmDialog.kt (chip variant)
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/handlers/BridgeCommandHandler.kt
• mod: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/accessibility/ActionExecutor.kt
• mod: app/src/sideload/AndroidManifest.xml
• mod: ROADMAP.md (marked v0.4.1 unattended access shipped)
• mod: CHANGELOG.md (added unreleased section)

Next. Build + install from Android Studio + flip the toggle on a Samsung S24 with a PIN lock. Expected behaviours: (a) scary dialog appears on first toggle-on, (b) keyguard-detected chip stays visible while unattended is ON, (c) bridge actions return keyguard_blocked when fired against a locked screen, (d) toggling master off drops the wake lock immediately. After verification, cut v0.4.1 release tag.

Known residuals / follow-ups:

1. The WakeOutcome.Success path doesn't actually wait on the requestDismissKeyguard callback — we predict success based on isDeviceSecure == false. Predict-don't-wait is fine for None / Swipe locks (which always succeed) but a Wave 2 refinement could plumb the callback for richer telemetry.
2. The host-activity registration is single-Activity by design. If a future MainActivity refactor introduces a second Activity surface, the setHostActivity(null) call in onPause would clobber the wrong reference. Document this constraint where it matters.
3. READ_ONLY_PATHS is hand-maintained — adding a new bridge route requires updating both the dispatch when and the read-only set. A linter rule or test-time enforcement would catch drift.

---

2026-04-16 — Voice intent → server session sync (v0.4.1)

Motivation. On-device repro (2026-04-14): speak "open Chrome", phone opens Chrome (good), then type "did that work?" → LLM responds "I have no prior context for what you're asking about." Voice intents dispatch in-process via BridgeCommandHandler.handleLocalCommand (correct — voice actions are phone-local) and append a local-only trace bubble to chat (good UX), but the server-side Hermes session never absorbs the action so the gateway-side LLM has zero memory of it. Followups felt like the chat had "reset."

Approach. Synthesize OpenAI-format assistant (with tool_calls) + tool (with tool_call_id) message pairs from unsynced voice-intent traces and pass them under a new optional messages field on the existing /v1/runs and /api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream payloads. LLMs are trained on this exact shape — they read it as natural conversation history, not a side-channel system-prompt note. Lower retry risk than a bracketed system-message prefix. Frontend-only — zero server changes.

Implementation summary.

• data/ChatMessage.kt — added voiceIntent: VoiceIntentTrace? field (default null). The new VoiceIntentTrace class captures toolName (must start android_*), argumentsJson (OpenAI tool-call args, JSON-encoded string), success, resultJson (full result envelope including ok/error/error_code), and syncedToServer flag. Default null so every existing ChatMessage(...) call site keeps compiling without touching this field.
• voice/VoiceIntentSyncBuilder.kt (new file, ~170 LOC) — pure-function builder that walks chat history, filters to unsynced voice-intent traces, mints call_voiceintent_<uuid> IDs, and emits a JsonArray of synthetic assistant + tool message pairs in chronological order. hasUnsynced() short-circuits the empty-array allocation on the common-case turn. successResultJson() / failureResultJson() helpers normalize the tool-response payload shape so call sites don't hand-roll JSON. No Android dependencies — JVM-pure for cheap unit testing.
• network/HermesApiClient.kt — sendChatStream and sendRunStream both gained an optional voiceIntentMessages: JsonArray? = null parameter. When non-empty, splices it under a top-level messages field on the request body. Additive, OpenAI-compat — older servers ignore unrecognised body fields.
• viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — startStream snapshots history, calls VoiceIntentSyncBuilder.buildSyntheticMessages, threads the result into both API client paths, then calls handler.markVoiceIntentsSynced() after the API client takes ownership. Idempotent — already-synced traces are skipped. recordVoiceIntent/recordVoiceIntentResult signatures now accept an optional voiceIntent: VoiceIntentTrace? so VoiceViewModel can attach the structured payload.
• network/handlers/ChatHandler.kt — appendLocalVoiceIntentTrace and appendLocalVoiceIntentResult now accept an optional voiceIntent parameter; new markVoiceIntentsSynced() method flips syncedToServer=true on every trace currently in state.
• voice/VoiceBridgeIntentHandler.kt — IntentResult.Handled gained androidToolName: String? (defaults to null) and androidToolArgsJson: String (defaults to "{}"). Sideload classifier populates both per intent so VoiceIntentSyncBuilder can synthesize a structured tool_call.
• Sideload VoiceBridgeIntentHandlerImpl.kt — every tryHandle branch now passes androidToolName + androidToolArgsJson to handleSafe/handleDestructive. The dispatch callbacks (onDispatchResult) carry these forward to VoiceViewModel. Maps SendSms → android_send_sms, OpenApp → android_open_app, Tap → android_tap_text, Back/Home → android_press_key. Args mirror what the gateway-side LLM tool wrappers in plugin/tools/android_tool.py would emit for the same actions, so the synthetic tool_call looks identical to the real one.
• VoiceIntentResultCallback typealias — extended in BOTH googlePlay/ and sideload/ flavor source sets to (intentLabel, result, androidToolName, androidToolArgsJson) -> Unit. Play APK never invokes the callback (no destructive intents in the no-op handler) but typealias parity keeps VoiceViewModel compilable against either flavor with no #if gating.
• viewmodel/VoiceViewModel.kt — extended dispatch callback wiring builds a VoiceIntentTrace from the post-dispatch outcome (using LocalDispatchResult.isSuccess + resultJson + errorMessage + errorCode) and threads it into chatViewModel.recordVoiceIntentResult(label, result, voiceTrace). Trace attaches to the post-dispatch RESULT bubble (not the pre-dispatch action bubble) because that's the moment the dispatch outcome is authoritative — pre-dispatch was either pending (destructive countdown) or not-yet-known.

Tests. app/src/test/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceIntentSyncBuilderTest.kt (12 cases):

• empty history → empty output
• no voice-intent messages in history → empty output
• single success trace → exactly one assistant+tool pair, correct shape
• failure trace → tool message content carries ok:false + error + error_code
• already-synced traces are skipped
• multiple traces preserve chronological order
• non-android_* tool name is filtered (defence-in-depth)
• blank args is filtered (defence-in-depth)
• assistant tool_calls[].id and tool tool_call_id reference the same minted ID
• hasUnsynced happy paths (empty / unsynced / all-synced)
• successResultJson / failureResultJson helpers behave correctly

ChatHandlerTest.kt gained 4 new cases for trace storage + markVoiceIntentsSynced flag flip + idempotency on already-synced traces + safety on plain non-trace messages.

Files touched (10):

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/data/ChatMessage.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceIntentSyncBuilder.kt (new)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/HermesApiClient.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/handlers/ChatHandler.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/VoiceViewModel.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentHandler.kt
• app/src/sideload/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentFactory.kt
• app/src/sideload/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentHandlerImpl.kt
• app/src/googlePlay/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentFactory.kt
• app/src/test/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceIntentSyncBuilderTest.kt (new)
• app/src/test/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/handlers/ChatHandlerTest.kt

Branch. feature/voice-session-sync. Not merged. Pushed for review.

What's next. On-device verification: send a voice intent ("open Chrome"), then type "did that work?" — the LLM should describe the action with grounded context instead of hallucinating. If the upstream gateway logs the synthetic messages array as additional context (visible in journalctl --user -u hermes-gateway -f), the wire integration is clean. If the gateway 400s on the new field name (e.g. wants additional_messages or history), we may need to peek at gateway/platforms/api_server.py upstream to confirm the exact field name. The CHANGELOG note about "additive — OpenAI-compat" reflects best-current-knowledge but isn't yet wire-verified.

Blockers. None. Ships as a self-contained refactor.

---

2026-04-15 — Voice → bridge → agent pipeline end-to-end fixes

Motivation. On-device voice SMS testing surfaced a stack of bugs that individually looked small but together blocked the voice → bridge → agent pipeline from working end-to-end. A single long session diagnosed and fixed six distinct layers: voice classifier gaps, a safety-modal lifecycle bug, chat history clobbering, a plugin check_fn pointed at the wrong relay endpoint, missing LLM tool wrappers for the direct-dispatch phone actions, and two Android OEM-interaction issues (MediaProjection notification persistence + activity recreation on warm reopen). Landed across four commits on feature/bridge-feature-expansion.

Summary of changes (in narrative order, not commit order):

• Voice intent classifier narrowed + phrasing-tolerant. Removed the Scroll voice intent (nobody says "scroll down" aloud; /scroll route stays for server-side android_scroll tool calls). Added SMS_INDIRECT regex to catch natural indirect-object phrasing ("send Hannah a text saying smoke test") plus message as a direct verb. Added a phone-number literal bypass so "text +1 555 1234 saying hi" skips contact lookup.
• Honest error classification replaces "couldn't find contact" catch-all. resolveContactPhone now returns a ContactResolution sealed type distinguishing Found / ServiceMissing / PermissionMissing / NotFound / NoPhoneNumber / OtherError, with voice mode speaking a specific actionable message per category ("I need Contacts permission to look up that number" vs "I couldn't find a contact called Hannah"). resolveAppPackage got the same treatment via AppResolution. Pre-flight SEND_SMS check short-circuits before the 5s countdown if permission is missing. Multi-contact matches surface total-count + matched-name in the spoken confirmation so the user knows one of several got picked.
• Safety-modal threading + savedstate lifecycle fixes. BridgeSafetyManager.awaitConfirmation now wraps host.showConfirmation in withContext(Dispatchers.Main.immediate) — the ComposeView creation + setContent must run on Main, but was being called from Dispatchers.Default via the voice local-dispatch path, threw, and got swallowed as "likely overlay permission missing" (which misled on-device triage for a full test cycle). OverlayLifecycleOwner.start() init order flipped: performRestore(null) must run while lifecycle state is still INITIALIZED, not after advancing to CREATED — current androidx.savedstate asserts performAttach requires INITIALIZED. The old order worked against an earlier androidx.savedstate version and broke silently when the Compose BOM bumped.
• Voice mode UX: post-dispatch feedback, TTS, visual countdown, fall-through visibility. handleLocalCommand went from fire-and-forget to capturing the response via an AtomicReference sink on the LocalDispatch coroutine context element, returning LocalDispatchResult(status, errorMessage, errorCode, resultJson). Voice mode emits a follow-up chat bubble ("Send SMS — sent ✓" / "Send SMS — cancelled by you" / permission/service errors) AND speaks the outcome via the existing TTS queue. Voice-in-voice cancel detects "cancel / stop / never mind" during the 5-second countdown and routes it straight to cancelPending() instead of classifying it as a new turn. Visual countdown: DestructiveCountdownState on VoiceUiState + onCountdownStart callback + LinearProgressIndicator in VoiceModeOverlay synced to the real delay. Classifier fall-through immediately flips VoiceState.Thinking so the UI shows progress during SSE connect latency instead of appearing to drop the utterance.
• Voice mode transcript with chat parity. VoiceModeOverlay now observes ChatViewModel.messages and renders the last 6 via CompactTranscriptRow + StreamingResponseRow. Voice-action traces render via MarkdownContent. User messages keep the "YOU" caption (fixed a caption mislabel where voice-intent user messages were showing as "ACTION" due to an id-prefix check that didn't filter by role). ChatHandler.loadMessageHistory preserves any voice-intent-* messages across server reloads so "Opened Chrome" bubbles don't vanish when session_end reload fires after voice fall-through to LLM.
• Chat parity: structured result bubbles for android_ tool calls on the runs API.* ChatHandler now intercepts tool.completed SSE events from /v1/runs for action tools (send_sms, call, search_contacts, open_app, return_to_hermes, screenshot, press_key, setup — read-only tools skipped because they'd add noise on top of the existing ToolProgressCard) and emits the same structured markdown bubble the voice fast-path does. agentName = "Phone action" distinguishes chat-originated from voice-originated ("Voice action"). MessageBubble.kt picked up a subtle visual marker for both action-type bubbles so they read as distinct from LLM replies when interleaved.
• Plugin _check_requirements pointed at the right endpoint with a three-gate rule. Was hitting /ping which returns {pong, ts} and looking for phone_connected / accessibilityService fields that don't exist there — result: the gate always returned False and hid all 13 non-setup tools from every gateway platform. The "no android_* tools available" reports traced to this. Now hits /bridge/status and requires all three: phone_connected AND bridge.accessibility_granted AND bridge.master_enabled. Tools vanish from the LLM's schema entirely when the master toggle is off (or accessibility is revoked post-Studio-reinstall), giving the model a clean "no tools" signal instead of an error-interpretation race. Trade-off accepted: tools disappear mid-session if the user flips the toggle — desired behavior per "stop the agent from controlling my phone" intent.
• 4 new direct-dispatch plugin tools. android_search_contacts, android_send_sms, android_call, android_return_to_hermes all wrap phone routes (/search_contacts, /send_sms, /call, new /return_to_hermes) that were already fully implemented (safety modal, direct SmsManager / CALL_PHONE dispatch) but had never been exposed to the agent, forcing it to drive Messages / Phone / Contacts UI step-by-step via tap + read_screen. Tool count 14 → 18. The /return_to_hermes route short-circuits when service.currentApp == service.packageName (i.e. Hermes is already foreground) so agent wrap-up calls are benign no-ops in voice mode. Master-toggle check exempts /return_to_hermes so the agent can always wrap up cleanly.
• Honest error_code in bridge.response JSON. respondFromResult substring-classifies ActionExecutor errors and emits error_code + required_permission fields alongside the existing free-text error, for permission_denied / service_unavailable / user_denied / bridge_disabled. LLM gets both human-readable text AND a machine-readable classification. Clearer 403 English on the bridge_disabled path explicitly says "this is NOT a pairing problem" + names the exact toggle — earlier the agent was walking users through re-pairing when the master toggle was off.
• Plugin tool descriptions carry the "prefer direct dispatch + return_to_hermes when done" guidance instead of the agent personality. Initial implementation edited ~/.hermes/config.yaml on the server, which only works for a single install — reverted. Guidance now lives in android_send_sms / android_call / android_open_app descriptions where it travels with the plugin to any hermes-agent install. Portable across deploys.
• MediaProjection notification persists bug fixed. BridgeForegroundService.onTaskRemoved now revokes the MediaProjection + downgrades the FGS type back to SPECIAL_USE-only when the user swipes the app from recents. The bridge itself keeps running (agent phone control via WSS still works), but the system-level screen-cast icon goes away — which is what the user expects when they "close" the app. Before this fix the icon persisted indefinitely because foreground services legitimately survive task removal and the projection stayed bound.
• Activity recreation on warm reopen fixed. MainActivity in the manifest gained launchMode="singleTask" + configChanges="uiMode|fontScale|locale|density|orientation|screenSize|screenLayout|keyboardHidden". Before this the activity was being recreated on config changes and on certain resume paths, triggering installSplashScreen() again and showing the splash on warm reopen. The residual case — Samsung OneUI aggressively killing backgrounded apps even with a foreground service — needs user-side battery whitelisting (Settings → Device Care → App battery management → Hermes Relay → Unrestricted) and can't be fixed in code.

Commits landed on feature/bridge-feature-expansion:

• 5c763eb — honest errors, modal lifecycle, missing LLM tools (11 files, +974/-158)
• 536a131 — post-dispatch feedback + clearer bridge-disabled error (7 files, +325/-37)
• (pending, this session) — agent-team work: voice UX polish (TTS, cancel, countdown, phone-number bypass, multi-contact), chat structured feedback parity, plugin three-gate rule, /return_to_hermes short-circuit, tool description guidance, MediaProjection cleanup, activity recreation hardening

Server state. hermes-gateway restarted cleanly twice this session. _check_requirements() now returns True/False deterministically based on live /bridge/status (verified via Python import). The agent personality reverted to clean default — no plugin-specific coupling. All 18 tools register with no missing/orphan handlers.

Known residual items for follow-up (not blocking, documented for future-us):

1. Full multi-turn voice disambiguation for multi-contact matches — current fix just hints "found N, using first". Wave 3 multi-turn state machine deferred.
2. Samsung OneUI process-death UX — add an in-app nudge to whitelist battery optimization if running on Samsung + not currently whitelisted. Polish.
3. Tool-description guidance relies on LLM cooperation (non-deterministic) — monitor whether Victor actually picks up android_send_sms over UI automation in future tests. If not, we may need to reinforce via plugin.yaml or a new upstream plugin-metadata field.
4. loadMessageHistory race with voice-intent-result bubbles self-heals via timestamp sort but has a brief visual flicker window.
5. android_return_to_hermes no-op in voice mode is benign but wastes a tool call — agent should detect voice mode and skip. Minor.

Next session. Waiting on an on-device retest with the bundled agent-team work. Once that passes, bump version (voice intent loop + chat parity is v0.4.0-worthy) and start the release cut.

---

2026-04-15 — Gateway slash-command dispatch: architectural finding + three-PR strategy

Motivation. Typing /model into the Android app's chat on the feature/bridge-feature-expansion branch to switch the model for the session: the message reached the LLM as plain text and got a hallucinated reply: "Switching model — /model is a client-side command, I don't execute it. Just send it as its own message (not wrapped in chat) and Hermes will swap the model for the session." The reply is confidently wrong on two counts — the command is not "client-side", and nothing about the Android client's wire format would prevent Hermes from intercepting it. The LLM was filling a gap it didn't know existed.

Root cause (confirmed via upstream code archaeology by a subagent oriented in a fresh clone of Codename-11/hermes-agent on feat/session-api):

• Gateway slash commands (/model, /new, /retry, the 29 in hermes_cli/commands.py::GATEWAY_KNOWN_COMMANDS) are intercepted by in-process platform adapters — Discord, Telegram, Slack, Matrix, Signal, BlueBubbles, etc. All of them wrap inbound messages into MessageEvents with MessageType.COMMAND and route them through BasePlatformAdapter.handle_message() → GatewayRouter._handle_message(). That router method contains a ~300-line if canonical == "new"/"help"/"model"/... dispatch chain at gateway/run.py:2645–2929, and the command handlers (_handle_model_command at 4226, _handle_status_command at 4065, _handle_help_command at 4151, and ~25 others) are instance methods on GatewayRouter that mutate router-owned state: self._session_model_overrides, self._agent_cache, self._agent_cache_lock, plus per-adapter interactive pickers via self.adapters[platform].send_model_picker(...).
• APIServerAdapter (gateway/platforms/api_server.py) does not connect to the router. Its __init__ (at api_server.py:331) takes only a PlatformConfig — no GatewayRouter reference. _handle_chat_completions and _handle_runs call self._run_agent(...) directly, which calls self._create_agent(...) to build a fresh agent per request with no persistent session state. Upstream confirms this is intentional: run.py:3148 comments that api_server is an "excluded platform" from the router notification path.
• Therefore /model cannot be made to work on /v1/runs with a local preprocessor. A fresh agent per request means there is no persistent session to switch the model on. Same story for /new, /retry, /undo, /compress, /title, /resume, /branch, /rollback, /approve, /deny, /background, /stop, /yolo, /fast, /reasoning, /personality — they all mutate router-owned state that api_server doesn't maintain. What can run statelessly: /help and /commands via gateway_help_lines() at hermes_cli/commands.py:340, and possibly /profile, /provider, /usage, /insights, /status depending on their implementation.

Strategy — a three-PR arc, each independently reviewable, each with a matching bootstrap-middleware sibling shipping earlier:

1. PR #8556 (already submitted, feat/session-api → NousResearch/hermes-agent:main). "feat(api-server): add session management API for frontend clients." Scope is broader than the title: sessions CRUD + search + fork + messages, /api/sessions/{id}/chat + /api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream, memory CRUD, skills, config, available-models. Verified 2026-04-15 via gh pr diff 8556. This is the missing session primitives — once merged, api_server has a durable place where stateful state can live.

2. Stage 1 PR — slash-command preprocessor on the stateless endpoints. Sibling follow-up to #8556, same file (gateway/platforms/api_server.py), stacks on feat/session-api during review so the diff shows both together. Detects known gateway commands on /v1/runs + /v1/chat/completions, dispatches the small stateless subset (/help, /commands) via existing helpers, returns a deterministic synthetic-SSE "use a channel with session state" notice for the stateful majority. Respects upstream's intentional api_server design and does not touch GatewayRouter. Being prepared in a separate local hermes-agent checkout on branch feat/api-server-gateway-commands via a background subagent; Option B scope (stateless dispatch + polite decline) confirmed after the subagent stopped on the architectural finding instead of writing Option C code that would have fought upstream's design. The subagent is preparing the full diff + PR body for human review before any gh pr create runs. Matching bootstrap-middleware sibling (hermes_relay_bootstrap/_command_middleware.py) is filed as a v0.4.1 roadmap item so the hallucination fix ships to vanilla-upstream installs without waiting for the upstream PR.

3. Stage 2 PR — stateful slash-command dispatch on /api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream. Blocked on #8556 merging. Once session primitives ship upstream, a smaller separate PR adds a preprocessor scoped to the session chat stream endpoint only, using the URL's session_id as the persistence handle. Stateful commands become session-scoped dict writes (session.model_override = new_model) without refactoring GatewayRouter or plumbing api_server into the router. Clean partition: /v1/* stays stateless, statefulness lives on /api/sessions/*.

Why not a single giant "Option C" PR that refactors GatewayRouter to expose dispatch_slash_command() + wires APIServerAdapter to the router + adds per-session state to api_server: (a) it would withdraw #8556 to restart bigger, which burns reviewer goodwill and signals indecision to Nous, (b) it would touch 10+ files across subsystems normally owned separately, reviewing far worse than three small PRs, (c) it would fight the documented "api_server is excluded from router" design intent rather than extending it, (d) #8556 is already doing most of the work (session primitives); a parallel session substrate would duplicate it, (e) review slots on respected org PRs are hard-won; don't give one back.

Docs updated this session:

• CLAUDE.md — fork branch reference corrected to feat/session-api + scope clarification on #8556.
• docs/decisions.md — same fix in the upstream-notes section (line 85).
• docs/upstream-contributions.md — new §5 documenting the Stage 1 + Stage 2 upstream PR plan and the bootstrap-middleware workaround.
• ROADMAP.md — v0.4.1 bootstrap-middleware entry rewritten to reflect the Option B ceiling (cannot make /model actually switch models on /v1/runs — that's Stage 2, blocked on #8556) and the architectural reasoning.
• TODO.md — three new entries covering Stage 1 upstream PR, Stage 1 bootstrap middleware, and Stage 2 (blocked on #8556).
• hermes_relay_bootstrap/_handlers.py, hermes_relay_bootstrap/_patch.py — docstring branch-name corrections (feat/api-server-enhancements → feat/session-api).

Not touched this session:

• No Kotlin changes. The Android client at HermesApiClient.kt:655-715 already parses message.delta / response.output_text.delta / reasoning.available / tool.started / tool.completed / run.completed / [DONE], so when Stage 1 or the bootstrap middleware lands with a synthetic SSE stream matching those shapes, the client needs no changes.
• No changes to gateway/platforms/api_server.py or any file in hermes-agent-pr-prep/. The subagent has orientation-only state on feat/api-server-gateway-commands; implementation begins on its next wake.
• The feature/bridge-feature-expansion branch is untouched by this session and continues with its voice-bridge work. The slash-command work is a separate branch arc and will not land on the bridge feature branch.

2026-04-13 — Play Console migration to Axiom-Labs, LLC (applicationId → com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay)

Moved the Play Store listing from the maintainer's personal Play Console account (where v0.1.x–v0.3.0 shipped under Internal testing) to the Axiom-Labs, LLC D-U-N-S-verified organization account. This unblocks straight-to-production rollout — personal accounts created after late 2023 are subject to Google's 14-day closed-testing rule (≥12 opted-in testers for 14 continuous days before production promotion); D-U-N-S-verified org accounts are exempt. See Google's policy.

applicationId change. com.hermesandroid.relay → com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay (googlePlay flavor) and com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay.sideload (sideload flavor, unchanged suffix pattern). Play Store package names are permanently reserved once used, so the old ID can never be reclaimed — the previous Internal-testing listing is retired and existing installs won't auto-upgrade to the new listing. Blast radius is one tester, so manual reinstall is fine.

Kotlin namespace stays at com.hermesandroid.relay. AGP decouples namespace (build-time R-class / BuildConfig / on-disk source layout) from applicationId (runtime install identity), so we don't need to mass-rename the 130+ Kotlin files, their package declarations, proguard rules, or test FQCNs. The source tree stays stable; only the Play/Android install identity moves. scripts/dev.bat and scripts/dev.sh already use the split FQCN form adb am start -n com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay/com.hermesandroid.relay.MainActivity to bridge the two namespaces at launch time.

Keystore identity is unchanged. Same CN=Bailey Dixon, Codename-11 upload cert, same SHA256 fingerprint, same HERMES_KEYSTORE_* GitHub Secrets, same CI signing flow. Play App Signing mints a new server-side app signing key per listing, but that's invisible to us since App Signing is enabled. No CI or keystore changes required.

Files touched in this migration:

• app/build.gradle.kts — applicationId = "com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay" + multi-paragraph comment block explaining the namespace/applicationId decoupling and the migration rationale
• RELEASE.md — new "Google Play Console developer account" section documenting the Axiom-Labs account, the D-U-N-S exemption from the 14-day rule, and a "Historical note (2026-04-13 migration)" block for future maintainers
• ROADMAP.md — "Current — Axiom-Labs migration" section added at the top
• README.md — Play Store badge URL → ?id=com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay; copyright line → "Axiom-Labs"
• CLAUDE.md — "applicationId" bullet updated to call out both flavors under com.axiomlabs.*
• scripts/dev.bat, scripts/dev.sh — am start commands updated to the new applicationId
• scripts/bridge-smoke.sh — sideload package test payload → com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay.sideload
• user-docs/guide/getting-started.md, user-docs/guide/release-tracks.md — Play Store URLs + both applicationIds

Play Console listing creation (for future reference):

Field	Value
App name	Hermes-Relay
Package name	com.axiomlabs.hermesrelay
Default language	English (US)
App/game	App
Free/paid	Free
Developer account	Axiom-Labs, LLC

Nothing to rebuild or re-sign beyond the normal v0.3.1+ release flow.

2026-04-12 — Manual pairing fallback — hermes-pair --register-code <code>

Wired the host-side half of the in-app fallback pairing flow. The phone has been generating a local 6-char code in Settings → Connection → Manual pairing code (fallback) and AuthManager.authenticate() already sent that code as pairing_code when no server-issued code was present, but there was no convenient way for an operator to pre-register an arbitrary code with the relay without going through the QR flow. Now there is.

Use case: pairing a phone already SSH'd in from, where there's no second device with a camera to scan a QR off the host's display. The QR flow is unusable in that scenario; the new flag is the only path.

plugin/pair.py additions:

• New normalize_pairing_code(code) helper — upper-cases, strips, validates against PAIRING_ALPHABET (A-Z / 0-9) and PAIRING_CODE_LENGTH (6). Raises InvalidPairingCodeError (a ValueError subclass) with a clear message on length or alphabet mismatches so the CLI can fail fast instead of letting the operator find out via an HTTP 400.
• New register_code_command(args) — separate code path from the QR pipeline. Validates the code, parses --ttl / --grants (same parser as the QR flow, default 30d), resolves the relay port from read_relay_config(), probes /health first so we can give a precise "relay not running" message instead of a generic post failure, then calls the existing register_relay_code() helper with all the optional metadata. Prints a clean success block listing the code, transport hint, session TTL, grants, and the exact 3-step "tap Connect in the app" instructions. Distinct exit codes: 0 success, 1 relay unreachable / rejected, 2 argument validation failed.
• pair_command() short-circuits to register_code_command when args.register_code is set, so the QR pipeline is skipped entirely (no relay code minted, no QR rendered, no API config probed).
• New CLI flags on the standalone python -m plugin.pair argparser: --register-code <CODE> (the trigger), --transport-hint {ws,wss} (override the auto-detected transport hint when running behind an external TLS proxy that the host can't see). All existing flags (--ttl, --grants, --host, --port, etc.) compose with --register-code exactly the way they compose with the QR flow.

New CLI shape:

hermes-pair --register-code ABCD12
hermes-pair --register-code ABCD12 --ttl 30d --grants terminal=7d,bridge=1d
hermes-pair --register-code ABCD12 --ttl never --transport-hint wss

The relay endpoint (POST /pairing/register in plugin/relay/server.py) and PairingManager.register_code were not touched — they already accepted user-supplied codes with optional TTL/grants/transport-hint metadata. This change just exposes that capability via a CLI flag so the operator doesn't have to hand-craft a curl POST.

plugin/tests/test_register_code.py — 25 tests, stdlib unittest only. Three test classes:

• NormalizePairingCodeTests (13 tests) — happy path (uppercase / lowercase / whitespace-stripped / all-digit / all-letter), every rejection branch (empty / whitespace-only / None / too short / too long / dash / punctuation / unicode).
• RegisterCodeCommandTests (10 tests) — happy path with default TTL (verifies it posts 30 * 24 * 3600 seconds and transport_hint="ws"); happy path with --ttl 7d --grants terminal=1d,bridge=1d and tls=True in the relay config (verifies transport_hint="wss" and the auto-uppercase of abcd12 → ABCD12); explicit --transport-hint wss override; every error path (invalid chars, wrong length, empty, relay unreachable → exit 1, relay rejection → exit 1, invalid --ttl → exit 2, invalid --grants → exit 2). Each error-path test asserts the network was NOT touched if validation failed first.
• RegisterRelayCodeWireShapeTests (2 tests) — patches urllib.request.urlopen directly and verifies the bytes the manual flow puts on the wire match what handle_pairing_register already parses: {"code": ..., "ttl_seconds": ..., "grants": ..., "transport_hint": ...}. Also covers the minimal-body case (just {"code": ...} when no metadata is supplied) so we don't accidentally start sending null fields the server's _parse_pairing_metadata would have to filter.

Run via python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_register_code — 25 passed in 0.006s.

Docs touched:

• skills/devops/hermes-relay-pair/SKILL.md — added --register-code to the "Useful flags" bullet list and a full "Manual fallback (--register-code)" section between Procedure and Pitfalls covering when to use it, the 3-step workflow, how --ttl / --grants / --transport-hint compose, and the exit codes.
• skills/devops/hermes-relay-self-setup/SKILL.md — added an "If you can't scan a QR" subsection inside section D pointing operators at the hermes-relay-pair skill's manual-fallback recipe.
• user-docs/reference/configuration.md — expanded the "Manual pairing code (fallback)" bullet from a one-liner into a full 3-step workflow walkthrough so users can find this without leaving the app's docs.
• user-docs/guide/getting-started.md — added a "Camera unavailable? Use manual pairing" callout under the "Choosing session lifetime + channel grants" section.
• README.md — added a one-line bullet under the install section listing hermes-pair --register-code alongside the slash command and the dashed shim.

Conventions: No Kotlin touched (parallel agent owns the in-app UI cleanup). Did not modify plugin/relay/server.py or PairingManager — endpoint already supported user-supplied codes. Tests run via stdlib unittest to bypass the conftest.py that imports responses.

2026-04-12 — Connection UX — Manual pairing code walkthrough + per-channel grant revoke

Manual pairing code card. Settings → Connection → "Manual pairing code (fallback)" used to be a bare-bones code + copy/regen stub that left users guessing what to do with the 6-character code. Replaced the body with a proper three-step walkthrough: (1) copy the code (with both an instant copy button and the existing regenerate button), (2) on the host, run hermes-pair --register-code <code> rendered in a copyable monospace shell-command surface, (3) tap Connect to fire the pair flow. Step 3 is a real Button that calls applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset → disconnectRelay → connectRelay (mirroring the existing dialog flow), tracks an in-flight card3ConnectInProgress flag with a CircularProgressIndicator + "Connecting…" label, and reports success/failure through LocalSnackbarHost.showHumanError with the "pair" classifier context. Below the steps is an expandable "How does this work?" explainer that spells out when this is the right flow vs. the QR scan, and reminds users that bridge control is gated by the master toggle on the Bridge tab — not by the pairing code itself. New private ManualPairStep helper renders the numbered step badges. Pairs cleanly with the parallel agent's host-side hermes-pair --register-code work above. Markers: // === MANUAL-PAIR-FOLLOWUP: ... === / // === END MANUAL-PAIR-FOLLOWUP ===.

Per-channel grant revoke. Paired Devices → device card grant chips are now individually revocable. Each chip got an inline Close icon button (a small clickable Box instead of IconButton to avoid the 48dp touch-target inflation that would blow up the FlowRow). Tapping the x opens an AlertDialog confirming "Revoke access for ?" with an explicit reminder that the session itself stays paired and other channels keep their current expiry. New ConnectionViewModel.revokeChannelGrant(tokenPrefix, channel) builds the full grants map by reading the device's current PairedDeviceInfo.grants, converting absolute-epoch grants back to seconds-from-now (clamped to ≥ 1 since 0 means "never expire" on the relay side), and replacing only the target channel with 1L (≈ instantly expired by the time the PATCH lands). Then it reuses RelayHttpClient.extendSession with ttlSeconds = null, grants = rebuilt and refreshes the device list on success. The chip label also got a relative TTL helper (formatRelativeTtl) that renders "never" / "in 6d" / "in 23h" / "expired" instead of the previous absolute short date. The full per-session "Revoke" button stays — per-channel chips are additive, not a replacement. Markers: // === PER-CHANNEL-REVOKE: ... === / // === END PER-CHANNEL-REVOKE ===.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / status — relay GET /bridge/status endpoint + expanded BridgeStatusReporter

Backend half of the android_phone_status() work. The phone (BridgeStatusReporter.kt) now pushes a structured status envelope every 30 s with three nested groups:

• device — Build.MODEL, battery, PowerManager.isInteractive, HermesAccessibilityService.instance?.currentApp
• bridge — master_enabled, accessibility_granted, screen_capture_granted, overlay_granted, notification_listener_granted
• safety — blocklist count, destructive verb count, auto-disable timer minutes, auto_disable_at_ms

Old flat keys kept alongside the new structure for backwards compat. New pushNow() method on the reporter for out-of-band emissions; ConnectionViewModel calls it whenever the master toggle flips so the relay-side cache refreshes immediately instead of waiting up to 30 s.

Relay side: BridgeHandler gained latest_status: dict | None and last_seen_at: float | None, populated in handle_status. New handle_bridge_status route at GET /bridge/status, gated to loopback only (mirrors /pairing/register). Empty cache → 503; populated → 200 with last_seen_seconds_ago computed at response time. Stale-cache disconnects return 200 — the cached snapshot is still useful.

Tests: plugin/tests/test_bridge_status.py — 7 stdlib unittest cases (empty cache 503, populated 200, disconnected, non-loopback rejection, IPv6 ::1, snapshot-not-reference regression, dual-field stamping). All pass; existing test_bridge_channel.py still green.

Markers: # === PHASE3-status: ... === / # === END PHASE3-status === for the new Python blocks; // === PHASE3-status: ... === for Kotlin.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / bridge UI hardening — master gate, MediaProjection consent, label disambiguation

Three follow-ups discovered while smoke-testing the merged Phase 3 build on a real device.

Master gate fix. HermesAccessibilityService.cachedMasterEnabled was supposed to be fed by an external updateMasterEnabledCache(...) writer, but nothing was calling it — the cache was permanently false and BridgeCommandHandler was 403'ing every command except /ping and /current_app regardless of the toggle state. Fix: the service now starts a serviceScope coroutine on onServiceConnected that observes masterEnabledFlow(this) and pumps every emission into the cache. Service-owned scope is cancelled on onUnbind/onDestroy and re-created on each connect (cancelled SupervisorJobs can't be reused). Cache is reset to false on teardown so a stale-but-bound state can't leak through.

MediaProjection consent flow. MediaProjectionHolder.onGranted(...) existed but nothing called it — there was no ActivityResultLauncher registered anywhere. Fix: MainActivity now registers a launcher in onCreate and a new ScreenCaptureRequester process-singleton holds the launch closure (installed on Activity create, cleared on destroy). BridgeViewModel.requestScreenCapture() calls ScreenCaptureRequester.request() to ask the user; the system consent dialog fires; the result callback feeds MediaProjectionHolder.onGranted(...) which closes the loop with the existing ScreenCapture.kt. Bridge tab's Screen Capture row is now tappable instead of inert; the row's checkmark reflects MediaProjectionHolder.projection != null.

Notification Listener Test button parity. Added BridgeViewModel.testNotificationListener() and an onTestNotificationListener lambda through BridgePermissionChecklist so the row gets a Test button matching the other three. The dedicated functional test on NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen still ships.

Launcher label disambiguation per flavor. With googlePlayDebug and sideloadDebug installed side-by-side (same icon, same name), there was no way to tell which install you were tapping in the launcher / recents / Settings → Apps. Fix: sideload's res/values/strings.xml now overrides three strings:

• app_name → Hermes Dev (10 chars, fits launcher icon, mirrors Slack Dev / Chrome Dev convention)
• a11y_service_label → Hermes-Bridge Dev (Accessibility settings list)
• notification_companion_label → Hermes Dev notification companion

googlePlay's a11y_service_label also flipped to Hermes-Bridge (with hyphen) for consistency. The Play track inherits all other strings from main.

Other small fixes: BridgeForegroundService.kt Intent.flags = ... → addFlags(...) (the property setter form doesn't compile because Intent.setFlags returns Intent, not void). BridgeViewModel.kt removed StateFlow.distinctUntilChanged() (deprecated no-op since StateFlow already deduplicates).

Markers: new code blocks tagged // === PHASE3-bridge-ui-followup: ... === / // === END PHASE3-bridge-ui-followup ===.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / status trio — android_phone_status tool + hermes-status CLI + /hermes-relay-status skill

Symmetric read-only counterpart to the pair trio. The relay ships GET /bridge/status (loopback, in a parallel agent's scope) that exposes live phone state — connection, battery, screen, foreground app, bridge permission flags, safety-rail config. This change builds the three consumers that wrap it so the agent, operators, and chat users all have a clean entry point.

plugin/tools/android_phone_status.py. New Hermes tool registered via the canonical tools.registry import pattern, modeled after plugin/tools/android_notifications.py. Zero args. Calls http://127.0.0.1:8767/bridge/status over loopback (no bearer — same trust model as /media/register and /pairing/register), returns {"status": "ok"|"error", "phone_status": {...}|null, "error": str|null}. Stdlib urllib.request only — no requests/httpx. Handles three canonical paths:

• 200 OK → status=ok with the parsed relay body as phone_status.
• 503 (relay alive but no phone has ever connected) → status=ok with phone_status={"phone_connected": false, ...}. From the agent's perspective the phone not being connected isn't an error — it's just the current state, and the LLM should render it as prose.
• URLError/OSError/timeout → status=error with error="relay unreachable". This is the only case where the agent should bail.

The tool's description is explicit about when to call it: before attempting any bridge operation (android_tap, android_type, android_screenshot) so the agent can check phone_connected + bridge.*_granted upfront instead of eating failures one by one. check_fn=lambda: True because gating status on bridge connectivity would be circular — it IS the connectivity check.

plugin/status.py. New CLI module modeled after plugin/pair.py. Probes the same endpoint, pretty-prints with a small ANSI _Palette helper that's a no-op when stdout isn't a TTY. Three distinct exit codes so shell scripts can distinguish the cases: 0 success + connected, 1 relay unreachable, 2 relay alive but no phone. --json flag emits raw JSON pass-through (always a stable envelope so callers can jq over it even on failure). --port N overrides RELAY_PORT. Invokable via python -m plugin.status or the hermes-status shim. fetch_status(port) is factored out as a pure-function core so the tests can exercise it without mocking argparse.

skills/devops/hermes-relay-status/SKILL.md. New slash-command skill mirroring hermes-relay-pair's structure verbatim — same frontmatter shape, same metadata.hermes.category: devops, same "When to Use / Prerequisites / Procedure / Pitfalls / Verification" section layout. Explains how to interpret the three exit codes, when to re-pair vs. when to restart the relay, and how to read the permission flags when the user's "accessibility is granted" but status says otherwise (OS killed the service). Picked up automatically by the external_dirs scan installer registers — no config change needed on upgrade.

install.sh / uninstall.sh — hermes-status shim. Added step [5/6] sibling block that writes ~/.local/bin/hermes-status alongside hermes-pair. Same template: a tiny bash shim that execs $HERMES_VENV_PY -m plugin.status "$@" with a friendly error if the venv python can't be found. Uninstaller mirrors it for removal — both shims come out together under [5/6]. Header comments in both scripts updated to reference the plural "shims".

plugin/tests/test_android_phone_status.py — 19 tests, stdlib unittest only. Covers the tool's success path, 503 mapping, 503 with empty body, connection refused (URLError), raw OSError, other HTTP errors (500), non-JSON body, non-object JSON ([1,2,3], 42), schema sanity (parameters.required == [], properties == {}), and the registry handler wrapper. Also covers the CLI's fetch_status return-triple shape across all three exit codes + main(["--json"]) happy path + all three failure modes. The rendering pass has two smoke tests: one verifies the happy path includes all the expected fields (device name, battery %, current app, blocklist count, destructive verbs, permission labels), one verifies the disconnected short-circuit omits the Device/Bridge/Safety sections entirely. Mocks urllib.request.urlopen via unittest.mock.patch, uses a tiny _FakeResponse context-manager stub and _http_error(code, body) helper that builds a real urllib.error.HTTPError whose .read() returns the fixture body (critical: the 503 handler reads the body to extract the phone-state envelope, so the mock has to wrap a BytesIO in the fp slot, not just pass bytes). All tests run green:

python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_android_phone_status -v
Ran 19 tests in 0.010s
OK

Files touched: new plugin/tools/android_phone_status.py, new plugin/status.py, new skills/devops/hermes-relay-status/SKILL.md, new plugin/tests/test_android_phone_status.py, edits to install.sh + uninstall.sh for the shim pair. No relay-side changes — the /bridge/status endpoint is owned by a parallel agent working in the plugin/relay/server.py scope. This change is pure consumer.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / safety-rails followup — deep link, overlay nag, in-app permission Test buttons

Three small UX wins on top of the merged Wave 2 safety rails. All gate cleaner first-run smoke testing on a real device.

Deep link from foreground notification → BridgeSafetySettingsScreen. BridgeForegroundService.ACTION_OPEN_SETTINGS previously dropped the user on MainActivity's home screen — they had to navigate Settings → Bridge safety manually. New app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/util/NavRouteRequest.kt is a tiny MutableSharedFlow<String> singleton that any external launcher (foreground service, broadcast receiver, shortcut intent) can post route requests to. MainActivity reads EXTRA_NAV_ROUTE in onCreate + onNewIntent and forwards via NavRouteRequest.tryRequest. RelayApp adds a LaunchedEffect(navController) that collects NavRouteRequest.requests and forwards each emission to navController.navigate(route) { launchSingleTop = true }. BridgeForegroundService now sets MainActivity.EXTRA_NAV_ROUTE = "settings/bridge_safety" on its launch intent. Single observer at the app root, no per-screen plumbing.

Overlay-permission nag banner on BridgeScreen. When the master toggle is on but Settings.canDrawOverlays(context) is false, a prominent red errorContainer-colored card appears at the top of BridgeScreen warning the user that confirmation prompts can't display. Without the banner, BridgeSafetyManager.awaitConfirmation was failing-closed silently — destructive verbs would just be denied with no UX hint about why. New private OverlayPermissionNagCard Composable in BridgeScreen.kt with a Warning icon, plain-language explanation, and a tap action that opens Settings.ACTION_MANAGE_OVERLAY_PERMISSION for our package. Goes away on its own once the permission is granted (BridgeViewModel re-probes on ON_RESUME).

In-app permission Test buttons in BridgePermissionChecklist. Matches the pattern already shipped on NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen. Each row in the bridge permission checklist now has an optional "Test" text-button next to its status icon. Tapping it runs a side-effect-free diagnostic on the underlying runtime state and surfaces the result via the global LocalSnackbarHost. New methods in BridgeViewModel:

• testAccessibilityService() — checks HermesAccessibilityService.instance is non-null AND instance.rootInActiveWindow is non-null. Three result strings cover "not bound", "bound but no active window", and "OK".
• testScreenCapture() — checks MediaProjectionHolder.projection is non-null. Reports either "active grant" or "no grant — bridge will request consent next /screenshot".
• testOverlayPermission() — checks Settings.canDrawOverlays(context). Reports granted vs not-granted with a hint to tap the row.

Each method emits a one-shot human-readable string on a new MutableSharedFlow<String> (testEvents) that BridgeScreen collects in a LaunchedEffect and shows via snackbarHost.showSnackbar(message). Notification listener row keeps onTest = null because the existing dedicated test on NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen already covers it.

Why diagnostic-only, not full functional tests (e.g., actually capture a screenshot or actually flash an overlay): the diagnostic checks need zero side effects, no extra dependencies, no permission flows mid-test. They answer the "is this thing actually wired through?" question 80% of the time — full functional tests are a Wave 3 follow-up if the diagnostics aren't enough in practice.

Files touched: new util/NavRouteRequest.kt, new private composables in BridgeScreen.kt, edits to MainActivity.kt, BridgeForegroundService.kt, RelayApp.kt, BridgePermissionChecklist.kt, BridgeViewModel.kt. All marker blocks use PHASE3-safety-rails-followup.

2026-04-12 — Rename Phase 3 agent codenames from Greek letters to ASCII slugs

Bulk rename across the repo + Obsidian plan: replaced the Greek-letter agent codenames used since the original Phase 3 plan (the original set was α β γ δ ε ζ η θ) with descriptive ASCII slugs. The Greek letters were a math/CS-paper convention and they sort nicely, but they're a pain to type, render badly in some terminals, and made commit-history search awkward.

Mapping:

Old	New
α	bridge-server
flavor-split	flavor-split
accessibility	accessibility
bridge-ui	bridge-ui
notif-listener	notif-listener
safety-rails	safety-rails
voice-intents	voice-intents
vision-nav	vision-nav

Scope: 42 repo files (DEVLOG, CLAUDE, Kotlin sources, Python sources, manifests, Vue docs) + the canonical Obsidian plan at Plans/Phase 3 — Bridge Channel.md. Implementation was a single sed pass per file with all 8 substitutions in one invocation, applied via a bash for-loop. Verified with grep -rc '[αβγδεζηθ]' returning 0 across the affected trees.

Git history is not rewritten. Existing commits and merge commits keep their original Greek-letter subjects (e.g., merge(phase3-α): migrate legacy bridge relay). Renaming history would require a force push and would invalidate every commit hash since the divergence point — not worth the cost for a cosmetic change. Going forward, new branches, commit messages, and marker blocks all use the ASCII slugs.

Marker block convention going forward: // === PHASE3-bridge-server: ... === / // === END PHASE3-bridge-server === (and the analogous Python # === ... === and XML <!-- === ... === --> forms). Followup blocks use PHASE3-<slug>-followup.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 1 hotfix — dedupe AccessibilityService entry; Gradle deprecation cleanup

Two small fixes discovered while smoke-testing Wave 1 in Android Studio.

Duplicate AccessibilityService entry in Android Settings. Reported: Settings → Accessibility → Installed services listed two Hermes entries (Hermes-Relay and Hermes Bridge). Root cause: a coordination miss between agents flavor-split and accessibility during the Wave 1 agent-team run. flavor-split created the flavor manifests first and stubbed <service android:name=".accessibility.BridgeAccessibilityService" tools:ignore="MissingClass"> blocks in both flavor overlays, anticipating that accessibility would name the service class BridgeAccessibilityService. accessibility later named it HermesAccessibilityService instead. Manifest merger only collapses <service> elements with matching android:name, so two different names → two separate <service> entries in the merged manifest. The flavor-split-stub entry pointed at a class that doesn't exist anywhere — enabling that row in Android Settings would have crashed the bind.

Fix: removed the stub <service> blocks from both app/src/googlePlay/AndroidManifest.xml and app/src/sideload/AndroidManifest.xml entirely (the flavor manifests are now empty <application /> overlays kept around for future flavor-specific permissions / activities). The flavor distinction now lives purely at the resource layer — each flavor's res/xml/accessibility_service_config.xml carries its own use-case description and flag bitset, and Gradle's resource merger picks the right file at build time. Added a11y_service_label ("Hermes-Relay Bridge") to app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml so the single canonical service entry in app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml can be labeled distinctly from the launcher icon.

Gradle deprecation warning. AGP printed android.dependency.excludeLibraryComponentsFromConstraints=true is deprecated, will be removed in version 10.0. The two flags useConstraints=true + excludeLibraryComponentsFromConstraints=true were doing the work of one — the second flag overrode the first to mean "actually, exclude library components from constraint resolution." AGP's recommended migration is useConstraints=false. Collapsed two lines in gradle.properties into one. Semantics unchanged.

Lessons learned (for future agent teams): when an agent that creates a manifest stub names a class to be filled in by another agent, the two agents need to agree on the class name up front — manifest merger does not auto-collapse <service> blocks with different android:name values, even if everything else matches. Putting the canonical class name in the plan's "Wire format" section would have prevented this.

2026-04-12 — Onboarding/Settings unification + lifecycle-aware health checks

Closed two long-standing UX gaps that compounded each other: (1) onboarding's "Connect" page only configured the API server side and discarded the QR's relay block (code, TTL, grants, transport hint), so users walked out of onboarding in a "half-paired" state and had to re-do setup in Settings; (2) connection status badges showed stale Connected/Disconnected for up to 30 s after foregrounding because nothing kicked a re-probe on Lifecycle.Event.ON_RESUME — the StateFlow snapshot was just preserved across backgrounding even when the underlying server had died or the network had flipped.

New: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/ConnectionWizard.kt — shared three-step pairing wizard (Scan → Confirm → Verify) with a circular step indicator at the top. Used by both OnboardingScreen and ConnectionSettingsScreen's "Pair with QR" button so first-run and re-pair stay in lockstep forever. Step 1 launches QrPairingScanner via the camera permission flow. Step 2 displays the scanned details (server URL, relay URL, grants, transport security badge), an inline TTL radio list, and a red "plain ws://" warning when the relay is insecure. Step 3 observes AuthState with a 15s withTimeout, surfaces classified errors via Retry/Back/Cancel, and calls onComplete() on AuthState.Paired. The wizard's "Skip for now" affordance only renders when the caller passes showSkip = true (onboarding sets that, Settings doesn't).

New: ConnectionViewModel.applyPairingPayload(payload, ttlSeconds) — single entry point for "user just confirmed a scanned QR + chose a TTL." Does the full credential dance: API URL + key, relay URL + insecure mode, applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset (wipes TOFU pin + applies code), setPendingGrants, setPendingTtlSeconds, disconnectRelay() + connectRelay(), then revalidate(). Replaces the ~50-line confirm-callback that used to live in ConnectionSettingsScreen.kt::SessionTtlPickerDialog.onConfirm. The wizard is the only caller now.

New: ConnectionViewModel.HealthStatus (Unknown / Probing / Reachable / Unreachable) + apiServerHealth + relayServerHealth StateFlows. Distinct from the existing apiServerReachable: Boolean so the UI can render a dedicated "Probing" pose right after foreground / network change. The boolean stays in place for legacy callers; new UI consumes the tri-state flow.

New: ConnectionViewModel.revalidate() — single entry point for "the world might have changed — re-check everything." Flips both health flows to Probing immediately so the badge poses don't flash stale Connected/Disconnected, then fires API + relay /health probes in parallel and joins them, and kicks reconnectIfStale() to bring the WSS back if it was holding a paired-but-disconnected state. Idempotent — guarded by a revalidationJob so rapid foreground/background cycles don't pile up parallel probes.

New: lifecycle hook in RelayApp.kt — DisposableEffect(lifecycleOwner) registers a LifecycleEventObserver that calls connectionViewModel.revalidate() on ON_RESUME. This is the fix for the resume-lag flash. Single observer at the app root so every screen gets fresh badges on foreground without each one wiring its own.

New: connectivity reaction inside ConnectionViewModel.init — the existing ConnectivityObserver.observe() flow was previously exposed as networkStatus but never read. Now a collector inside init calls revalidate() on every Available transition (with drop(1) to skip the seed value so we don't double-probe on first composition). Airplane-mode flips, network handoffs, and Tailscale up/down events now actually trigger a re-probe instead of being purely advisory.

New: periodic relay health loop — mirrors the existing 30s API health loop. Uses RelayHttpClient.probeHealth() (unauthenticated, 3s timeout, no rate-limit cost) to update relayServerHealth independently of the WSS heartbeat. Plugs the historical gap where relay status was only verified by WSS or manual Save & Test taps.

New: fourth state on ConnectionStatusBadge — BadgeState.Probing — gray pulsing dot at 1.2s cadence, distinct from the amber Connecting pulse at 0.8s and the green Connected pulse at 1.5s. Added a new state: BadgeState overload of both ConnectionStatusBadge and ConnectionStatusRow. The boolean overloads are preserved (with a new optional isProbing: Boolean = false parameter) so legacy call sites — chat header, terminal screen, bridge cards — keep working without churn. Only call sites that want a Probing state need to migrate.

Edited: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/onboarding/OnboardingScreen.kt — replaced the bespoke ConnectPage (which discarded the relay block, never walked the user through TTL picking, and let users exit onboarding in a half-paired state) and RelayPage (a bare URL text field) with a single ConnectPage that embeds ConnectionWizard. Pages list is now: Welcome → Chat → (Terminal → Bridge if relay enabled) → Connect (wizard). Onboarding's onComplete callback collapsed from 4 args (apiServerUrl, apiKey, relayUrl, relayPairingCode) to zero — the wizard owns credential application via applyPairingPayload, so the callback only needs to mark complete + navigate. The pager's bottom Next/Back navigation is hidden on the Connect page so the wizard owns its own affordances. Top-bar Skip is also hidden on the Connect page so the wizard's "Skip for now" is the only skip affordance.

Edited: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/ConnectionSettingsScreen.kt — "Scan Pairing QR" + "Guided setup" buttons collapsed into a single "Pair with QR" button that opens the wizard inside a full-screen Dialog. "Re-pair" button (shown when paired) now opens the wizard instead of launching the camera directly. Removed: the cameraPermissionLauncher (wizard owns permission), pendingQrPayload state, the inline SessionTtlPickerDialog confirm-callback block (~50 lines), and the showPairingWalkthrough/PairingWalkthroughDialog dialog. The API/Relay/Session status rows now consume apiServerHealth and relayServerHealth so they render the new Probing pose during the post-resume window.

Edited: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — root Connection summary card's API and Relay rows updated to consume the new health flows + render Probing on resume. Status text reads "Checking…" during the probe instead of flashing stale "Connected"/"Unreachable".

Deleted: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/PairingWalkthroughDialog.kt (~370 lines) — the old 4-step dialog-counter wizard. Wizard supersedes it. SessionTtlPickerDialog.kt is preserved because the wizard reuses its ttlPickerOptions() and defaultTtlSeconds() helpers.

The end result: one canonical pairing flow used by both onboarding and Settings, badges that flip to "Checking…" instead of flashing stale state on resume, and an explicit Probing pose so the user can tell the difference between "we don't know yet" and "we know it's down."

2026-04-12 — Docs: two-track explainer + FeatureMatrix component

Closed the user-doc gap left by Phase 3's googlePlay/sideload Gradle flavor split. Before this, the user-docs site framed sideloading as just an alternative install path — there was no signal that the sideload APK actually unlocks tier 3/4/6 features (voice→bridge intent routing, vision-driven android_navigate, workflow recording) that are compiled out of the Play Store APK by BuildFlavor.bridgeTier{3,4,6} checks.

New: user-docs/.vitepress/theme/components/FeatureMatrix.vue — polished feature comparison component that matches the design language of HermesFlow.vue / InstallSection.vue / HeroDemo.vue (Space Grotesk + Space Mono, --vp-c-brand-1 purple accent, flat + border-separated, no gradients/shadows/blur). Renders a semantic <table> with one row per feature (tier numbers are an implementation detail users don't care about), grouped into Chat & voice / Bridge — read / Bridge — control / Safety rails / Install & updates sections. Three support states per cell (full / limited / none) with inline SVG icons inheriting currentColor from the cell's class. Sideload-only rows fade to --vp-c-text-3 opacity 0.6; "limited" cells get a • see note suffix that surfaces a per-row footnote about the read-only Play accessibility surface. Responsive: above 720px shows both columns side-by-side with a brand-soft tinted Sideload column; below 720px collapses to a single visible column with role=tablist mobile tab switcher (the semantic table stays intact for screen readers — the inactive column is hidden via display:none on mobile-only cells, not removed). Below 480px the text labels collapse to icon-only with the support state on the cell's aria-label. Zero npm deps — all icons are inline SVG.

New: user-docs/guide/release-tracks.md — canonical prose explainer. Plain-language opener ("Hermes-Relay ships in two flavors built from the same codebase"), TL;DR up top, "Why two tracks?" section that explains Google Play's accessibility-service scrutiny without jargon, embedded <FeatureMatrix />, decision guide ("Want X? → Track Y" bullets), "Can I switch later?" section explaining the side-by-side applicationIdSuffix = ".sideload" story, install instructions for both tracks (linking to existing getting-started.md content rather than duplicating), and a "Safety rails — always on, in both tracks" closer to make clear the floor isn't a sideload feature. Wired into the /guide/ sidebar between Installation & Setup and Chat.

Edited: user-docs/features/index.md — added a "Bridge — Phone Control" table with a Track column and a <span class="track-badge track-badge--sideload">Sideload only</span> convention for compiled-out features (voice→bridge, vision navigation, workflow recording). Added a "Bridge — Safety Rails" table to make the floor explicit. Removed Bridge from "Coming Soon" since Phase 3 is shipping. Added a "Choose your track" section near the bottom with <FeatureMatrix /> embedded and a link to release-tracks.md. Top-of-page intro now flags the two flavors and the badge convention.

Edited: user-docs/guide/getting-started.md — replaced the single-line "download the APK or wait for Play Store" sentence in step 1 with a short two-flavor pitch and a link to release-tracks.md. Did not duplicate the matrix here — just points to it.

Edited: user-docs/.vitepress/config.mts — added Release tracks to the /guide/ sidebar between Installation & Setup and Chat.

Edited: user-docs/.vitepress/theme/index.ts — registered FeatureMatrix as a global Vue component so MD files can use <FeatureMatrix /> without per-file imports (matches the existing HermesFlow registration pattern).

Build verified locally with npx vitepress build — clean compile, all pages render, no errors.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 2 / safety-rails: bridge safety rails

Branch: feature/phase3-zeta-safety-rails (off main @ 8d86a62 which has Wave 1 merged).

What landed. Tier 5 safety for the bridge channel — five enforcement components that together make it OK to actually ship agent device control:

1. Per-app blocklist (BridgeSafetyPreferences.kt) — DataStore-backed set of package names. Ships with a conservative default covering common banking apps (Chase / Wells Fargo / BoA / Revolut / Monzo / Starling), payment apps (Venmo / Cash App / PayPal / Coinbase), password managers (1Password / Bitwarden / LastPass / Dashlane / Keeper), and 2FA apps (Google Authenticator / Authy / Duo). Users edit via BridgeSafetySettingsScreen — searchable LazyColumn of installed apps with checkboxes. Enforcement is in BridgeSafetyManager.checkPackageAllowed(packageName: String?), called by BridgeCommandHandler against HermesAccessibilityService.currentApp; a blocked package fails fast with HTTP 403 {"error": "blocked package <name>"}.

2. Destructive-verb confirmation modal (DestructiveVerbConfirmDialog.kt + BridgeStatusOverlay.kt) — when /tap_text or /type carries a body that matches one of the configurable destructive verbs (default: send, pay, delete, transfer, confirm, submit, post, publish, buy, purchase, charge, withdraw) on a word-boundary regex, BridgeSafetyManager.awaitConfirmation(method, text) suspends the handler coroutine, shows a full-screen Compose modal through a SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW overlay (necessary because the agent can act while the app is backgrounded), and waits on a CompletableDeferred<Boolean> under a withTimeout. Timeout default 30s; timeout = DENY. Fail-closed: if the overlay permission is missing, the check returns false.

3. Auto-disable timer (AutoDisableWorker.kt) — a coroutine Job owned by BridgeSafetyManager with a delay(minutes.toMillis()). Rescheduled on every accepted bridge command. On fire: flips the master toggle off via HermesAccessibilityService.setMasterEnabled(context, false) and posts a one-shot "Bridge auto-disabled after idle" notification through NotificationManagerCompat. Default idle window: 30 min, slider 5..120 min. Deviation from spec: spec called for WorkManager, but androidx.work is not in the classpath and adding the dep is out of scope for this slice. The coroutine-job approach is documented in AutoDisableWorker.kt as the canonical upgrade path if WorkManager is added later.

4. Persistent foreground service (BridgeForegroundService.kt) — plain Service with startForeground(NOTIFICATION_ID, notification, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_SPECIAL_USE) on Android 14+, graceful fallback below. Notification shows "Hermes agent has device control" with two action buttons: Disable (broadcasts back into the service which flips the master toggle) and Settings (opens MainActivity; TODO followup to wire a deep-link extra for direct nav to BridgeSafetySettingsScreen). Started/stopped from BridgeViewModel via a masterToggle.distinctUntilChanged().collect {} observer.

5. Optional status overlay chip (BridgeStatusOverlay.kt) — tiny floating "Hermes active" pill in the top-right corner. Off by default, opt-in via BridgeSafetySettingsScreen. Uses the same SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW pipeline as the confirmation modal — only one WindowManager attachment point per process. The overlay host implements ConfirmationOverlayHost so the safety manager can reach both the chip and the modal through the same singleton.

Files created (8):

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/data/BridgeSafetyPreferences.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/BridgeSafetyManager.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/BridgeForegroundService.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/BridgeStatusOverlay.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/bridge/AutoDisableWorker.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/BridgeSafetySettingsScreen.kt
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/DestructiveVerbConfirmDialog.kt (also hosts BridgeStatusOverlayChip)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/BridgeSafetySummaryCard.kt

Shared-concern files touched (6) — all marked with // === PHASE3-safety-rails: ... === / === END PHASE3-safety-rails ===:

• BridgeCommandHandler.kt — injects safetyManager: BridgeSafetyManager?, runs the three-stage check (blocklist → confirmation → reschedule timer) before dispatching each action.
• AndroidManifest.xml — adds SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW + FOREGROUND_SERVICE_SPECIAL_USE uses-permission + a <service android:name=".bridge.BridgeForegroundService" android:foregroundServiceType="specialUse"/> declaration with the PROPERTY_SPECIAL_USE_FGS_SUBTYPE justification property.
• BridgeScreen.kt — replaces the SafetyPlaceholderCard stub with the real BridgeSafetySummaryCard driven by BridgeSafetyManager.peek()?.settings and .autoDisableAtMs. New onNavigateToBridgeSafety parameter.
• SettingsScreen.kt — adds onNavigateToBridgeSafety callback and a "Bridge safety" SettingsCategoryRow between Notification companion and Media.
• RelayApp.kt — Screen.BridgeSafetySettings data object, composable(route), wires the nav callback from Settings + from Bridge screen.
• BridgeViewModel.kt — observes masterToggle and calls BridgeForegroundService.start/stop, reschedules/cancels the auto-disable timer on toggle changes, and combines the master toggle with statusOverlayEnabled to drive the chip visibility.
• ConnectionViewModel.kt (wiring only, marked) — calls BridgeSafetyManager.install() + BridgeStatusOverlay.install() at construction and passes the manager into BridgeCommandHandler.

Key design notes / blockers / decisions.

• WorkManager not in classpath. Went with a coroutine-owned timer instead of adding a new dependency. AutoDisableWorker.kt documents the upgrade path. This is acceptable because the toggle is in-process — no inter-process scheduling is required, and process death already implies the service is disconnected.

• SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW UX. Users must grant the permission through Settings.ACTION_MANAGE_OVERLAY_PERMISSION before either the confirmation modal or the status chip can display. BridgeSafetySettingsScreen detects via Settings.canDrawOverlays(context) and kicks off the grant flow on first switch tap. Fail-closed: if the permission is missing when a destructive verb fires, BridgeSafetyManager.awaitConfirmation denies the action outright — better to drop a command than to silently allow it. Phase 3 Wave 3 should add a prominent "grant overlay permission" nag on the BridgeScreen when the user enables the master toggle without having granted it.

• Compose in a WindowManager overlay. ComposeView attached via WindowManager.addView doesn't automatically get a ViewTreeLifecycleOwner — we synthesize an always-RESUMED OverlayLifecycleOwner + ViewModelStoreOwner. Skipped SavedStateRegistryOwner because the dialog only uses remember, not rememberSaveable, and androidx.savedstate isn't pinned in the version catalog. If future overlay content needs rememberSaveable, pin that artifact and extend OverlayLifecycleOwner.

• Confirmation coroutine wiring. The safety manager keeps a ConcurrentHashMap<Long, PendingConfirmation> keyed by a monotonic request id. awaitConfirmation registers an entry, asks the overlay host to show the modal, then withTimeout(...) { deferred.await() }. The overlay's Allow / Deny buttons call back with the result. Timeouts dismiss the overlay programmatically. The suspending BridgeCommandHandler.dispatch call is what holds the slot — the relay sees a slow response instead of a premature 403, which matches the intended UX (user gets 30s to react, agent waits).

• accessibility/bridge-ui API dependencies. Relied on: HermesAccessibilityService.currentApp (accessibility, @Volatile String?), HermesAccessibilityService.setMasterEnabled(context, enabled) (accessibility), HermesAccessibilityService.isMasterEnabled() (accessibility), BridgePreferencesRepository pattern (bridge-ui), relayDataStore extension (existing), BridgeViewModel.masterToggle: StateFlow<Boolean> (bridge-ui). All used as-is — no edits in accessibility/bridge-ui territory.

What's next.

• Wire a deep-link extra on MainActivity so BridgeForegroundService.ACTION_OPEN_SETTINGS lands directly on BridgeSafetySettingsScreen (currently opens the app and the user taps through).
• Record BridgeActivityEntry rows for blocked-package / denied-confirmation events so the bridge activity log shows why an agent command failed.
• Wave 3 can add tests: unit tests for the destructive-verb regex word-boundary matching, an instrumented test for the foreground-service lifecycle, and a fake overlay host for awaitConfirmation timeout behavior.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 2 / voice-intents: voice→bridge intent routing (sideload-only, Tier 3)

Wired voice mode to optionally route transcribed utterances through the bridge channel instead of chat. When the user holds the voice button and says "text Sam I'll be 10 min late" on a sideload build, a lightweight keyword classifier recognizes the SMS intent, the voice layer speaks a confirmation ("About to text Sam: I'll be 10 min late. Say cancel to stop."), and a bridge envelope is queued for dispatch after a 5-second cancel window. "Open camera" / "scroll down" / "go back" / etc. execute immediately with no countdown.

Cross-flavor compile pattern. This is the first Wave 2 surface to exercise the googlePlay vs sideload flavor split that agent flavor-split is wiring up in parallel. VoiceBridgeIntentHandler is an interface + sealed IntentResult in main/ so VoiceViewModel has a stable compile-time reference. Two separate implementations ship per-flavor with matching FQCNs and a shared top-level factory function createVoiceBridgeIntentHandler(multiplexer):

• app/src/googlePlay/kotlin/.../VoiceBridgeIntentHandlerImpl.kt — NoopVoiceBridgeIntentHandler always returns IntentResult.NotApplicable, never touches the bridge, never references any device-control / accessibility class. Keeps the Play APK honest with its conservative feature description.
• app/src/sideload/kotlin/.../VoiceBridgeIntentHandlerImpl.kt — RealVoiceBridgeIntentHandler + VoiceIntentClassifier with keyword/regex patterns for SendSms / OpenApp / Tap / Scroll / Back / Home. Destructive intents go through the 5 s countdown; safe intents dispatch immediately.

VoiceViewModel.initialize() calls the factory exactly once; the ViewModel only ever holds the interface reference. No reflection, no runtime flavor check — Gradle picks the right impl at build time via the source-set flavor. The routing call site in processVoiceInput tries the handler first and falls through to chatVm.sendMessage(text) on NotApplicable.

Classifier heuristic. Six intents, first-match-wins, all case-insensitive with a filler-stripping preamble ("hey", "okay", "please", "can you", …):

Intent	Pattern example	Parse
SendSms (with separator)	text <contact> saying <body> / text <contact>: <body> / send a message to <contact> saying <body>	contact, body
SendSms (no separator)	text <contact> <body≥2chars> — conservative: 1-2 word contact, requires a body	contact, body
OpenApp	`open	launch
Tap	`tap	press
Scroll	`scroll (to the)? up	down
Back	`(go	navigate)? back`
Home	`(press	go)? home(?: screen)?`

Design bias: false negatives > false positives. "Can you text me when you're done?" falls through to chat because the SMS regex can't parse a contact + body from it. Anything that doesn't cleanly split into a structured action becomes a chat message. Each pattern is a single named-group regex so Wave 3 tuning is mechanical.

v1 confirmation simplification. Full conversational confirmation ("About to text… say yes or cancel") would need a multi-turn voice state machine we don't have. Instead: destructive intents speak the confirmation via the existing sentence-TTS queue, start a 5 s countdown coroutine, and dispatch unless VoiceViewModel.cancelPendingBridgeIntent() is called first. The overlay's Cancel button wires into that method. Full voice-confirmation is a Wave 3 follow-up (see Phase 3 plan row voice-bridge-confirmation).

Bridge envelope wire shape. Simple and documented so Wave 2 sibling safety-rails (bridge-safety-rails) owns the authoritative schema:

{ channel: "bridge",
  type:    "tool.call",
  payload: { tool: "android_send_sms" | "android_open_app" | ... ,
             args: { ... },
             requires_confirmation: true|false,
             source: "voice" } }

Emission goes through ChannelMultiplexer.send(envelope) — the new bridgeMultiplexer: ChannelMultiplexer? = null parameter on VoiceViewModel.initialize() is optional so existing call sites keep compiling until they're updated to pass the instance. The googlePlay factory ignores the multiplexer entirely.

Files:

New (main):

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentHandler.kt — interface + sealed class IntentResult { Handled, NotApplicable }

New (googlePlay flavor):

• app/src/googlePlay/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentHandlerImpl.kt — NoopVoiceBridgeIntentHandler
• app/src/googlePlay/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentFactory.kt — factory returning the no-op

New (sideload flavor):

• app/src/sideload/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentHandlerImpl.kt — RealVoiceBridgeIntentHandler with v1 countdown + envelope builders
• app/src/sideload/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceBridgeIntentFactory.kt — factory returning the real impl
• app/src/sideload/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/voice/VoiceIntentClassifier.kt — regex-based classifier + VoiceIntent sealed class

Touched (main):

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/VoiceViewModel.kt — new bridgeMultiplexer param on initialize(); factory call at the bottom of init; intent-routing block at the top of processVoiceInput (between the Thinking-state update and the sentence-buffer reset); new cancelPendingBridgeIntent() public method for the overlay's Cancel button. All changes wrapped in // === PHASE3-voice-intents: ... === / // === END PHASE3-voice-intents === markers.

Known cross-worktree dependency. This worktree assumes agent flavor-split's productFlavors { googlePlay; sideload } + BuildFlavor.bridgeTier3 constant lands in build.gradle.kts / FeatureFlags.kt before this branch merges. Without flavor-split's flavor config, Gradle won't resolve the createVoiceBridgeIntentHandler(...) reference from VoiceViewModel because neither flavor source set is active. Order of merges: flavor-split first, then voice-intents (and safety-rails + vision-nav).

Next steps (Wave 2 sibling + Wave 3):

• safety-rails owns the bridge envelope contract — if the wire-level field names change (tool → name, etc.), update VoiceBridgeIntentHandlerImpl.buildXxxEnvelope in one place.
• Overlay wire-up (a follow-up): show IntentResult.Handled.intentLabel in the voice overlay, add a Cancel button that calls cancelPendingBridgeIntent() when requiresConfirmation=true.
• Wave 3 voice-bridge-confirmation: replace the 5 s countdown with a proper multi-turn confirmation ("say yes or cancel" → STT → classifier for yes/no).
• Classifier unit tests: extractNextSentence-style unit tests for VoiceIntentClassifier.classify(). Top-level function already testable without an Application context.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 2 / vision-nav — android_navigate vision-driven navigation tool

Lands the Tier 4 "burner-phone trick, done sanely" plan row. New Hermes tool android_navigate(intent, max_iterations=5) closes the loop on high-level bridge automation: instead of the agent having to know exact node IDs or coordinates, it passes a natural-language intent ("compose a tweet about rainy weather") and the tool loops screenshot → vision model → action → repeat until the model emits done or hits the iteration cap.

Files added:

• plugin/tools/android_navigate.py — main loop + registry registration. Reuses the same _bridge_url()/_auth_headers()/ANDROID_BRIDGE_URL transport layer as android_tool.py so pairing config stays single-sourced. Dispatches parsed actions to /tap_text, /tap, /type, /swipe, /press_key (the HTTP routes Wave 1 stood up). Screenshot per iteration goes through the bridge /screenshot endpoint, then tries plugin.relay.client.register_media() for an opaque token and gracefully falls back to a file:// marker if the relay isn't reachable. Every step records {step, action, params, screenshot_token, reasoning, result} into a trace the agent gets back on both success and failure envelopes. Iteration cap defaults to 5, hard-clamped to ABSOLUTE_MAX_ITERATIONS = 20 so the agent can't accidentally burn capture budget.
• plugin/tools/android_navigate_prompt.py — prompt template + response parser. Parser is case-insensitive, tolerates trailing punctuation on the verb, allows done to omit the PARAMS line, enforces per-verb param shape (e.g. tap needs either (x,y) ints or node_id string), and returns ParsedAction(action="error", reasoning=<why>) on any malformed input so the loop can surface structural failures cleanly.
• plugin/tests/test_android_navigate.py — 35 stdlib-only unittest tests covering all 6 valid actions, every malformed-input branch (empty / missing lines / bad JSON / wrong shape / unknown verb / list-not-object / bad swipe direction), success path (single-step and multi-step), iteration cap, screenshot failure, parse error, action-execution failure, llm_gap envelope, empty intent short-circuit, max_iterations clamping, and schema sanity. Uses only unittest.mock so it runs cleanly via python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_android_navigate without the pytest conftest.py that imports the responses module.

LLM integration — known gap: The plan specifies "vision model integration" but doesn't pick a provider, and the plugin has no published LLM client surface for tools to call. The gateway's run loop is not re-entrant (calling the agent from inside a tool deadlocks the run). Rather than invent a new LLM client and ship an opinionated default, the loop has a call_vision_model injection point. Tests patch it; production either (a) sets HERMES_NAVIGATE_STUB_REPLY for smoke testing, or (b) swaps _default_vision_model for a real client (e.g. Anthropic messages.create with a base64 image block). Until (b) lands, calling android_navigate against a live phone returns a clean {"status": "error", "reason": "llm_gap", ...} envelope so the agent sees exactly why the loop can't run — no silent fakes, no import-time crashes. The _default_vision_model docstring documents the replacement contract.

Tool guardrails (from the plan):

• Never continuous capture — exactly one /screenshot per iteration, only when the tool is invoked.
• Default 5 iterations, hard-clamped ceiling of 20.
• 200 ms settle delay between action and next screenshot; callers needing longer waits use android_wait explicitly.
• intent must be non-empty; empty/whitespace returns an error envelope without touching the bridge.

Files NOT touched: plugin/relay/*, plugin/relay/channels/bridge.py, plugin/tools/android_tool.py, plugin/tools/android_relay.py, plugin/relay/auth.py, plugin/relay/media.py, plugin/relay/voice.py, anything under app/. The slice is self-contained in plugin/tools/ as scoped.

Test results: python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_android_navigate → 35 tests, all pass in ~0.05 s.

2026-04-12 — Dynamic phone-status system prompt block

Replaced the single hardcoded "app context prompt" sentence with a transparent, granular block that reflects real Phase 3 bridge/permission state. The old toggle promised far more than it delivered — one static line, regardless of anything actually happening on the phone. The new block is a master toggle + 4 sub-toggles with a live preview card in Chat Settings.

New file: app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/util/PhoneStatusPromptBuilder.kt — pure function buildPromptBlock(settings, snapshot) returning String?. Returns null when master is off so no empty system message is sent. Defines AppContextSettings (5 booleans) and PhoneSnapshot (11 nullable fields). Output capped under ~100 words; the brief suggests calling android_phone_status for full detail, keeping per-turn token cost down while giving the agent a permission-lit entrypoint.

ConnectionViewModel: Four new DataStore keys alongside the existing KEY_APP_CONTEXT — KEY_APP_CONTEXT_BRIDGE_STATE (default true), KEY_APP_CONTEXT_CURRENT_APP (default false — privacy), KEY_APP_CONTEXT_BATTERY (default false — privacy), KEY_APP_CONTEXT_SAFETY_STATUS (default true). Each gets a StateFlow + setter mirroring the appContextEnabled pattern.

ChatViewModel: Deleted APP_CONTEXT_PROMPT constant, replaced var appContextEnabled: Boolean with var appContextSettings: AppContextSettings. send() now calls buildPromptBlock(appContextSettings, capturePhoneSnapshot()). The capturePhoneSnapshot() helper uses guarded reflection (runCatching on every lookup) to read Phase 3 classes — HermesAccessibilityService.instance, MediaProjectionHolder.projection, BridgeSafetyManager.peek(). The reflection path exists so ChatViewModel compiles cleanly before those classes land in this worktree (they're being built by a parallel agent); once they exist, reads light up with zero further code changes here. Non-Phase-3 sources (battery, overlay permission, notification listener flat-string) use direct platform APIs.

RelayApp.kt: Single LaunchedEffect now keys on all 5 toggles and writes a fresh AppContextSettings into chatViewModel.appContextSettings on any change.

ChatSettingsScreen.kt: Master toggle renamed to "Share phone status with agent". When enabled, AnimatedVisibility reveals 4 sub-toggle rows + a "Preview" Card. The preview uses remember(master, bridgeState, currentApp, battery, safetyStatus) to regenerate exact output text on every toggle change, calling the same buildPromptBlock with a neutral empty snapshot so the user sees the shape without leaking current phone state into the settings screen. Shows "(no system message will be sent)" when builder returns null.

Privacy model: Default configuration sends "mobile-friendly preamble + bridge permission summary + safety rails count" — no package names, no battery level. Users opt in explicitly to each privacy-sensitive field. The android_phone_status tool (being built in a parallel worktree) is the disclosure path for full detail so per-turn cost stays bounded.

Markers: all new blocks tagged // === PHASE3-status: ... === / // === END PHASE3-status === for grep.

2026-04-12 — Add canonical uninstall.sh + bootstrap docs

Companion to the bootstrap injection work below. There was no formal uninstall path before — install.sh is idempotent so most update flows worked, but cleanly removing the plugin (e.g., to test that install.sh works on a truly fresh state) required manually undoing 6 install steps. New uninstall.sh reverses them in opposite order:

1. Stops + disables hermes-relay.service, removes the systemd unit, daemon-reloads
2. Removes ~/.local/bin/hermes-pair shim
3. Scrubs the relay's skills.external_dirs entry from ~/.hermes/config.yaml via the same yaml parsing pattern install.sh uses, with a .bak backup before write — preserves all other entries
4. Removes ~/.hermes/plugins/hermes-relay symlink + any legacy stales (hermes-android, etc.)
5. Removes hermes_relay_bootstrap.pth from venv site-packages, pip uninstall hermes-relay
6. Removes ~/.hermes/hermes-relay clone (sanity-checked: refuses to delete a directory that doesn't have .git + install.sh)

What it never touches: ~/.hermes/.env (other tools authenticate against this), ~/.hermes/state.db (sessions DB shared with the gateway), ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/ (the agent itself), ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv/ (only our .pth is removed, not the venv core), and ~/.hermes/hermes-relay-qr-secret (kept by default — the QR signing identity is precious; opt in to wipe with --remove-secret).

Flags: --dry-run previews without changing anything, --keep-clone leaves the git tree in place, --remove-secret wipes the QR secret. Help text: bash uninstall.sh --help.

install.sh header docs updated to mention bootstrap injection (step 2) and the uninstall path. Success summary now prints both git pull && bash install.sh for updates and bash uninstall.sh --dry-run for previewing removal. README.md and user-docs/guide/getting-started.md got equivalent updates with the bootstrap explanation + uninstall flags.

2026-04-12 — Bootstrap injection: vanilla upstream hermes-agent now works with the plugin

Closed the "you must run our hermes-agent fork to get full features" gap. The Codename-11 fork (feat/api-server-enhancements, 13 commits, submitted as PR #8556) adds 20 management endpoints — /api/sessions/* CRUD, /api/memory, /api/skills, /api/config, /api/available-models, /api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream — that the Android app depends on. Until #8556 merges and reaches a release, vanilla upstream users were missing the sessions browser, conversation-history-on-restart, personality picker, command palette, and memory management.

The fix: a single .pth file that runs at Python interpreter startup. New hermes_relay_bootstrap/ package ships with the plugin, gets loaded by Python's site module before anything in hermes-agent imports aiohttp.web. The bootstrap installs a sys.meta_path finder that wraps the loader for aiohttp.web. When the import resolves, our wrapper replaces web.Application with a thin subclass. The subclass overrides __setitem__ to detect app["api_server_adapter"] = self — the line at gateway/platforms/api_server.py:1735 where the gateway gives us a reference to the adapter while the router is still mutable. At that moment we feature-detect by route path and bind ~14 management handlers from _handlers.py directly onto the same router. The gateway then continues with its own route registrations and starts the server. From the outside, vanilla upstream now serves all the fork's management endpoints.

What is NOT injected and why: the chat-stream handler (/api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream). It depends on _create_agent and agent.run_conversation with multimodal content — the riskiest cross-cutting upstream methods that the fork may have implicitly modified. Instead, chat goes through standard upstream /v1/runs, which already emits structured tool.started/tool.completed SSE events. This is arguably an upgrade — /v1/runs has live tool events whereas the sessions chat-stream path required a post-stream message-history reload to render tool cards. The Android client adapts via a new streamingEndpoint = "auto" mode (default for new installs).

Files added:

• hermes_relay_bootstrap/__init__.py (~30 lines) — installs the meta_path finder
• hermes_relay_bootstrap/_patch.py (~170 lines) — _AioHttpWebFinder, _PatchingLoader, _PatchedApplication, _maybe_register_routes with feature detection by route path
• hermes_relay_bootstrap/_handlers.py (~500 lines) — 14 ported management handlers + helpers (sessions CRUD, memory CRUD, skills, config, available-models). Handlers take adapter as a closure parameter rather than being bound methods, so we don't pollute upstream's class.
• hermes_relay_bootstrap.pth — single line: import hermes_relay_bootstrap

Files changed:

• pyproject.toml — added hermes_relay_bootstrap* to packages.find include list
• install.sh step 2 — copies the .pth into the venv's site-packages/ after pip install -e. Verified empirically: setuptools' editable install does NOT ship data-files to site-packages reliably (it puts them in venv/data/ instead, where Python's site module never looks). Manual copy is necessary.
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../HermesApiClient.kt — new ServerCapabilities data class + probeCapabilities() method that returns per-endpoint presence. Uses HEAD-method probes (initially tried OPTIONS but the gateway's CORS middleware intercepts preflight and returns 403 for both existing and missing paths — discovered during the live install test on 2026-04-12). Treats any non-404 status as "route exists." detectChatMode() becomes a thin compatibility wrapper around probeCapabilities().toChatMode().
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ConnectionViewModel.kt — exposes serverCapabilities: StateFlow<ServerCapabilities>, populates it from probeCapabilities() in rebuildApiClient(), adds resolveStreamingEndpoint(preference) helper that collapses "auto" to a concrete "sessions" or "runs" based on the latest snapshot. Default endpoint preference for new installs flipped from "sessions" to "auto".
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ChatViewModel.kt — streamingEndpoint default flipped from "sessions" to "runs" (the safer fallback before RelayApp pushes the resolved value).
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/RelayApp.kt — LaunchedEffect(streamingEndpoint, serverCapabilities) recomputes the resolved endpoint when either changes, pushes into ChatViewModel.
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/screens/ChatSettingsScreen.kt — Settings → Streaming endpoint dropdown gains an "Auto" option (alongside Sessions/Runs). Helper text dynamically shows which path Auto is currently using.
• CLAUDE.md — non-standard endpoints table rewritten to show all three "provided by" mechanisms (fork, bootstrap, upstream-merged), plus key files entries for bootstrap + capability detection.
• docs/decisions.md — new ADR 16 covering the runtime injection rationale, options considered (A/B/C/D), risks accepted, removal path.
• vault/Hermes-Relay.md — new "Bootstrap Injection Architecture" section with the compatibility matrix; updated "Hermes Integration" table to show two install paths (fork or bootstrap).

Compatibility matrix (all three combinations safe to ship the bootstrap with):

Gateway version	Bootstrap behavior	Result
Codename-11 fork (axiom)	Detects existing /api/sessions, no-ops	Fork serves everything natively ✓
Vanilla upstream main	Detects no /api/sessions, injects routes	Bootstrap-injected endpoints serve ✓
Post-PR-#8556 upstream-merged	Detects existing /api/sessions, no-ops	Upstream serves everything natively ✓

Removal path (when PR #8556 reaches a released hermes-agent version): delete hermes_relay_bootstrap/, delete hermes_relay_bootstrap.pth, remove the .pth drop block from install.sh. The Android client probeCapabilities() + streamingEndpoint = "auto" plumbing stays — it's permanent infrastructure that handles mixed-version deployments.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 1.5 — bridge-server-followup + notif-listener-followup (post-merge polish)

Two small follow-ups discovered during the Wave 1 agent-team merge. Both gate clean smoke testing of the merged Wave 1 work in Android Studio.

bridge-server-followup — POST /media/upload route on the relay. Agent accessibility's ScreenCapture posts screenshot bytes via multipart to /media/upload, but bridge-server only ported the existing /media/register (loopback + path-based). Phone has no shared filesystem with the relay, so /media/register was unusable for the bridge screenshot path. The new endpoint accepts a file multipart field with bearer auth (every paired phone has a session token), streams the bytes to a NamedTemporaryFile under tempfile.gettempdir() (which is in the default MediaRegistry.allowed_roots), enforces MediaRegistry.max_size_bytes while reading (returns 413 on overflow), then hands the path off to MediaRegistry.register() so token issuance / expiry / LRU eviction / GET /media/{token} are byte-for-byte identical to the loopback path. Marker block: # === PHASE3-bridge-server-followup: /media/upload === / # === END PHASE3-bridge-server-followup === in plugin/relay/server.py. tempfile import added at the top. Route registered next to /media/register. py_compile clean.

notif-listener-followup — wire HermesNotificationCompanion.multiplexer + Settings nav row. Agent notif-listener flagged two small touch-ups in its handoff:

1. ConnectionViewModel.init now sets HermesNotificationCompanion.multiplexer = multiplexer once, immediately after the bridge handler registration. The companion service buffers up to 50 envelopes in its own pendingEnvelopes queue while the slot is null, so wiring it from here (rather than at service-bind time) is safe — the buffer drains on the next onNotificationPosted once the slot is set. Marker: // === PHASE3-notif-listener-followup: notification companion multiplexer wiring === / // === END PHASE3-notif-listener-followup ===.
2. SettingsScreen gains a new onNavigateToNotificationCompanion: () -> Unit callback parameter and a SettingsCategoryRow between Voice mode and Media (Icons.Filled.Notifications, "Notification companion", "Let your assistant triage notifications you've shared"). RelayApp adds Screen.NotificationCompanionSettings (route settings/notifications), wires the new callback in the SettingsScreen call site, and registers a composable(...) that hosts NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen(onBack = popBackStack). Both new imports added.

After this entry the Bridge tab + Notification companion screen are both reachable through the normal navigation tree, and accessibility's screenshot pipeline has a working server-side endpoint. Wave 2 (safety-rails safety, voice-intents voice-bridge, vision-nav vision) is unblocked once both build flavors are confirmed to compile in Android Studio.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 1 / bridge-server — Migrated legacy bridge relay into unified relay (port 8767)

Retired the standalone bridge relay (plugin/tools/android_relay.py + the duplicate top-level plugin/android_relay.py, both listening on port 8766) and folded its functionality into the unified Hermes-Relay on port 8767 as the bridge channel. The wire protocol (bridge.command / bridge.response / bridge.status) stays byte-for-byte identical — only the transport changed. Agents accessibility, bridge-ui, notif-listener can now build against a single port.

• plugin/relay/channels/bridge.py — replaced the stub with a real BridgeHandler. One handler instance per RelayServer; holds phone_ws + pending: dict[request_id, Future] behind an asyncio.Lock. handle_command(method, path, params, body) mints a request_id, registers the future, sends a bridge.command envelope, and awaits a response with 30s timeout (matches the legacy android_relay._RESPONSE_TIMEOUT). handle(ws, envelope) opportunistically latches phone_ws and dispatches bridge.response/bridge.status. detach_ws(ws, reason) fails all pending futures with ConnectionError so HTTP callers don't hang when the phone drops.
• plugin/relay/server.py — added 14 HTTP routes (/ping, /screen, /screenshot, /get_apps, /apps [legacy alias], /current_app, /tap, /tap_text, /type, /swipe, /open_app, /press_key, /scroll, /wait, /setup) each delegating to _bridge_dispatch → server.bridge.handle_command. BridgeError → 503/504/502 depending on message. Wired server.bridge.detach_ws(ws) into _on_disconnect so phone drops instantly fail in-flight commands instead of hanging to the 30s timeout. All additions are bracketed by # === PHASE3-bridge-server: ... === / # === END PHASE3-bridge-server === markers so the Agent notif-listener notification-listener merges are mechanical.
• plugin/android_tool.py + plugin/tools/android_tool.py — BRIDGE_URL default changed from http://localhost:8766 to http://localhost:8767 (both copies; plugin/android_tool.py is the one imported by plugin/__init__.py, plugin/tools/android_tool.py is the standalone-toolset copy). _relay_port() falls back through ANDROID_RELAY_PORT → RELAY_PORT → 8767. android_setup() rewritten: no longer imports the deleted android_relay module, instead probes http://localhost:<port>/health to verify the unified relay is up and returns a structured error if not. Env-var side effects preserved so the existing test_android_tool.py::TestSetup still passes.
• plugin/android_relay.py + plugin/tools/android_relay.py — DELETED. Both copies of the standalone relay are gone.
• plugin/tests/test_bridge_channel.py — new unittest suite (7 tests) covering envelope routing, future resolution, timeout cleanup, disconnect cleanup, send-failure cleanup, and the legacy-timeout regression guard. Uses a _FakeWs stand-in and bypasses the pytest conftest.py that imports responses. Run with python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_bridge_channel. All 7 green locally; existing test_relay_media_routes / test_qr_sign / test_session_grants / test_media_registry still pass (22 + 47 assertions) so create_app + route registration hold.

Auth model judgment call: the bridge HTTP routes are unauthenticated at the HTTP layer, matching the legacy standalone relay. Defensible because (a) the trust boundary is unchanged — only same-host processes reach localhost:8767, (b) a disconnected/unpaired phone naturally causes every call to fail with 503, and (c) the bridge grant is already tracked per-session in Session.grants["bridge"] so Wave 2 (safety-rails) can add a bearer wrapper without touching the handler. Noted inline in the PHASE3-bridge-server block so Agent safety-rails can find it.

Branch: feature/phase3-alpha-bridge-server-migration.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 1 / flavor-split — googlePlay + sideload build flavors

Agent flavor-split (bridge-flavor-split) adds the Gradle flavor split that the Phase 3 Bridge channel needs before any accessibility code lands. Google Play reviews AccessibilityService heavily, so Phase 3 ships two parallel release tracks from one codebase: a conservative googlePlay flavor with a notifications-and-confirmations use-case description, and a sideload flavor with the full agent-control description for GitHub Releases / F-Droid / ADB distribution.

Scope of this change:

• app/build.gradle.kts — flavorDimensions += "track" with two product flavors. The sideload flavor carries applicationIdSuffix = ".sideload" and versionNameSuffix = "-sideload" so both tracks can coexist on the same device during Phase 3 testing. The googlePlay flavor keeps the canonical com.hermesandroid.relay applicationId so existing v0.2.0 Play Store installs upgrade cleanly and Play Console keeps its release history. Decision trade-off: power users with both installed will see two launcher icons until we differentiate labels in a follow-up.
• app/src/googlePlay/* — flavor manifest overlay declaring .accessibility.BridgeAccessibilityService (owned by Agent accessibility in src/main/), conservative accessibility_service_config.xml (event subset: typeWindowStateChanged|typeWindowContentChanged|typeViewClicked, flagDefault only, no gestures, canRetrieveWindowContent=true), and a11y_description_googleplay targeted at Play Store policy review.
• app/src/sideload/* — flavor manifest overlay, full-capability accessibility_service_config.xml (typeAllMask, flagRetrieveInteractiveWindows|flagReportViewIds|flagRequestTouchExplorationMode, canPerformGestures=true), and a11y_description_sideload with explicit voice/vision/logging language.
• FeatureFlags.kt — new BuildFlavor object with current / displayName / six bridgeTier1..6 flags. Tiers 1, 2, 5 are baseline-true for both tracks. Tiers 3 (voice-first), 4 (vision-first), 6 (ambitious future) are get() = current == SIDELOAD so UI code can do a single if (BuildFlavor.bridgeTier3) check and R8 can fold the branch at release-build time for the Play track.
• AboutScreen.kt — added a small "Track: Google Play" / "Track: Sideload" row under the existing Version row (which owns the 7-tap dev-options reveal). Marked with === PHASE3-flavor-split === banners so bridge-ui and notif-listener can land their own additions without merge conflicts.

Not shipped in this change: the actual BridgeAccessibilityService class (Agent accessibility) and any tier-gated UI surfaces (Agents bridge-ui/notif-listener). The manifests reference .accessibility.BridgeAccessibilityService with tools:ignore="MissingClass" so the Gradle + AAPT check doesn't block Agent accessibility's landing.

Branch: feature/phase3-beta-bridge-flavor-split.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 1 / accessibility — accessibility runtime (service + reader + executor + capture)

Wave 1 Agent accessibility (accessibility-runtime) landing the phone-side execution layer for the bridge channel. Five new files under a new com.hermesandroid.relay.accessibility package plus BridgeCommandHandler under network/handlers:

• HermesAccessibilityService — master AccessibilityService subclass. Self-registers as a @Volatile singleton on onServiceConnected, clears on unbind/destroy. Caches the foregrounded package from TYPE_WINDOW_STATE_CHANGED events (the only event type we consume — content-change events fire thousands/min and we read the tree on demand via rootInActiveWindow). Master enable flag lives in DataStore (bridge_master_enabled) so UI + safety rails can toggle it without killing the service.
• ScreenReader — UI tree → ScreenContent(rootBounds, nodes[], truncated). @Serializable output; one ScreenNode per interesting node (non-blank text, content description, clickable/longClickable/scrollable/editable). Hard caps: MAX_NODES=512, MAX_TEXT_LEN=2000 per field. findNodeBoundsByText and findFocusedInput helpers for the executor. Recycles child nodes in a try/finally pattern per-iteration.
• ActionExecutor — tap/tapText/swipe/scroll via GestureDescription wrapped in suspendCancellableCoroutine so the suspend form actually waits for GestureResultCallback.onCompleted. typeText uses ACTION_SET_TEXT with a Bundle arg. pressKey maps a curated string vocabulary (home/back/recents/notifications/quick_settings/power_dialog/lock_screen) to AccessibilityService.GLOBAL_ACTION_* constants — we deliberately don't accept raw KeyEvent codes so agents can't inject arbitrary keypresses. wait(ms) clamped to 15s. Every method returns ActionResult(ok, data, error) so the handler can map 1:1 to HTTP-style status codes.
• ScreenCapture — MediaProjection → VirtualDisplay → ImageReader → PNG bytes → multipart upload to POST /media/upload on the relay. Crops rowStride padding before Bitmap.copyPixelsFromBuffer. 2.5s capture timeout. MediaProjectionHolder singleton holds the per-session grant — Bridge UI (Agent bridge-ui) is responsible for the ActivityResultLauncher flow that calls onGranted(resultCode, data). Registers a MediaProjection.Callback to null the holder when the system revokes.
• BridgeStatusReporter — coroutine that emits bridge.status envelopes every 30s with screen_on (via PowerManager.isInteractive), battery (BatteryManager.BATTERY_PROPERTY_CAPACITY with a sticky-intent fallback for OEM quirks), current_app (from the service singleton), and accessibility_enabled (true when the service instance is non-null). Owned by ConnectionViewModel.
• BridgeCommandHandler — routes inbound bridge.command envelopes to the executor and emits bridge.response. Wire paths: /ping (works without the service), /tap, /tap_text, /type, /swipe, /scroll, /press_key, /wait, /screen, /screenshot, /current_app. Gates everything except /ping and /current_app on the master-enable toggle, returning 503 if the service isn't connected or 403 if the soft master is off. /screen serializes the full ScreenContent via kotlinx.serialization.json.

Wired into ChannelMultiplexer.kt via a // === PHASE3-accessibility === marked section (simplified the existing bridge branch that was stubbed with a TODO), and ConnectionViewModel.kt gets a matching marker block that instantiates ScreenCapture, BridgeCommandHandler, and BridgeStatusReporter, registers the handler, and starts the reporter. AndroidManifest.xml declares the service with BIND_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICE permission + intent filter + @xml/accessibility_service_config meta-data (the XML itself is flavor-provided by Agent flavor-split). Added FOREGROUND_SERVICE, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MEDIA_PROJECTION, and POST_NOTIFICATIONS for the Wave 2 persistent-notification work.

Known blocker for bridge-ui to wire: MediaProjectionManager.createScreenCaptureIntent() requires an Activity-scoped result. ScreenCapture.createConsentIntent() exposes the intent; the Bridge screen needs an ActivityResultLauncher<Intent> that forwards the result to MediaProjectionHolder.onGranted(context, resultCode, data). Until that lands, /screenshot returns 503 with a clear error message.

Known blocker for bridge-server to fix: the relay's /media/register endpoint is loopback-only and path-based (see plugin/relay/media.py). The phone can't use it — there's no shared filesystem. ScreenCapture.uploadViaMultipart POSTs to /media/upload (new endpoint; mirrors the /voice/transcribe multipart pattern) which doesn't exist yet. Until bridge-server ships it, /screenshot surfaces a 404 with the exact message "relay /media/upload endpoint not found — server needs Phase 3 bridge-server migration". Token extraction uses the same {"ok": true, "token": "..."} shape as /media/register.

Branch: feature/phase3-accessibility-runtime.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 1 / bridge-ui — BridgeScreen rewrite (bridge-screen-ui)

Replaced the BridgeScreen "Coming Soon" placeholder with the real Tier-1 control surface from the Phase 3 plan. Wave 1 Agent bridge-ui (bridge-screen-ui) deliverable — the UI scaffold is now ready to render whatever state Agent accessibility's HermesAccessibilityService exposes once its runtime lands.

New files:

• app/src/main/kotlin/.../data/BridgePreferences.kt — DataStore repo with bridge_master_enabled boolean and serialized bridge_activity_log JSON list (capped at 100 entries). Mirrors VoicePreferences.kt / MediaSettings.kt style. Uses lenient Json for forward-compat.
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../viewmodel/BridgeViewModel.kt — AndroidViewModel exposing masterToggle, bridgeStatus, permissionStatus, activityLog StateFlows. Reads a11y service enablement via Settings.Secure.ENABLED_ACCESSIBILITY_SERVICES, overlay via Settings.canDrawOverlays, notification listener via enabled_notification_listeners. Seeds BridgeStatus on init from PowerManager.isInteractive + BatteryManager.BATTERY_PROPERTY_CAPACITY so the card isn't empty before accessibility lands. Four explicit TODO(accessibility-handoff) markers documenting the StateFlow/class-name/activity-writer surface that accessibility needs to expose for final wiring.
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/components/BridgeMasterToggle.kt — headline Switch card with status inlines (device / battery / screen / current app), explanation dialog (required by Play Store a11y review), and a11y-granted gate so users can't flip it on before enabling the service.
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/components/BridgeStatusCard.kt — standalone status card with ConnectionStatusBadge integration. Usable independently of the master toggle so safety-rails can re-arrange the cards without losing state.
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/components/BridgePermissionChecklist.kt — four-row checklist (Accessibility / Screen Capture / Overlay / Notification Listener) with tap-to-open Intent launchers wrapped in runCatching for OEM skin safety. ACTION_ACCESSIBILITY_SETTINGS, ACTION_MANAGE_OVERLAY_PERMISSION with package URI, and the direct enabled_notification_listeners intent string.
• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/components/BridgeActivityLog.kt — scrollable LazyColumn (bounded at heightIn(max = 320.dp)) with tap-to-expand row showing full timestamp, status, result text, and optional screenshot token. java.time.DateTimeFormatter for HH:mm:ss / yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss. Stubbed screenshot thumbnail rendering with a TODO pointing at accessibility's MediaRegistry upload path.

Shared-concern edits (marked with PHASE3-bridge-ui: banners):

• app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/RelayApp.kt — the existing BridgeScreen() call wraps in the bridge-ui marker. Signature compatible: BridgeScreen defaults its ViewModel via viewModel(), so no new nav-graph plumbing needed.

Each new component carries a @Preview (or two — e.g., BridgeMasterTogglePreviewOn vs PreviewBlocked) for iterating in Android Studio's preview pane without rebuilding the whole app.

accessibility-handoff points (in priority order, documented in BridgeViewModel KDoc):

1. bridgeStatus StateFlow — bridge-ui stubs a best-effort read from system APIs; accessibility replaces with the real HermesAccessibilityService status flow.
2. A11Y_SERVICE_CLASS constant — bridge-ui hard-codes "com.hermesandroid.relay.accessibility.HermesAccessibilityService". accessibility confirms the final FQCN.
3. recordActivity write path — accessibility's command dispatcher calls BridgeViewModel.recordActivity(entry) on every bridge.command to populate the activity log. Until then the log stays empty and the empty- state copy shows.
4. Master toggle read from accessibility — accessibility's service reads bridge_master_enabled from BridgePreferencesRepository.settings and treats it as the runtime disable switch. No extra wiring needed from bridge-ui; accessibility just imports the repo.

Build-flavor flags (BuildFlavor.bridgeTierN from flavor-split) are not referenced yet — this worktree pre-dates flavor-split's landing. Once flavor-split's object lands on main, bridge-ui's components remain compatible (they don't tier-gate anything; Tier 1 is always-on in both flavors per the plan).

Safety card is a placeholder stub — Agent safety-rails (Wave 2) owns the real safety UI. bridge-ui's SafetyPlaceholderCard just says "Configure in Bridge Safety Settings" with a Wave-2 teaser subtitle.

Branch: feature/phase3-delta-bridge-screen-ui.

2026-04-12 — Phase 3 / Wave 1 / notif-listener — notification companion (opt-in triage helper)

Adds an opt-in helper that lets the user's Hermes assistant read notifications they've explicitly granted access to via Android's standard NotificationListenerService API — the same one Wear OS, Android Auto, and Tasker have used for over a decade. Disabled by default; the user controls grant + revoke via Android Settings → Notification access.

Three pieces, all marked with PHASE3-notif-listener block markers in shared files:

1. Phone — NotificationListenerService + Compose settings screen. New app/src/main/kotlin/.../notifications/ package with HermesNotificationCompanion (the bound service) + NotificationModels (@Serializable NotificationEntry) + ui/screens/NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen (About / Status / Test sections, mirrors VoiceSettingsScreen style). The service buffers up to 50 envelopes in a ConcurrentLinkedQueue if companion.multiplexer isn't wired yet (cold-start ordering), drains on the next onNotificationPosted, then sends via multiplexer.sendNotification(envelope) — a thin new wrapper in ChannelMultiplexer that fast-paths to no-op when sendCallback == null (relay offline). Notifications with empty title+text are skipped (background-sync placeholders that just confuse the LLM). The Status row uses LifecycleEventObserver(ON_RESUME) so the grant state updates immediately when the user comes back from Android Settings.

2. Server — bounded in-memory deque. New plugin/relay/channels/notifications.py::NotificationsChannel with recent: collections.deque[dict] capped at 100 entries via maxlen (LRU-by-time eviction for free). handle() dispatches notification.posted envelopes to handle_envelope() which appends; get_recent(limit) returns newest-first with limit clamped to [1, max_entries]. Wired into RelayServer.__init__ as self.notifications and dispatched in _on_message for channel == "notifications". The cache is in-memory only and lost on restart by design — same semantics as a smartwatch out of range.

3. Agent tool — android_notifications_recent(limit=20). New plugin/tools/android_notifications.py registers the tool into the tools.registry (with the try/except ImportError pattern matching android_tool.py). It hits http://127.0.0.1:8767/notifications/recent?limit=N over loopback via stdlib urllib.request — no auth needed because handle_notifications_recent skips bearer for loopback callers (matches the /media/register and /pairing/register trust model). Remote callers still go through _require_bearer_session. The tool docstring explicitly frames it as "List recent notifications the user has shared with this assistant" so the LLM treats absence as "not granted yet" rather than an error.

Files touched:

• New: plugin/relay/channels/notifications.py, plugin/tools/android_notifications.py, app/src/main/kotlin/.../notifications/HermesNotificationCompanion.kt, app/src/main/kotlin/.../notifications/NotificationModels.kt, app/src/main/kotlin/.../ui/screens/NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen.kt
• Edited (additive only, marker-blocked): plugin/relay/server.py (import + handler init + HTTP route + dispatch + route registration), app/src/main/kotlin/.../network/ChannelMultiplexer.kt (sendNotification wrapper), app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml (service entry with BIND_NOTIFICATION_LISTENER_SERVICE permission), app/src/main/res/values/strings.xml (notification_companion_label)
• Docs: CLAUDE.md Key Files table (8 new rows / additive notes), DEVLOG.md (this entry)

Decisions:

• No new session grant type. Spec explicitly said don't add notifications to auth.py grants — this is opt-in via Android system permission, not via per-channel session grant. Reuses the existing chat grant trust boundary.
• Loopback bypass for the tool. The route's spec said "bearer auth gated like /media/*", but the tool is in-process on the host, so we mirror /media/register's loopback gate: 127.0.0.1 callers skip the bearer check, remote callers still require a session token. This means the tool doesn't need to grovel through the relay's session store to mint a token.
• Drop on relay-offline rather than buffer at the multiplexer. A wearable doesn't replay notifications it missed while out of range; we don't either. The cold-start buffer in the service is for the much shorter "service bound but multiplexer not wired yet" window.
• activeNotifications for the Test button, not a relay round-trip. Lets the user verify the listener is bound even if the relay is unreachable, which is the more common failure mode at first-grant time.

Validation: python -m py_compile plugin/relay/channels/notifications.py plugin/tools/android_notifications.py plugin/relay/server.py → OK. Kotlin compile happens on the next Android Studio run.

Branch: feature/phase3-epsilon-notification-companion (off worktree-agent-a84b51cc).

Next: wire HermesNotificationCompanion.multiplexer from ConnectionViewModel after relay handshake (one-line touch), add a Settings entry-point row that navigates to NotificationCompanionSettingsScreen, and (Phase 3 follow-up) consider a per-package allow/deny list so the user can mute social-media spam from the listener pipeline before it ever hits the relay.

2026-04-12 — Fix: TTS waveform stays alive through multi-sentence playback

The waveform was flatlinining after the first sentence while audio kept playing. Root cause: maybeAutoResume() fired after every sentence in the TTS consumer loop. The SSE stream finishes before TTS plays all queued sentences, so streamObserverJob?.isActive was already false → state flipped to Idle → amplitude bridge stopped → waveform died. Fix: restructured TTS consumer from for loop to while + tryReceive peek. maybeAutoResume only fires when the queue is actually drained (tryReceive returns failure), not between sentences. Between sentences within the same response, tryReceive succeeds immediately and the consumer skips the Idle transition. Additionally, the consumer re-asserts Speaking state before each synthesis call to handle the edge case where the queue was briefly empty between observer pushes.

2026-04-12 — Classified error feedback across voice/chat/settings/pairing

Ended the "error: unknown" era. New RelayErrorClassifier.kt converts any Throwable → HumanError(title, body, retryable, actionLabel) based on exception type + context tag. Branch order: UnknownHostException → ConnectException → SocketTimeoutException → SSLException → SecurityException → IllegalStateException → IOException (message-scan for HTTP 401/403/404/413/500/503) → default. SSL before IOException is load-bearing since SSLPeerUnverifiedException extends IOException. Context tags (transcribe, synthesize, voice_config, record, pair, save_and_test, media_fetch, send_message) shape the title and drive 404 body specialization.

Global SnackbarHost via LocalSnackbarHost: CompositionLocal<SnackbarHostState> at RelayApp scope — every screen can toast via LocalSnackbarHost.current.showHumanError(err). Both VoiceViewModel and ChatViewModel gained errorEvents: SharedFlow<HumanError> (one-shot events, replay=0, buffer=4, DROP_OLDEST). 5 voice error sites + 4 chat error sites converted to use the classifier. Mic permission banner in ChatScreen rebuilt with "Open Settings" action. ConnectionSettingsScreen Save & Test and manual pair now show classified errors.

2026-04-12 — Voice polish: reactive waveform, pill edges, stop semantics, enter/exit chimes

Comprehensive polish pass on voice mode addressing issues surfaced during live testing:

• Waveform sensitivity: four layers of damping were compounding. Fixed at every stage: perceptual curve in VoiceRecorder (noise-floor + speech-ceiling + sqrt), attack/release envelope follower in VoiceViewModel (0.75/0.10 at 60Hz), removed the Compose spring in VoiceWaveform, amplitude-driven phase velocity via withFrameNanos ticker (speeds up 3.5× at peak amplitude).
• Pill edges: dual-technique merge — geometric sin(π·t) taper forces wave to centerY at endpoints + BlendMode.DstIn horizontal gradient mask in saveLayer. The Conjure pill approach (dark gradient overlay against solid background) does not work on a translucent overlay, hence the layer technique.
• TTS replying to wrong turn: ignoreAssistantId captures the pre-send last-assistant-id so the stream observer doesn't replay the previous turn's response. Root cause: StateFlow.collect replays current value on subscribe, and the current value at subscribe time still has the previous assistant message.
• Stop semantics: interruptSpeaking() rewritten to drain queue + stop player + chatViewModel.cancelStream() + cancel all jobs → Idle (not Listening). Old version only paused playback; SSE kept feeding ttsQueue.
• Enter/exit chimes: new VoiceSfxPlayer.kt — pre-synthesized 200ms PCM sweeps (440→660 Hz ascending enter, mirror exit) via AudioTrack.MODE_STATIC. Phase-accumulated to avoid chirp artifacts.
• Stop button color: hardcoded vivid red Color(0xFFE53935) for both Listening and Speaking states (Material 3 dark colorScheme.error resolved to pale pink).
• Scrollable response: overlay response Column now weight(1f, fill=false) + verticalScroll.
• NaN guards: VoicePlayer.computeRms and VoiceViewModel.sanitizeAmplitude — Float.coerceIn silently passes NaN per IEEE 754.
• Gradle logcat task: silenceAndroidViewLogs Exec task hooked via finalizedBy on all install* tasks — runs adb shell setprop log.tag.View SILENT to suppress Compose's Android 15 setRequestedFrameRate=NaN spam.

2026-04-12 — Relay startup: Python-side .env bootstrap + systemd user service

Fixed a drift-class bug where the relay would 500 on /voice/transcribe with STT provider 'openai' configured but no API key available after any restart that wasn't preceded by a manual source ~/.hermes/.env. Root cause: the relay was run as a detached nohup process, which inherits whatever env the launching shell happens to have exported — not what's in ~/.hermes/.env. The gateway already solves this via hermes_cli/main.py:144 calling load_hermes_dotenv(project_env=...) at import time, which is why its user systemd unit carries no EnvironmentFile= directive. The relay was missing that pattern entirely.

New: plugin/relay/_env_bootstrap.py

A tiny helper (55 lines) exposing load_hermes_env() -> list[Path]. Preferred path: from hermes_cli.env_loader import load_hermes_dotenv and call it with defaults — keeps precedence and encoding fallbacks (latin-1 on UnicodeDecodeError) in exact lockstep with hermes-agent. Fallback path: direct python-dotenv against $HERMES_HOME/.env (or ~/.hermes/.env when unset) with override=True. Silent no-op in stripped-down containers that explicitly provide env via docker run -e …. Both entry points — plugin/relay/__main__.py and the legacy relay_server/__main__.py shim — call load_hermes_env() before importing .server, so anything in the module-import chain that reads os.getenv at module level sees the same environment regardless of launcher.

New: systemd user unit matching the gateway's shape

Rewrote relay_server/hermes-relay.service from scratch. The old template was a system-level unit hardcoded to a fixed /home/<user>/hermes-relay path with /usr/bin/python3 — not usable as-is. New template is a user unit with %h expansion so it's user-agnostic:

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=%h/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv/bin/python -m plugin.relay --no-ssl --log-level INFO
WorkingDirectory=%h/.hermes/hermes-relay
Environment="PATH=%h/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"
Environment="VIRTUAL_ENV=%h/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv"
Environment="HERMES_HOME=%h/.hermes"
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
...
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

No EnvironmentFile= on purpose — _env_bootstrap.py handles that. Matches the gateway unit's env directives (PATH, VIRTUAL_ENV, HERMES_HOME) + restart policy (StartLimitIntervalSec=600, StartLimitBurst=5) + log destination (StandardOutput=journal). User target so it lives in ~/.config/systemd/user/ and doesn't need sudo.

install.sh step [6/6] — optional systemd install

Added a final installer step that idempotently drops the unit into ~/.config/systemd/user/, runs daemon-reload, and enable --nows the service. Skipped gracefully on:

• Hosts without systemctl (macOS, some BSDs)
• Hosts where systemctl --user show-environment fails (bare chroots, WSL without systemd, containers without a user bus)
• $HERMES_RELAY_NO_SYSTEMD set (explicit opt-out for users who prefer their own process supervisor)

If an orphan nohup-launched python -m plugin.relay is already holding :8767, the installer warns the user to kill it first rather than racing. A parting hint about loginctl enable-linger $USER for users who want the relay to survive SSH logout.

After install, the update cycle is now a single command:

cd ~/.hermes/hermes-relay && git pull
systemctl --user restart hermes-relay

No pkill / nohup / disown dance, no manual env sourcing, no stale-key drift on restart.

Docs surface updated

• docs/relay-server.md — new Quick Start with install.sh as the recommended path, manual-run and Docker sections preserved, new .env auto-loading subsection explaining precedence + why there's no EnvironmentFile=.
• user-docs/reference/relay-server.md — mirror of the above in user-facing style, plus two new troubleshooting entries (voice 500 "no API key available" → check .env + restart, and service stops on SSH logout → loginctl enable-linger).
• CLAUDE.md Server Deployment section — relay is now listed as hermes-relay.service (user unit), the restart command is systemctl --user restart hermes-relay, the verification step is cat /proc/$PID/environ via systemctl show -p MainPID, and the old nohup instructions carry a history note pointing at this entry.
• DEVLOG.md — this entry.

Why this is the right shape for the general plugin path

The installer is the only user-facing install surface for hermes-relay and already owns plugin registration, skill discovery, and the hermes-pair shim. Adding systemd-user install to it means any Linux user who runs the one-liner gets the relay in the same canonical place as hermes-gateway (~/.config/systemd/user/) with the same management commands (systemctl --user …). Non-systemd hosts fall back to manual python -m plugin.relay --no-ssl and the Python-side env loader still does the right thing. Docker users mount ~/.hermes and the bootstrap finds .env at its canonical path inside the container. There's no setup branching that varies by user, distro, or launch method — the env load happens at import time, which is the one place every launch path passes through.

Fix scope: 3 Python files touched (2 entry points + 1 new helper), 1 systemd template rewritten, 1 installer stanza added, 4 docs updated. No breaking changes to existing callers — manual python -m plugin.relay still works and is actually more robust than before because it now auto-loads .env.

---

2026-04-12 — Voice mode: end-to-end voice conversation via relay TTS/STT endpoints

Shipped voice mode in a single session via a four-agent team in a shared worktree (feature/voice-mode). Plan came from the Obsidian vault at Hermes-Relay/Plans/Voice Mode.md — a 4-phase spec (V1 server endpoints → V2 app audio pipeline → V3 orb animation → V4 polish). All four phases landed in parallel; V2b UI waited on V2a's locked ViewModel contract, everything else ran concurrently. Net: ~2750 lines across 9 new files + 6 modified files, no upstream hermes-agent changes required.

Architecture

Voice lives entirely in the relay plugin, not upstream hermes-agent. The relay is editable-installed into the hermes-agent venv, so plugin/relay/voice.py imports tools.tts_tool.text_to_speech_tool and tools.transcription_tools.transcribe_audio directly from the server's configured providers. Both upstream functions are sync, so the aiohttp handlers wrap them in asyncio.to_thread(...) to avoid blocking the event loop. Config (provider, voice, model) is read internally by the tools from ~/.hermes/config.yaml — the relay doesn't pass provider arguments, which means TTS providers (currently ElevenLabs) or STT providers (currently OpenAI whisper-1) can be swapped on the server without touching the phone.

Three new routes on the relay alongside /media/*:

• POST /voice/transcribe — multipart audio → {text, provider}
• POST /voice/synthesize — {text} JSON → audio/mpeg file response
• GET /voice/config — provider availability + current settings

All three gated on the same bearer auth as /media/* (local helper _require_bearer_session, not the private server.py version, to avoid circular imports). Fourteen unit tests in plugin/tests/test_voice_routes.py, all passing on the server (68/68 across voice + existing media/sessions suites). Upstream tool imports are lazy inside each handler so voice.py can be imported on Windows (where the hermes-agent venv doesn't exist); tests inject fake modules into sys.modules at collect time.

Android audio pipeline

app/.../audio/VoiceRecorder.kt wraps MediaRecorder with MPEG_4/AAC output to .m4a (not WebM — the plan suggested WebM but m4a is Android-native and whisper-1 handles it fine via the upstream _validate_audio_file path). Amplitude is polled at ~60fps from mediaRecorder.maxAmplitude / 32767f and exposed as a StateFlow<Float> for the orb.

app/.../audio/VoicePlayer.kt wraps MediaPlayer + android.media.audiofx.Visualizer for real-time amplitude during TTS playback. The Visualizer construction is in a try/catch — some OEM devices refuse to construct one even with MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS granted, and rather than crashing the voice session on those devices we fall back to a flat-zero amplitude and log. Voice still works; the sphere just won't pulse during Speaking on those devices.

app/.../network/RelayVoiceClient.kt mirrors RelayHttpClient's ctor shape — same okHttpClient / relayUrlProvider / sessionTokenProvider pattern, same error handling. Transcribe uses MultipartBody.Builder, synthesize uses JSON POST with the response bytes streamed to cacheDir/voice_tts_<ts>.mp3. Added a third method getVoiceConfig() for the Voice Settings screen to read provider availability.

app/.../viewmodel/VoiceViewModel.kt orchestrates the state machine: Idle → Listening → Transcribing → Thinking → Speaking → Idle. Sentence-boundary detection lives in a top-level internal fun extractNextSentence(StringBuilder) that drains complete sentences (whitespace-lookahead for e.g., min length 6 so tiny fragments don't get synthesized) into a Channel<String> consumed by a dedicated coroutine that synthesizes + plays + awaits completion per sentence. This gives streaming TTS without needing chunked-Opus support on the server — the latency win comes from client-side chunking of the SSE stream.

ChatViewModel integration — cleaner than the plan

The plan called for a // VOICE HOOK callback added to ChatViewModel so VoiceViewModel could observe streaming deltas. Instead, VoiceViewModel.startStreamObserver collects chatVm.messages: StateFlow<List<ChatMessage>> and diffs the last assistant message's content length on each emission. Zero changes to ChatViewModel / ChatHandler. The transcribed user text is routed through the normal chatVm.sendMessage(text) path, so voice utterances appear as regular user messages in chat history — the same message shows up if you reload the session on another device.

The trade-off is documented in a KDoc comment on the observer: this assumes "the last isStreaming=true message is the current turn," which is true today. If ChatViewModel ever streams multiple assistant messages concurrently (agent hand-off, multi-agent runs) this would need a dedicated per-turn flow. Flagged for Phase 3+ review.

MorphingSphere: Listening + Speaking states

Two new SphereState values added additively — all five existing call sites (RelayApp, BridgeScreen, ChatScreen ×3) compile unchanged because voiceAmplitude: Float = 0f and voiceMode: Boolean = false are defaulted. The plan spec had exact formulas for amplitude → visual parameter mapping (lines 338-367 of Voice Mode.md) and the sphere-animator teammate mapped them to the actual render variables:

• Listening — soft blue/purple (#597EF2 ↔ #A573F2, cooler than Idle's green/purple). breatheSpeed lerps 1.0→1.3× at half amplitude, turbulenceAmp gets +0.15×amp, perimeter-noise wobbleAmplitude scales up 30% max. Subtle — the orb "breathes with the user."
• Speaking — vivid green/teal (#40EB8C ↔ #4DD9E0) with coreWarmth (a new synthetic Float, not a refactor — spliced into the existing warmth term at line ~400) lerping 0.3→1.0 on amplitude for a white-hot core at peaks. breatheSpeed up to 2×, turbulenceAmp +0.5×amp, wobbleAmplitude +80%, dataRingSpeed up to 4× on peak amplitude. Dramatic — the orb performs the voice.

Radius scale for voiceMode=true is capped at 1.08×, not 1.0× as the plan suggested. The existing baseRadius is already 0.60× half-extent and the data ring at 1.55× would overflow the canvas past 1.1×. Expansion is subtle by physical necessity. Three @Preview functions (MorphingSphereListeningPreview, MorphingSphereSpeakingLowPreview, MorphingSphereSpeakingPeakPreview) with deterministic frames for scrubbing amplitude values in Studio without a device.

Voice mode UI

VoiceModeOverlay.kt is the full-screen experience: top bar with interaction-mode dropdown + close X, centered sphere at 60% height with voiceMode=true, transcribed + response text with AnimatedContent fades, mic button at bottom with pulseScale driven by amplitude. The mic button respects interactionMode:

• TapToTalk — click starts recording; auto-stops on silence (threshold from VoicePreferences, default 3000ms); click again to stop manually; click during Speaking routes to interruptSpeaking().
• HoldToTalk — awaitEachGesture { awaitFirstDown() + waitForUpOrCancellation() } starts on press and stops on release.
• Continuous — after TTS finishes speaking, maybeAutoResume() auto-starts listening again. Current detection uses streamObserverJob?.isActive != true as the "turn done" signal because Channel.isEmpty isn't public API — may resume very slightly early on the last sentence before the final observer tick, but it's imperceptible in practice.

Haptics: HapticFeedbackType.LongPress on record start, HapticFeedbackType.TextHandleMove on record stop. Error banner with retry button handles mic permission denial, voice-config failure (shows "Unknown" provider rows), and transcribe/synthesize errors.

ChatScreen now hosts a mic FAB in the bottom-right corner (hidden while voice mode is active) that triggers the permission flow. Existing chat content fades to 40% alpha via animateFloatAsState when voice mode opens. VoiceSettingsScreen.kt is a new sub-screen off Settings with four sections: Voice Mode (interaction mode + silence threshold slider + auto-TTS placeholder), Text-to-Speech (read-only provider/voice labels), Speech-to-Text (read-only provider + language picker stored for future use), and a Test Voice button that calls the new VoiceViewModel.testVoice(sample) extension. VoicePreferences.kt is a new DataStore-backed repo mirroring MediaSettings.kt.

Things left as follow-ups

1. Silence-detector wiring — V2a's recorder exposes the amplitude StateFlow, and VoicePreferences.silenceThresholdMs is persisted, but the ViewModel doesn't yet collect recorder amplitude and auto-call stopListening() on silence. V2b flagged this as a boundary question (expose a preferences setter on VoiceViewModel vs. observe DataStore directly). Not a voice-mode blocker — tap-to-stop works — but the auto-stop UX promised in the plan isn't there yet. Small follow-up task.
2. Auto-resume precision — the streamObserverJob.isActive signal for continuous mode is slightly imprecise (see above). If stalled turns are reported in continuous mode this is where to look.
3. Voice config write-through — reads GET /voice/config, but the Voice Settings screen can't yet write changes back to ~/.hermes/config.yaml. That would need a management API endpoint (Phase M territory per the plan). For now, edit the yaml and restart hermes-gateway.
4. Dedicated OkHttpClient for voice — voiceClient has its own OkHttpClient instance (2-min read timeout) rather than sharing ConnectionViewModel.relayOkHttp (which is private). Minor duplication; would clean up if we exposed that field.
5. ChatScreen box/column indent — Box { Column {...} } with same-level indentation in ChatScreen is slightly ugly. Compiles fine; purely cosmetic.

Files

New (server): plugin/relay/voice.py, plugin/tests/test_voice_routes.py. New (app): app/.../audio/VoiceRecorder.kt, app/.../audio/VoicePlayer.kt, app/.../network/RelayVoiceClient.kt, app/.../viewmodel/VoiceViewModel.kt, app/.../ui/components/VoiceModeOverlay.kt, app/.../ui/screens/VoiceSettingsScreen.kt, app/.../data/VoicePreferences.kt, app/src/test/.../viewmodel/SentenceExtractionTest.kt. Modified: plugin/relay/server.py (+21 lines — imports, handler wiring, 3 route registrations), app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml (RECORD_AUDIO + MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS), app/.../ui/components/MorphingSphere.kt (+145 lines — Listening/Speaking states, voiceAmplitude modifier, coreWarmth spliced into existing warmth term, voiceMode scale, 3 preview functions), app/.../ui/RelayApp.kt (+49 lines — VoiceViewModel wiring + VoiceSettings nav route), app/.../ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt (+115 lines — mic FAB + permission flow + chat alpha + overlay mount), app/.../ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt (+46 lines — nav entry).

Dev workflow note

Four agents, shared worktree, 1 blocker (V2b waited on V2a's locked VoiceUiState contract). Agents reported via SendMessage → mailbox → delivered as team idle notifications. The lead handled: SSH recon (real upstream signatures from ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/tools/), plan review, task list with explicit blockedBy, parallel agent spawn with complete self-contained briefs (including full upstream signatures so no agent needed to re-SSH), integration spot-checks on diffs, then this docs pass. The server-voice teammate SCP'd test files to the server, ran them via unittest, and cleaned up its stray files on the server side when done. Zero Kotlin gradle runs — every agent respected the "compile in Studio" rule.

For a feature this size, the worktree + team approach is the right default. The alternative (single-session linear work) would have been 3–4× slower.

2026-04-11 — clearSession reconnect leak → self-inflicted rate limit

Reported: "unable to pair via QR code" after hitting Revoke on the device in Paired Devices. Worked again after an app restart.

Root cause (from ~/hermes-relay.log)

20:38:29  DELETE /sessions/f75cfb14 → 200 (self-revoke)
20:38:29  GET /sessions             → 401 (phone loadPairedDevices with dead token)
20:38:32  Client disconnected
[relay restart]
20:39:03  WebSocket from 192.168.1.50 → Auth failed: Invalid pairing code or session token
20:39:04  WebSocket from 192.168.1.50 → Auth failed
20:39:05  WebSocket from 192.168.1.50 → Auth failed
20:39:06  WebSocket from 192.168.1.50 → Auth failed
20:39:07  WebSocket from 192.168.1.50 → Auth failed
20:39:07  [WARNING] IP 192.168.1.50 blocked for 300s after 5 failed auth attempts
20:39:08+ GET /ws → 429 (blocked)

Five Auth failed in four seconds. The rate limiter did exactly what it was built to do.

The bug — three state machines disagree

1. AuthManager.clearSession() wipes the stored token, sets authState = Unpaired, and regenerates a fresh local pairing code (_pairingCode.value = generatePairingCode()).
2. ConnectionManager's internal reconnect loop (scheduleReconnect → doConnect) runs entirely inside the network module — it bypasses ConnectionViewModel.connectRelay and its hasPairContext gate completely. shouldReconnect stays true until someone calls disconnect().
3. ConnectionViewModel.clearSession() called authManager.clearSession() and returned — never called disconnectRelay(). So the reconnect scheduler kept firing after the state wipe.

Sequence of collapse:

• Self-revoke succeeds (server deletes session)
• Phone's Paired Devices UI calls clearSession() → state wiped, reconnect loop still alive
• WS disconnects (because the relay closes the socket after revoke / the relay restart fires)
• onClosed → scheduleReconnect → backoff → doConnect with freshly-regenerated local pair code in the auth envelope
• Server: "Invalid pairing code or session token" (the local code isn't registered)
• Loop fires 5 times in ~4 seconds (exponential backoff starts at 1s)
• Rate limiter blocks the IP for 5 minutes
• User scans a fresh QR → /pairing/register clears the block — but the phone's next WS connect bounces off whatever delayed retry is still in flight (and also possibly a 429 from the still-valid block depending on exact timing)
• User restarts app → cold start has shouldReconnect = false and empty session store, no auto-connect, fresh QR scan succeeds

Fix

network/ConnectionManager.kt:

• New constructor parameter reconnectGate: () -> Boolean = { true } (defense-in-depth gate for the internal auto-reconnect loop).
• scheduleReconnect() calls reconnectGate() both before scheduling and after the backoff delay. If either returns false, the retry is silently dropped and connectionState is set to Disconnected. Rationale: the delay window is where state flips happen — user hits Revoke while the previous attempt was sleeping, and we need to re-check.
• Logs "scheduleReconnect: gate says no pair context — aborting retry" at INFO for traceability.
• Default value preserves backwards compat with tests that construct a bare ConnectionManager(multiplexer).

viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt:

• ConnectionManager now constructed with reconnectGate = { authManager.hasPairContext } — same hasPairContext predicate introduced for the Option B Save & Test gate.
• clearSession() rewritten to call disconnectRelay() before authManager.clearSession(). Order matters: tear down the reconnect loop before wiping the state it depends on, so in-flight retries return cleanly instead of firing with half-wiped state. KDoc explains the 2026-04-11 rate-limit incident as the why.

Both fixes together: clearSession stops the immediate loop, and the reconnectGate is a safety net for any other code path that wipes state without calling disconnect. Either alone would technically fix the reported bug; together they harden against future regressions.

Test plan (on-device)

• Go to Settings → Paired Devices → open the current device's card → Revoke → confirm. Snackbar shows "This device was unpaired". App navigates to pair screen.
• Immediately scan a fresh QR (from /hermes-relay-pair on the server). Should succeed — no "unable to pair" error, no 429 on the relay's /ws.
• Check ~/hermes-relay.log after revoke: should see the DELETE /sessions/... line but NOT a burst of Auth failed entries. Phone should stay quiet until the user scans the new QR.
• Bonus: toggle airplane mode while paired (forces disconnect with pair context still valid), confirm reconnect still works normally after re-enabling network.

Server deploy

Phone-only change. No server restart needed. Rebuilt from Android Studio.

2026-04-11 — Paired Devices JSON unwrap fix + /media/by-path permissive sandbox (B+C)

Two bugs surfaced on-device:

1. Paired Devices crash — "Expected start of the array '[', but had '{'"

RelayHttpClient.listSessions was parsing the response body as a bare List<PairedDeviceInfo>, but the server returns {"sessions": [...]} (plugin/relay/server.py::handle_sessions_list, line 406). Classic wire-format mismatch. The phone saw JSON starting with { and crashed kotlinx.serialization's list deserializer.

Fix: parse the body to JsonElement, pull out the sessions field, then decode the array via Json.decodeFromJsonElement(ListSerializer(PairedDeviceInfo.serializer()), arrayElement). If the sessions field is missing, return a descriptive IOException instead of the kotlinx parse error so the UI shows a meaningful message.

One concept to internalize: Json.decodeFromJsonElement(deserializer, element) is a member function on the Json instance — no extension import needed. The reified-generic form (Json.decodeFromJsonElement<T>(element)) needs the import kotlinx.serialization.json.decodeFromJsonElement extension import; the explicit-deserializer form doesn't.

2. "Path not allowed by relay sandbox" for legitimate LLM emits

The /media/by-path route enforced allowed_roots against every phone-side fetch. When the LLM ran search_files and found an image somewhere like ~/projects/claw3d/readme.png, the phone hit the sandbox and rendered a "Path not allowed" error card — even though the agent had already read the file's bytes via its own tools and would happily paste them into chat if asked.

Decision: B + C (C as default).

• C (conceptual flip): drop the allowlist on /media/by-path by default. The trust boundary is the bearer-auth'd paired phone; the LLM can already exfiltrate bytes via plain text responses, so the sandbox was defense-in-depth with a high false-positive rate in practice. The token path (loopback-only /media/register) keeps its strict allowlist because it's trivially enforceable there.
• B (config knob): RELAY_MEDIA_STRICT_SANDBOX=1 (or RelayConfig.media_strict_sandbox = True) re-enables the allowlist enforcement on the by-path route for operators who want the tighter default back.

Changes

plugin/relay/media.py:

• validate_media_path(path, allowed_roots, max_size_bytes) — allowed_roots now accepts list[str] | None. When None, the root-under-allowlist check is skipped entirely. All other checks (absolute path, realpath, exists, regular file, size cap) remain unconditional.
• MediaRegistry.__init__ gains strict_sandbox: bool = False parameter, stored as self.strict_sandbox. Logged at init time alongside the existing max_entries/ttl/max_size summary.

plugin/relay/config.py:

• RelayConfig.media_strict_sandbox: bool = False field.
• RELAY_MEDIA_STRICT_SANDBOX env var parsed in from_env() — accepts 1/true/yes/on (case-insensitive).

plugin/relay/server.py:

• RelayServer.__init__ passes strict_sandbox=config.media_strict_sandbox to the MediaRegistry.
• handle_media_by_path computes roots_for_check = server.media.allowed_roots if server.media.strict_sandbox else None and passes that to validate_media_path. Permissive mode ⇒ only file-level checks (absolute, exists, regular, size). Strict mode ⇒ full allowlist enforcement.
• Docstring on handle_media_by_path rewritten to explain the permissive-by-default model and the opt-in path.

app/src/main/kotlin/.../network/RelayHttpClient.kt:

• listSessions() — unwraps {"sessions": [...]} before decoding the array. Missing-field path surfaces as a clean IOException("Relay response missing 'sessions' field").

plugin/tests/test_relay_media_routes.py:

• Existing RelayMediaRoutesTests class pinned config.media_strict_sandbox = True so its legacy assertions (outside-sandbox → 403, etc.) still hold.
• New sibling class RelayMediaByPathPermissiveTests exercises the production default:
  • test_by_path_outside_allowlist_still_streams_in_permissive_mode — the regression-guard test. A file in a totally unrelated tmpdir streams successfully with a valid bearer. If this breaks, the claw3d workflow breaks again.
  • test_by_path_still_rejects_relative_in_permissive_mode — absolute-path check is unconditional.
  • test_by_path_still_404s_nonexistent_in_permissive_mode — file-existence check is unconditional.
  • test_register_still_enforces_allowlist_in_permissive_mode — the token path (loopback POST /media/register) stays strict regardless of the flag.

CLAUDE.md:

• Updated the plugin/relay/media.py and "Inbound media fetch (path)" rows in the Key Files / Integration Points tables to document the permissive default and the opt-in RELAY_MEDIA_STRICT_SANDBOX knob.

Server deploy

Python-side changes. The relay needs a git pull on the server and a restart (pkill -TERM -f "python -m plugin.relay" + nohup ... & disown per the standard recipe) before the new by-path semantics take effect. Phone-side listSessions fix ships with the next Android Studio build.

Test plan (on-device after next build)

• Paired Devices screen: open → loads without the "Couldn't load paired devices" error card. Should show the current device with transport badge, expiry, and grant chips.
• Chat with find an image: LLM finds something in ~/projects/** → card renders inline (not "Path not allowed by relay sandbox").
• Optional: RELAY_MEDIA_STRICT_SANDBOX=1 on the server → same image request now renders the "Path not allowed" card (strict-mode opt-in works).

2026-04-11 — Option B: Save & Test as HTTP health probe + pair-context gate on connectRelay

A trap was identified in the Settings → Manual configuration flow: the Connect button fired connectRelay(url) unconditionally, even when the phone had no session token and no pending server-issued pair code. The WSS handshake would open, the phone would send an auth envelope with whatever code was lying around (usually the locally-generated phone→host Phase 3 code, which isn't registered on the relay), auth would fail, and after 5 such failures in 60 seconds the relay's rate limiter would block the IP for 5 minutes. Users fumbling with manual config could lock themselves out of pairing entirely.

Reviewed three fix options; picked B (split reachability from connect). Rejected C (two buttons — "Test" + "Connect") because the second button is redundant with the existing Reconnect button / auto-reconnect paths and would be disabled-when-unpaired / duplicated-when-paired. The right answer is one button that does a reachability probe, not two buttons fighting over WSS semantics.

Changes

Server: none. This is entirely phone-side.

plugin/relay unchanged except indirectly — the new phone-side probeHealth method hits the relay's existing GET /health endpoint (already implemented at plugin/relay/server.py::handle_health).

auth/AuthManager.kt — new hasPairContext: Boolean getter. Returns true when any of:

1. authState is Paired (stored session token)
2. authState is Pairing (mid-handshake)
3. serverIssuedCode != null (fresh QR scan or manual code entry just landed)

Crucially does NOT count the locally-generated _pairingCode.value as valid — that's the phone→host Phase 3 code and is meaningless to the relay side, so sending it yields guaranteed rate-limit hits. This is the fix for the entire class of "connect when unpaired" bugs.

network/RelayHttpClient.kt — new probeHealth(relayUrl): Result<RelayHealth> method:

• Converts ws:///wss:// → http:///https:// via the same regex used by fetchMedia
• Unauthenticated GET /health with a 3-second timeout (via okHttpClient.newBuilder().connectTimeout(3, SECONDS).readTimeout(3, SECONDS).build() — no need for a separate long-lived client)
• Parses the JSON body and validates it looks like a hermes-relay health response: status == "ok" AND a non-blank version field. Anything else fails with a descriptive error. Prevents a random HTTP server on port 8767 from falsely passing.
• Returns RelayHealth(version, clients, sessions) on success so the UI can render "✓ Reachable — hermes-relay v0.2.0 (0 clients, 1 session)" — actual metadata, not just a boolean.
• Error messages differentiate: "Connection refused — is the relay running on this URL?", "Relay is not responding (3s timeout)", "Relay responded HTTP 404", "Relay returned non-JSON: ...", etc.

viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt:

• Rewrote connectRelay(url) / connectRelay() to delegate to a private connectRelayInternal that gates on authManager.hasPairContext. When the gate fails, log an informational message and return silently — the UI doesn't get any error state because this path should only be hit as a user-initiated mistake, not a programmatic one. The four legitimate entry points (pair walkthrough, stale row tap, Reconnect button, QR confirm) all set pair context before calling connectRelay, so the gate passes.
• New sealed interface RelayReachable { Probing, Ok(version, clients, sessions), Fail(message) } + relayReachableResult: StateFlow<RelayReachable?> + testRelayReachable(url) method that saves the URL to DataStore and probes /health. The save-before-probe order is deliberate: a failed probe still leaves the URL persisted so the user can edit and retry without losing their typing.
• clearRelayReachableResult() — called by the Relay URL text field's onValueChange so stale probe results vanish when the user edits the URL.
• Deleted the old callback-based testRelayReachability(wsUrl, onResult: (Boolean) -> Unit) — it was a thinner version of probeHealth that spun up its own OkHttpClient per call and returned only a boolean. Single caller in SettingsScreen migrated to the new state-flow API.
• Removed the now-unused okhttp3.Request import (was only referenced by the deleted method).

ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — Manual configuration button row rewritten:

• Connect button deleted. It was the leak source. Reconnecting a paired session is handled by the existing Reconnect button (in the Connection card, gated on Paired), the stale row tap, and reconnectIfStale() on screen entry. No fourth "Connect" button is needed.
• "Test" button renamed to "Save & Test" — wired to testRelayReachable(relayUrlInput). Label change matches the new behavior (the button also persists the URL to DataStore). Disabled when the URL is blank or a probe is in flight.
• Disconnect button kept — still useful for debugging / forcing reconnect cycles.
• Result row rewritten to read from relayReachableResult: StateFlow instead of the old local relayTestInProgress / relayTestResult vars (both removed). Shows:
  • Probing /health… with spinner during the probe
  • ✓ Reachable — hermes-relay v0.2.0 (0 clients, 1 session) (green) on success, with version + client count so the user knows they're pointing at an actual relay
  • ✗ <specific error> (red) on any failure
  • Nothing when idle (so the row collapses cleanly when not in use)
• Relay URL text field's onValueChange now clears the probe result — stale "✓ Reachable" indicators won't hang around after the user starts typing a different URL.

Bonus fix — Settings QR confirm never connected WSS

Tracing the pair-context gate surfaced that the Settings → Scan Pairing QR → TTL picker confirm flow stashed the server-issued code + grants + TTL but never actually called connectRelay. The WSS stayed disconnected until the user either left and re-entered Settings (firing reconnectIfStale, which still wouldn't fire since authState is still Unpaired) or manually tapped Reconnect. This was a pre-existing bug dating from the pairing+security architecture cycle — the walkthrough dialog path (which has its own inline connectRelay call) masked it.

Added the missing disconnectRelay() + connectRelay(relay.url) pair to the TTL picker's onConfirm callback, mirroring the manual code pair path at submitPairing / authManager.applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset / connectRelay(...). Since applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset has just set serverIssuedCode, the new pair-context gate passes cleanly.

Bonus fix — Connection status rows didn't look tappable

Second round of UX feedback from the same cycle: the API Server / Relay / Session status rows in the Connection section open drawer sheets on tap, but there was no visual affordance that they were tappable — users would stumble onto the tap target by accident.

Fixed in ConnectionStatusRow:

• New onClick: (() -> Unit)? = null parameter. When non-null, the component applies a Material ripple + rounded-corner clip + internal clickable modifier, so the whole row is a proper list-item tap target.
• Trailing chevron icon (Icons.AutoMirrored.Filled.KeyboardArrowRight) rendered after the status text whenever onClick != null (and no onTest button is competing for the trailing slot). Gives users the standard Settings-list-item visual cue that the row opens something.

All three call sites in SettingsScreen migrated from modifier = Modifier.fillMaxWidth().clickable { ... } to onClick = { ... } + modifier = Modifier.fillMaxWidth(). Old pattern still works for legacy call sites (the component applies the interactive wrapping additively).

Files changed

Server: none.

Phone:

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/auth/AuthManager.kt — hasPairContext getter
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/RelayHttpClient.kt — probeHealth() + RelayHealth data class + jsonObject import
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt — RelayReachable sealed interface, relayReachableResult flow, testRelayReachable(), clearRelayReachableResult(), connectRelayInternal() with pair-context gate, deleted testRelayReachability
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — Connect button removed, Save & Test rewired, result-row reads from ViewModel flow, onValueChange clears probe, QR confirm flow adds missing connectRelay, three status rows migrated to onClick parameter
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/ConnectionStatusBadge.kt — ConnectionStatusRow gains onClick + chevron affordance

Docs: this DEVLOG entry.

Test plan

On-device, after the next Android Studio build:

1. Fresh Manual Config reachability probe — Settings → Connection → Manual configuration → type a relay URL → tap Save & Test. Verify:
   • Spinner + "Probing /health…" appears briefly
   • On a live relay: green "✓ Reachable — hermes-relay vX.Y.Z (N client, M session)"
   • On a dead URL: red "✗ " (refused / timeout / non-JSON / etc)
   • Editing the URL clears the result immediately
2. Pair-context gate doesn't regress pairing — scan a fresh /hermes-relay-pair QR → TTL picker confirms → verify the WSS connects + authState reaches Paired without any manual intervention
3. Manual code entry still works — Settings → Already configured? Enter code only → type a valid code → verify it pairs and WSS connects
4. Drawer affordance visible — open Settings → Connection section → verify API Server / Relay / Session rows show a chevron at the right edge + have a ripple on tap → tapping each opens its respective info sheet
5. Flicker still fixed — open Settings with a stale session → verify the row shows "Reconnecting..." for the whole transition, not the old "Stale → Connecting → Connected" flash

Known caveats

• The Connect button removal is a UX change for power users who were using it to force-reconnect. They should use the Reconnect button in the Connection card (gated on Paired) or the stale row tap. If this breaks a relied-on workflow, the button can come back gated on authManager.hasPairContext.
• The new probeHealth gives 3 seconds before timing out. On a very slow LAN this might be too tight; consider bumping to 5s if probes start false-failing.
• probeHealth doesn't follow redirects (OkHttp default). A relay behind a reverse proxy that 301s /health would fail the probe. None of the current deployments do that.

---

2026-04-11 — Relay status flicker fix + Dev Workflow docs in CLAUDE.md

Two small follow-ups from the same session:

1. Connection card flicker on Settings entry. When opening Settings with a stored session token, the Relay status row flashed through 3 rapid states: red "Disconnected" → amber "Stale — tap to reconnect" → amber "Connecting..." → green "Connected". Users saw the middle two as a flicker.

Root cause: authState default is Unpaired until the EncryptedSharedPreferences read finishes (~50ms async). During that gap the row shows red "Disconnected" which is actually correct. Once authState flips to Paired, isRelayStale becomes true and the row shows "Stale — tap to reconnect". The LaunchedEffect(Unit) that fires reconnectIfStale() then triggers ConnectionState.Connecting, changing the label to "Connecting...". These rapid transitions are the flicker.

Fix: added a screen-local isAutoReconnecting flag that's true for up to 5 seconds on screen entry (or until ConnectionState.Connected lands, whichever is first). During that window the status text unifies all the non-Connected sub-states into one consistent "Reconnecting..." label. After 5s the flag drops and the row falls through to the normal state machine — so the "Stale — tap to reconnect" affordance still works for cases where the user is genuinely sitting in a stale state (backgrounding the app, network flapping, etc.). Only the initial-entry transition gets the unified label.

The fix is purely presentational — the underlying state machine is unchanged. isConnecting is wired to treat isAutoReconnecting the same as the real Connecting / Reconnecting states so the ConnectionStatusBadge's pulse ring animates continuously through the window.

2. Dev workflow documented in CLAUDE.md. A request to document the typical dev loop in CLAUDE.md so the flow doesn't have to be rediscovered each session. Added a new "Typical Dev Loop" subsection + "Server Deployment" table + "Where Python vs. Kotlin changes land" table. Covers:

• Edit-in-Windows, test-on-Linux-server split
• Python plugin edits via pip install -e editable path → git pull on server picks them up
• hermes-gateway.service systemctl user-unit restart when tool code changes
• Manual nohup / setsid restart for the relay process (which isn't a systemd service on this deployment)
• Running tests via python -m unittest plugin.tests.test_<name> (avoiding the pre-existing conftest.py that imports the uninstalled responses module)
• The hard convention: APKs are built/installed via Android Studio's run button, not from the agent session
• Where sensitive info lives (~/SYSTEM.md on the server, ~/.hermes/.env) — explicitly NOT in this repo
• The PATH conventions (venv, plugin symlink, relay log, config yaml, qr-secret)

Keeps the doc free of any host-specific identifiers (IP, username, SSH key) — those stay on the server side.

Also included in this entry but landed in a separate earlier commit: fix(auth): extend without grants regenerates from defaults, not absolute-time clamp (c209c99). The first cut of SessionManager.update_session tried to preserve existing grants via a _clamp_grants_to_lifetime helper when only TTL changed. That made sense for shortening (clip grants that exceed the new session) but produced nonsense for extending: a 1h bridge grant made 30 minutes ago, extended to 90d, would still have an absolute expiry of 30 minutes from now — the user would tap Extend and find bridge was about to expire anyway. Corrected to regenerate grants from _default_grants(new_ttl, now) when only TTL changes, giving fresh allocations for the new lifetime. Deleted the now-unused _clamp_grants_to_lifetime helper. Caught by test_extend_ttl_zero_means_never which asserts that extending a finite session to never-expire produces all-null (never) grants.

Files changed:

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — isAutoReconnecting flag + updated ConnectionStatusRow wiring
• CLAUDE.md — new Dev Workflow subsections (Typical Dev Loop, Server Deployment, Where Python vs. Kotlin changes land)
• plugin/relay/auth.py — (separate commit c209c99) update_session semantic fix

No server side changes in this entry — the flicker fix is phone-only and the docs don't deploy.

---

2026-04-11 — Grant renewal action (PATCH /sessions/{prefix} + "Extend" button)

Why this exists: Pairing/security overhaul shipped a Paired Devices screen with list + revoke, but no way to change a session's TTL or grants after initial pair. Users who paired with "1 day" when trying out the feature and decided to keep it had to revoke + re-pair. This closes that gap with the smallest possible surface area: one new route, one new client method, one new button, one new dialog reuse. Scope #4 from the gap list — small and concrete enough to do directly rather than via agent team.

Semantics decision: TTL restarts the clock. "Extend by 30 days" = "30 days from now", not "add 30 days to the existing expiry." This matches what users mean when they tap Extend: they want the session to be valid for another 30 days starting today. It also means Extend can SHORTEN a session (pick a shorter duration or "Never" → fewer) — the button is labeled "Extend" for the common case but the semantics are really "update TTL policy".

Grant handling:

• If caller passes grants: re-materialize from scratch via _materialize_grants (uses defaults for channels the caller didn't specify, clamps each to the new session lifetime).
• If caller passes ONLY ttl_seconds: keep existing grants but re-clamp them via a new _clamp_grants_to_lifetime helper so a shorter TTL correctly clips any grant that would outlive the session. A longer TTL leaves grants unchanged (they were already ≤ the old expiry, which is now ≤ the new longer expiry, so no clipping needed).
• If caller passes both: apply TTL first (new session expiry), then materialize the provided grants clamped to the new expiry.
• If caller passes neither: 400. No-op calls are bugs.

UX: Reuses the existing SessionTtlPickerDialog directly — no new component needed. The dialog's "Keep this pairing for…" title works for both the pair flow and the extend flow (tense-neutral). Preselected option is computed from the session's current remaining lifetime rounded to the nearest picker option — never-expire sessions preselect "Never", 1-hour-remaining sessions preselect "1 day" (shortest real option), 25-day-remaining sessions preselect "30 days", etc.

Files

Server (plugin/relay/):

• auth.py — new SessionManager.update_session(token, ttl_seconds?, grants?) -> Session | None that restarts-the-clock on TTL and re-materializes/re-clamps grants. New module-level _clamp_grants_to_lifetime(grants, ttl_seconds, now) helper alongside the existing _materialize_grants. Expired sessions are NOT silently resurrected — caller should re-pair instead.
• server.py — new handle_sessions_extend(request) handler doing full validation (non-negative ttl_seconds, non-negative numeric grant values, at least one field present) + the prefix → session → update dance that mirrors handle_sessions_revoke. Route registered via app.router.add_patch("/sessions/{token_prefix}", handle_sessions_extend) — PATCH is a distinct method on the same pattern, no ordering collision with existing GET/DELETE.
• plugin/tests/test_sessions_routes.py — 10 new tests: bearer-required, nonexistent prefix → 404, empty body → 400, negative TTL → 400, bad grant shape → 400, TTL-only restarts the clock (asserts new_expiry ≈ now + new_ttl, NOT old_expiry + new_ttl), ttl_seconds=0 → never (null grants), grants-only leaves expiry alone, shorter TTL clips grants, self-extend, helper _settle() for the 1ms async delay needed on fast machines to make timestamp assertions meaningful.

Phone (app/src/main/kotlin/.../):

• network/RelayHttpClient.kt — new extendSession(tokenPrefix, ttlSeconds?, grants?) method. Hand-rolls the small JSON body to avoid pulling in another serializer branch (two optional fields, trivial to write, auditable). 400/401/404/409/5xx are all mapped to user-facing error messages. 404 is a hard failure here (unlike revoke where "already gone" → success) — if you're extending an active session and it's gone, that's surprising and should surface.
• viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt — new suspend fun extendDevice(tokenPrefix, ttlSeconds): Boolean, mirrors revokeDevice's shape (refresh list on success, surface error via pairedDevicesError). Grants intentionally not exposed on this path — MVP UX is "pick a new duration", server-side re-clamping handles the rest. Power users can call RelayHttpClient.extendSession directly for grant editing.
• ui/screens/PairedDevicesScreen.kt — pendingExtend: PairedDeviceInfo? state alongside the existing pendingRevoke. New dialog branch renders SessionTtlPickerDialog with the current remaining lifetime preselected (expires_at - now, clamped to ≥ 0, or 0 for never-expire sessions). Confirming calls connectionViewModel.extendDevice(...) inside a coroutine + shows a snackbar. DeviceCard action row becomes a 50/50 split between "Extend" and "Revoke" buttons (instead of a single full-width revoke). Both buttons are OutlinedButton; the revoke button keeps the error color tint.

Docs:

• docs/relay-server.md + user-docs/reference/relay-server.md — new PATCH /sessions/{token_prefix} route row
• user-docs/reference/configuration.md — Extend button description in the Paired Devices subsection
• CLAUDE.md — Integration Points table row for the new route
• this DEVLOG entry

Not changed (intentionally)

• __version__ stays at 0.2.0 per prior direction (we never released 0.2.0)
• No grant-editing UI — power users can hit the endpoint directly via a future tool
• No "extend by increment" UX (e.g. "+30 days on top of current") — semantics are always "set new TTL from now". Easier to reason about, matches what the picker already shows.
• No ADR bump — this is a small follow-up to ADR 15's architecture, not a new decision. ADR 15 already documents the session mutation model at a high level.

Test plan (on-device)

1. Pair with --ttl 1d so you have a short session
2. Open Paired Devices → find the current device → tap Extend
3. Picker should show "1 day" preselected. Pick "30 days" → confirm.
4. Verify the card now shows "Expires ~30 days from now" and the snackbar says "Session expiry updated"
5. Tap Extend again → pick "Never expire" → confirm. Verify the card now shows "Never" and all channel grant chips show "never" too
6. Tap Extend again → pick "1 day" → confirm. Verify the card now shows ~1 day from now AND the grant chips are now all ≤ 1 day (clamped by the shortened session)
7. Try to Extend a non-current session (if you have multiple paired) → should work the same way

---

2026-04-11 — Pairing + Security Architecture Overhaul (grants, TTL, Keystore, TOFU, devices)

Why this exists: The existing pairing model has been minimal since day one: pairing codes (one-shot, 10 min TTL) → session tokens (30 days hardcoded, single expiry, no per-channel grants, stored in EncryptedSharedPreferences). After the inbound media work exposed the "paired phone gets rate-limited to death on relay restart" gap, the entire pairing story was flagged as ready for a pass. Explicit asks:

1. Secure transport the default, insecure opt-in with clear UI
2. User-chosen TTL at pair time (1d/7d/30d/90d/1y/never)
3. Separate defaults by channel (terminal + bridge shorter than chat)
4. Never-expire ALWAYS selectable — "don't force check, just allow based on user intent" (an explicit decision)
5. Tailscale detection — informational only, not opinionated about defaults
6. Hardware-backed token storage
7. TOFU cert pinning with explicit reset on re-pair
8. Device revocation UI (Paired Devices screen)
9. QR payload signing
10. Phase 3 bidirectional pairing foundation

Delivered by two parallel background agents (server + phone) + local docs pass. No upstream hermes-agent changes — everything lives in files we own.

---

Server side — plugin/relay/

Data model (auth.py):

• Session gains grants: dict[str, float] (per-channel expiry timestamps), transport_hint: str ("wss" / "ws" / "unknown"), first_seen: float, and handles math.inf for never-expire (is_expired is False for inf; JSON serializes inf → null).
• New PairingMetadata dataclass carries ttl_seconds, grants, and transport_hint through the pairing flow. _PairingEntry.metadata stores it; PairingManager.register_code(..., ttl_seconds, grants, transport_hint) accepts it; consume_code returns the metadata dataclass (or None) instead of a bool — existing boolean callers use is not None.
• SessionManager.create_session now takes ttl_seconds, grants, transport_hint params (all with backwards-compatible defaults). _materialize_grants helper resolves seconds-from-now durations to absolute expiries and clamps each grant to the overall session lifetime — no terminal grant can outlive its session. Default caps: terminal 30 days, bridge 7 days, chat = session lifetime. Constants: DEFAULT_TERMINAL_CAP, DEFAULT_BRIDGE_CAP.
• SessionManager.list_sessions, SessionManager.find_by_prefix — used by the new routes below.
• RateLimiter.clear_all_blocks() — new method that resets _blocked and _failures dicts. Called unconditionally when /pairing/register succeeds, because the operator is explicitly re-pairing and stale rate-limit state is noise. This fixes the "phone rate-limited for 5 minutes after relay restart" bug that was occurring right when this session started.

Routes (server.py):

• handle_pairing_register — now accepts optional ttl_seconds / grants / transport_hint in the JSON body and forwards them to the _PairingEntry.metadata. Host-registered metadata takes precedence over phone-sent metadata (operator policy is authoritative). Calls server.rate_limiter.clear_all_blocks() on success.
• handle_pairing_approve — new POST /pairing/approve, Phase 3 bidirectional pairing stub. Loopback-only, same shape as /pairing/register. Marked with # TODO(Phase 3): — full flow needs a pending-codes store so operators review rather than rubber-stamp. Route + wire shape locked in now so the Android agent has something to target.
• handle_sessions_list — new GET /sessions, bearer-auth'd. Returns {"sessions": [...]} where each entry carries token_prefix (first 8 chars, never the full token), device_name, device_id, created_at, last_seen, expires_at (null for never), grants, transport_hint, is_current. Full tokens are NEVER included — only the prefix — so a caller can't extract another session's credential.
• handle_sessions_revoke — new DELETE /sessions/{token_prefix}, bearer-auth'd. Matches on first-N-char prefix (≥ 4 chars). Returns 200 on exact match, 404 on zero matches, 409 on ambiguous (2+) matches with the count in the body. Self-revoke is allowed and flagged via revoked_self: true so the phone knows to wipe local state.
• _authenticate — extended to thread pairing metadata into the new session + include expires_at, grants, transport_hint in the auth.ok payload. math.inf → null on the wire.
• _detect_transport_hint helper — sniffs request.transport.get_extra_info('ssl_object') (non-None → "wss"), falls back to request.scheme, defaults to "unknown". Runs only when pairing metadata didn't already supply a hint.

QR signing (new qr_sign.py):

• load_or_create_secret(path) — reads ~/.hermes/hermes-relay-qr-secret if present (32 bytes, 0o600, owner-only). On first run generates + writes via secrets.token_bytes(32) with os.umask safety.
• canonicalize(payload) — JSON-encode with sort_keys=True, separators=(",", ":"), allow_nan=False (so accidentally signing math.inf crashes loudly). Explicitly strips the sig field before canonicalization so signing a signed payload is idempotent.
• sign_payload(payload, secret) -> str — base64 HMAC-SHA256.
• verify_payload(payload, sig, secret) -> bool — constant-time compare via hmac.compare_digest.
• 13 test assertions covering canonicalization order-independence, sig exclusion, round-trip, tamper + wrong-secret + malformed-sig rejection, file perm check.

Pair CLI (plugin/pair.py + plugin/cli.py):

• New flags: --ttl DURATION (parses 1d / 7d / 30d / 1y / never) and --grants SPEC (terminal=7d,bridge=1d).
• build_payload(..., sign=True) — auto-bumps hermes: 1 → 2 when any v2 field is present, embeds ttl_seconds / grants / transport_hint in the relay block, computes and attaches the HMAC signature.
• read_relay_config now reads RELAY_SSL_CERT to determine TLS status; _relay_lan_base_url(tls=True) emits wss:// when set.
• register_relay_code sends the new fields so /pairing/register's metadata attaches to the code.
• render_text_block shows Pair: for 30 days / Pair: indefinitely + per-channel grant labels.

Tests added (all unittest.IsolatedAsyncioTestCase / AioHTTPTestCase, runs via python -m unittest):

• test_qr_sign.py — 13 assertions covering canonicalize / sign / verify / load_or_create_secret.
• test_session_grants.py — default TTL + grant caps, 1-day session clamping terminal/bridge, never-expire (math.inf everywhere), explicit grants clamped to session, grant=0 semantics, transport_hint, unknown-channel → expired, pairing metadata register/consume/one-shot/format-reject, list_sessions / find_by_prefix / revoke.
• test_sessions_routes.py — 401 on missing + invalid bearer, GET shape (no full-token leak, 8-char prefix, is_current correct, null for never-expire), DELETE 404 / 200 / 409 (ambiguous) / self-revoke.
• test_rate_limit_clear.py — unit clear_all_blocks + integration /pairing/register clears pre-existing blocks + metadata round-trip + invalid-ttl / bad-transport rejection + /pairing/approve loopback gate.

---

Phone side — app/src/main/kotlin/.../

Token storage + TOFU (new auth/SessionTokenStore.kt, auth/CertPinStore.kt):

• SessionTokenStore interface with two implementations:
  • KeystoreTokenStore — StrongBox-preferred via setRequestStrongBoxBacked(true) when FEATURE_STRONGBOX_KEYSTORE is present (Android 9+). Best-effort: tryCreate swallows exceptions so broken OEM keystores don't brick pairing; falls back to the legacy store.
  • LegacyEncryptedPrefsTokenStore — existing EncryptedSharedPreferences path, TEE-backed via MasterKey.AES256_GCM.
• One-shot migration: on first launch post-upgrade, reads session_token / device_id / api_server_key / paired-metadata blob from the legacy hermes_companion_auth file, writes them to the new store, clears the legacy. If Keystore is unavailable, legacy stays as the active store and no migration happens — users never lose their session.
• hasHardwareBackedStorage: Boolean flag — true only for the StrongBox path. Legacy TEE-backed reports false. Surfaced in the Session info sheet as "Hardware (StrongBox)" vs "Hardware (TEE)".
• CertPinStore — DataStore-backed map of host:port → SHA-256 SPKI fingerprints. recordPinIfAbsent on first successful wss connect; buildPinnerSnapshot produces an OkHttp CertificatePinner. ConnectionManager takes a fresh snapshot on every doConnect, so a removePinFor(host) during re-pair is honored on the next connect — no coordination needed between AuthManager and ConnectionManager. Plaintext ws:// short-circuits via isPinnableUrl.
• applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset(code, relayUrl?) now wipes the TOFU pin for the target host — a QR re-pair is explicit consent to a possibly-new cert fingerprint.

Auth + session model (auth/AuthManager.kt, new auth/PairedSession.kt):

• PairedSession data class: token, deviceName, expiresAt: Long?, grants: Map<String, Long?>, transportHint, firstSeen, hasHardwareStorage.
• PairedDeviceInfo wire model mirrors the server's GET /sessions response — token_prefix, device_name, device_id, created_at, last_seen, expires_at, grants, transport_hint, is_current.
• AuthManager.currentPairedSession: StateFlow<PairedSession?> — UI reads this for pair metadata without poking at prefs.
• handleAuthOk parses expires_at / grants / transport_hint from the payload, tolerates both int and float epoch seconds, persists alongside the token.
• authenticate(ttlSeconds) injects ttl_seconds + grants into pairing-mode auth envelopes. Session-mode re-auth (existing session token present) does NOT re-send these — the server keeps the grant table keyed on the original pair.

QR payload v2 (ui/components/QrPairingScanner.kt):

• HermesPairingPayload gains sig: String? (parsed, stored, NOT verified — the phone doesn't have the HMAC secret). RelayPairing gains ttlSeconds: Long?, grants: Map<String, Long>?, transportHint: String? — all optional with defaults.
• parseHermesPairingQr no longer rejects on version mismatch — any hermes >= 1 with a non-blank host decodes. Future v3+ still parses via ignoreUnknownKeys = true. v1 QRs with no hermes field also parse.
• Signature verification is a // TODO in the parser — full verification requires a phone-side secret distribution path the protocol doesn't yet define.

TTL picker (new ui/components/SessionTtlPickerDialog.kt):

• Radio list: 1 day / 7 days / 30 days / 90 days / 1 year / Never expire.
• defaultTtlSeconds(qrTtl, transportHint, tailscale) logic: QR operator value wins; else wss OR Tailscale → 30d; plain ws → 7d; unknown → 30d.
• Never expire is always selectable per the explicit "don't force check" direction. Shows an inline warning — "This device will stay paired until you revoke it manually. Only choose this if you control the network — LAN, Tailscale, VPN, or TLS." — but does NOT gate.
• Dialog ALWAYS opens on QR scan so the user confirms the TTL — the trust model is the user's judgment, not the QR's.
• Last user pick persists to PairingPreferences.pairTtlSeconds and becomes the preselected default on future pairs.

Transport security UI (new ui/components/TransportSecurityBadge.kt, ui/components/InsecureConnectionAckDialog.kt):

• Badge renders in 3 states (secure green 🔒 / amber insecure-with-reason / red insecure-unknown) and 3 sizes (Chip / Row / Large). Rendered in Settings → Connection, in the Session info sheet, and on each Paired Device card.
• Insecure ack dialog shown first time the user toggles insecure mode on. Body: plain-language threat model. Radio buttons for reason — "LAN only" / "Tailscale or VPN" / "Local development only". Only dismissible after selecting a reason + tapping "I understand". Marks insecure_ack_seen = true. Reason is stored for display, NOT gating.

Tailscale detection (new util/TailscaleDetector.kt):

• Checks NetworkInterface.getNetworkInterfaces() for tailscale0 interface or an address in 100.64.0.0/10 (Tailscale CGNAT range), plus the configured relay URL host (.ts.net / 100.x.y.z).
• StateFlow<Boolean> refreshed on network changes via ConnectivityManager callback.
• Purely informational — shown as a "Tailscale detected" green chip in the Connection section. Does NOT auto-change any defaults per the stated requirement (#5).

Paired Devices screen (new ui/screens/PairedDevicesScreen.kt):

• Nav destination reached from Settings → Connection → "Paired Devices".
• Fetches via RelayHttpClient.listSessions() (new method, GET /sessions with bearer auth). Each card: device name + ID, "Current device" badge if isCurrent, transport security badge, expiry ("Expires Apr 18, 2026" or "Never"), per-channel grant chips, revoke button.
• Revoke button → confirmation dialog → RelayHttpClient.revokeSession(tokenPrefix). Revoking the current device wipes local session token + redirects to pairing flow.
• Pull-to-refresh. Empty state "No paired devices". Graceful 404 handling — if the server hasn't shipped /sessions yet, renders empty list instead of crashing.

network/RelayHttpClient.kt — two new methods:

• listSessions(): Result<List<PairedDeviceInfo>> — GET /sessions with bearer auth. 404 treated as "endpoint not implemented yet" → empty list.
• revokeSession(tokenPrefix): Result<Unit> — DELETE /sessions/{prefix} with bearer auth. 404 treated as "already gone" → success.

network/ConnectionManager.kt — TOFU integration:

• Optional CertPinStore param. Rebuilds OkHttpClient on every connect with a fresh CertificatePinner snapshot (so re-pair pin wipes take effect immediately). Records peer cert fingerprint in onOpen when the handshake is TLS.
• Connect logic moved to IO dispatcher so the DataStore read for pin snapshot doesn't run on the caller's thread.

viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt:

• Wires AuthManager before ConnectionManager so the pin store is available.
• Exposes currentPairedSession, pairedDevices + pairedDevicesLoading + pairedDevicesError, isTailscaleDetected, insecureAckSeen, insecureReason.
• loadPairedDevices(), revokeDevice(prefix), setInsecureAckComplete(reason).
• Shuts down Tailscale detector on onCleared.

ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — integration:

• onNavigateToPairedDevices callback added to the signature.
• Connection card: new TransportSecurityBadge row, Tailscale chip (if detected), hardware-storage chip, Paired Devices navigation row.
• Insecure toggle now routes through the first-time ack dialog. Cancel leaves the toggle off; confirm persists the reason and flips the mode.
• QR scan handoff now stages the payload into pendingQrPayload and opens SessionTtlPickerDialog. Picker confirm applies URLs/key/code, calls applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset(code, relayUrl) (wipes the TOFU pin), stores pendingGrants + pendingTtlSeconds, then tests the connection.

ui/components/ConnectionInfoSheet.kt:

• SessionInfoSheet now reads currentPairedSession and displays Expires / Channel grants / Transport / Key storage rows when paired.

ui/RelayApp.kt:

• New Screen.PairedDevices nav destination wired into the nav graph with back + re-pair callbacks. Reachable only from Settings — no bottom-nav slot.

New DataStore keys (data/PairingPreferences.kt):

• pair_ttl_seconds (Long, user's last-selected TTL)
• insecure_ack_seen (Boolean)
• insecure_reason (String: "lan_only" / "tailscale_vpn" / "local_dev" / "")
• tofu_pins (string-encoded map)

---

Security review

The expansion of what a paired phone can do is:

• Listing all sessions (prefixes only, not full tokens) — a compromised phone was already able to see its own session, this adds visibility into other paired devices' metadata. Acceptable because the paired-phone population is explicitly trusted by the operator (they approved each QR pair).
• Revoking other sessions — any paired phone can revoke any other paired device. This is DoS territory: a compromised phone could lock out all other devices. Mitigation: revocation is auditable via the relay logs, and re-pairing is always possible from the host. For most deployments (one operator, 1-2 phones) this is acceptable. For multi-user deployments it'll need per-device role model (admin / user).
• QR payload signing — raises the bar for QR tampering (attacker can't inject their own pairing code via a modified QR photo), but it's defensive: the phone doesn't verify signatures yet. The server-side infrastructure is there so phone-side verification can land in a follow-up once the secret distribution model is defined.
• Never-expire sessions — an explicit decision: allow based on user intent, not gated. Users who pick this are accepting the risk. The Paired Devices screen makes revocation trivial.
• TOFU pinning — protects against MITM of a self-signed wss cert AFTER the first connect. Does not protect the first connect itself (trust-on-first-use). Acceptable for the LAN / Tailscale / VPN deployment model.
• StrongBox storage — improves attacker cost for on-device token extraction on Android 9+ devices with StrongBox hardware. Best-effort; older devices fall back to TEE-backed EncryptedSharedPreferences which is still strong.

---

Files created/modified

Server (11 files):

• New: plugin/relay/qr_sign.py, plugin/tests/test_qr_sign.py, plugin/tests/test_rate_limit_clear.py, plugin/tests/test_session_grants.py, plugin/tests/test_sessions_routes.py
• Modified: plugin/cli.py, plugin/pair.py, plugin/relay/auth.py, plugin/relay/server.py
• Unchanged: plugin/relay/__init__.py (version stays 0.2.0 by decision — never released)

Phone (17 files):

• New: auth/CertPinStore.kt, auth/PairedSession.kt, auth/SessionTokenStore.kt, data/PairingPreferences.kt, ui/components/InsecureConnectionAckDialog.kt, ui/components/SessionTtlPickerDialog.kt, ui/components/TransportSecurityBadge.kt, ui/screens/PairedDevicesScreen.kt, util/TailscaleDetector.kt
• Modified: auth/AuthManager.kt, network/ConnectionManager.kt, network/RelayHttpClient.kt, ui/RelayApp.kt, ui/components/ConnectionInfoSheet.kt, ui/components/QrPairingScanner.kt, ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt, viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt

Docs: this DEVLOG entry, ADR 15 in docs/decisions.md, §3.3 / §3.3.1 / §3.4 rewrites in docs/spec.md, route tables in docs/relay-server.md + user-docs/reference/relay-server.md, config sections in user-docs/reference/configuration.md, Key Files + Integration Points in CLAUDE.md, pair flow in user-docs/guide/getting-started.md.

Known gaps / follow-ups

• Phone-side QR signature verification — parsing + storing the sig field works; full verification requires a secret distribution mechanism (pre-shared key? on-device enrollment?) the protocol doesn't yet define.
• Bidirectional pairing full UX — POST /pairing/approve is a working stub. Real Phase 3 work needs a pending-codes store + operator approval UI.
• Per-device role model — all paired devices currently have equal revoke rights. Multi-user / admin-vs-user split is a future refactor.
• Grant renewal UI — the Paired Devices screen shows expiry but has no "extend this grant" action. Pair-again from the host or just revoke + re-pair.
• Build verification — no gradle run in this session; deployed from Android Studio. If a compile bug slipped through a KDoc or Compose misuse, it'll surface on the first build attempt (like the text/* comment bug earlier today).

---

2026-04-11 — Inbound Media v2: bare-path fetch + session-reload re-parse

Why this exists: On-device testing of the v1 inbound media pipeline (shipped earlier today, commits 1195778 + 8f61262) surfaced two bugs that showed up in the same screenshot:

1. Placeholder flicker. The ⚠️ Image unavailable card rendered for a split second and then vanished, replaced by raw MEDIA:/tmp/... text in the bubble.
2. Blank-looking attachment bubbles. Related symptoms of the same underlying issue — messages re-rendered inconsistently during the turn-end reload.

Both root-caused to the session_end reload pattern documented in CLAUDE.md: when a streaming turn completes, ChatViewModel.onCompleteCb calls client.getMessages() → ChatHandler.loadMessageHistory(), which wholesale-replaces _messages.value with fresh ChatMessages built from item.contentText. The streaming-time media marker parser had stripped the markers from the client-side copy and injected attachments, but NEITHER mutation was visible to loadMessageHistory — the server-stored text still contained the raw markers, and the client-injected attachments were gone.

Fix 1: re-run the media marker parser on reloaded history. loadMessageHistory now scans each loaded assistant message's content, strips matched lines, and queues onMediaAttachmentRequested / onMediaBarePathRequested callbacks to fire after the wholesale _messages.value assignment (so mutateMessage lookups hit the newly-loaded IDs). dispatchedMediaMarkers is cleared at the same time since pre-reload dedupe keys are meaningless against post-reload message IDs. Extracted into extractMediaMarkersFromContent — a pure helper that doesn't touch mutable buffer state. Shipped in commit 272a3c5.

---

Investigating the flicker bug surfaced a larger issue in the screenshot:

The LLM is emitting MEDIA:/tmp/... in its free-form text completions, not via the tool. Upstream hermes-agent/agent/prompt_builder.py:266 explicitly instructs the model in its system prompt: "include MEDIA:/absolute/path/to/file in your response. The file..." So the LLM treats MEDIA markers as a first-class way to request file delivery — in free-form completions, not through tool calls. Our v1 fix only intercepted markers emitted by tools that called register_media() — which covers android_screenshot but not the much larger set of LLM free-form emissions. For those, the marker form is always bare-path (MEDIA:/tmp/foo.jpg), and our phone-side handler treated bare-path as "unavailable" no matter what.

Fix 2: GET /media/by-path on the relay + phone-side fetchMediaByPath. Adds a second fetch route alongside the existing /media/{token}. Key points:

• Shared path validation — extracted validate_media_path(path, allowed_roots, max_size_bytes) -> (real_path, size) at the top of plugin/relay/media.py. Both MediaRegistry.register (the loopback-only tool path) and the new handle_media_by_path (the phone-auth'd direct fetch) call it, so the sandbox rules can't drift.
• Same trust model as /media/{token} — bearer auth against the existing SessionManager. Only a paired phone with a valid relay session token can fetch; 401 for everyone else.
• Path sandboxing — absolute path → os.path.realpath → must resolve under an allowed root (tempfile.gettempdir() + HERMES_WORKSPACE + RELAY_MEDIA_ALLOWED_ROOTS) → must exist → must be a regular file → must fit under RELAY_MEDIA_MAX_SIZE_MB. Symlink escape is blocked by the realpath pre-check. 403 for any violation; 404 if the file is missing; 400 if the path query param is absent.
• Content-Type negotiation — if the phone passes ?content_type=<...> it's honored; otherwise the server guesses via Python mimetypes.guess_type(). Falls back to application/octet-stream.
• Route ordering — /media/by-path is registered before /media/{token} in create_app or aiohttp swallows the literal path as a token and 404s. Commented in the source as a reminder.
• Phone-side rename for clarity — onUnavailableMediaMarker → onMediaBarePathRequested (ChatHandler callback and ChatViewModel method). The name "unavailable" made sense in v1 when bare-path was always terminal; now bare-path is the primary LLM format, so it's a request-to-fetch like the token form. The failure branch still produces the ⚠️ Image unavailable card, but only when the fetch actually fails.
• Shared fetch pipeline — performFetch → performFetchWith(handler, messageId, fetchKey, settings, fetch: suspend () -> Result<FetchedMedia>). Takes the fetch lambda as a parameter so both the token path (relay.fetchMedia(token)) and the bare-path (relay.fetchMediaByPath(path)) share the same size-cap / cache / state-flip logic. The fetchKey stored in Attachment.relayToken disambiguates via the leading / — secrets.token_urlsafe never produces a /, so the prefix check is unambiguous. manualFetchAttachment (retry CTA) uses the same discriminator.

Security review (in ADR 14 addendum): Adding /media/by-path widens what a paired phone can request by one degree — it can now read any file in the allowed-roots whitelist without host-local tool cooperation. This does NOT widen the trust boundary because (1) the whitelist is the same, (2) /tmp on Linux is already world-readable to same-user processes, (3) bearer auth still requires a valid session token, and (4) realpath symlink-resolves before the whitelist check so symlink escape is still blocked. Operators who want a tighter sandbox should narrow RELAY_MEDIA_ALLOWED_ROOTS, not disable the endpoint.

Tests added (plugin/tests/test_relay_media_routes.py):

• test_by_path_without_authorization_returns_401
• test_by_path_with_invalid_bearer_returns_401
• test_by_path_missing_path_param_returns_400
• test_by_path_outside_sandbox_returns_403
• test_by_path_nonexistent_in_sandbox_returns_404
• test_by_path_relative_path_returns_403
• test_by_path_happy_path_streams_bytes (verifies auto-guessed Content-Type: image/png from .png extension)
• test_by_path_content_type_hint_overrides_guess (verifies ?content_type=application/json wins over extension guess)
• test_by_path_oversized_returns_403 (uses try/finally to restore max_size_bytes so other tests in the class aren't affected — AioHTTPTestCase reuses one app instance)

Files created/modified:

Server (Python):

• plugin/relay/media.py — new validate_media_path() module-level helper + _is_under_any_root() private helper; MediaRegistry.register refactored to call the new helper; duplicate _is_under_allowed_root method removed.
• plugin/relay/server.py — new handle_media_by_path route handler, new imports (mimetypes, os, validate_media_path), route registration in create_app (order-sensitive — by-path before {token}).
• plugin/tests/test_relay_media_routes.py — 9 new tests for the by-path endpoint.

Phone (Kotlin):

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/RelayHttpClient.kt — new fetchMediaByPath(path, contentTypeHint) method, uses okhttp3.HttpUrl builder for correct query-param encoding (paths with slashes / spaces / unicode).
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/handlers/ChatHandler.kt — rename onUnavailableMediaMarker → onMediaBarePathRequested, updated KDoc explaining the new semantics.
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — rename + rewrite method body (now inserts LOADING, applies cellular gate, calls performFetchWith { relay.fetchMediaByPath(path) }); performFetch → performFetchWith signature change (takes fetch: suspend () -> Result<FetchedMedia> lambda); manualFetchAttachment dispatches to token-vs-path branch by fetchKey.startsWith("/").

Docs:

• docs/decisions.md — ADR 14 addendum covering the bare-path fetch endpoint, upstream-prompt rationale, and security review
• docs/relay-server.md + user-docs/reference/relay-server.md — new /media/by-path route entry
• docs/spec.md — §6.2a updated with three-route listing + bare-path flow
• user-docs/reference/configuration.md — honest description of the bare-path-as-primary-format model
• CLAUDE.md — Integration Points table split into token / path fetch + tool / LLM marker rows
• DEVLOG.md — this entry

Known gaps still filed for later:

• Session replay across relay restarts (phone-side persistent cache by token/hash-indexed)
• Auto-fetch threshold slider enforcement (currently persisted-not-enforced placeholder)
• Build verification — no gradle run against the phone side this session; relying on type-checks and review. Built from Android Studio.

Next cycle discussion point: A broader design question was raised about pairing security and TTL policy — bidirectional pairing, secure-by-default, user-selectable pair duration at initial pair, separate defaults for terminal vs bridge, opt-in never-expire for secured transports. Deferred to next design pass; not in this commit.

---

2026-04-11 — Inbound Media Pipeline (agent → phone, Discord-style file rendering)

Done:

• Root cause surfaced. The android_screenshot tool has always returned MEDIA:/tmp/... in its response text, assuming hermes-agent's gateway would extract and deliver the file as a native attachment. Upstream verification against gateway/platforms/api_server.py showed APIServerAdapter.send() is an explicit no-op ("API server uses HTTP request/response, not send()") and _write_sse_chat_completion streams raw deltas without ever invoking extract_media(). The upstream extract-media / send_document machinery (gateway/run.py:4570, 4747) is wired for push platforms only (Telegram, Feishu, WeChat). On our HTTP pull adapter, the MEDIA: tag has always passed through to the phone as literal text. No existing upstream path exists for delivering files over the HTTP API surface without a platform-adapter PR.
• Workaround landed: plugin-owned file-serving on the relay. Added a MediaRegistry and two new routes to the plugin's existing relay server. Media-producing tools POST to a loopback-only POST /media/register with a file path + content type, get back an opaque secrets.token_urlsafe(16) token, and emit MEDIA:hermes-relay://<token> in their chat response text instead of the bare path. The phone's ChatHandler parses the marker out of the SSE stream, fires a ViewModel callback, and RelayHttpClient fetches the bytes over GET /media/{token} with Authorization: Bearer <session_token> (reusing the existing SessionManager). Bytes land in cacheDir/hermes-media/, get shared via FileProvider (${applicationId}.fileprovider), and render inline via a new InboundAttachmentCard component. Result: zero LLM context bloat (token is ~25 chars), no upstream fork, no new auth model.
• Registry design. In-memory OrderedDict LRU with asyncio.Lock for thread-safety. Defaults: 24-hour TTL (chosen to cover within-a-day session scrollback — the real human use case; anything longer is wasted since SessionManager is in-memory and relay restarts invalidate all tokens regardless), 500-entry LRU cap (prevents runaway memory/disk under screenshot spam), 100 MB file-size cap (guards against /media/register being handed a 10 GB file). Path sandboxing: file must be absolute, os.path.realpath() resolve under an allowed root (default: tempfile.gettempdir() + HERMES_WORKSPACE or ~/.hermes/workspace/ + any RELAY_MEDIA_ALLOWED_ROOTS entries), exist, be a regular file, and fit under the size cap. The token → path mapping is held server-side — the client only ever presents an opaque token on GET, so there's zero path-traversal surface on the fetch endpoint.
• Fallback when relay isn't running. The tool calls register_media() via stdlib urllib.request with a 5s timeout; on any failure (relay down, connection refused, non-200 response) it returns the legacy MEDIA:<tmp_path> form with a logger warning. The phone's ChatHandler recognizes the bare-path form via a second regex and fires onUnavailableMediaMarker, which inserts a FAILED Attachment placeholder rendering ⚠️ Image unavailable — relay offline. No regression versus today's behavior; the placeholder is just tidier than raw marker text.
• Discord-style rendering on the phone. New AttachmentState { LOADING, LOADED, FAILED } and AttachmentRenderMode { IMAGE, VIDEO, AUDIO, PDF, TEXT, GENERIC } on the existing Attachment data class. InboundAttachmentCard dispatches by (state × renderMode): images render inline from the cached URI (decoded via BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray + asImageBitmap, matching the existing outbound-attachment render path — no Coil/Glide added); video/audio/pdf/text/generic render as tap-to-open file cards that fire ACTION_VIEW with FLAG_GRANT_READ_URI_PERMISSION. The same component now handles outbound attachments too (they default to state=LOADED), so MessageBubble.kt no longer has a separate outbound-only render branch.
• Cellular gate. If autoFetchOnCellular == false (default) and the device is on a cellular network, the attachment stays in LOADING state with errorMessage = "Tap to download" — the user taps to trigger manualFetchAttachment(), which re-issues the fetch ignoring the cellular gate. Encoded via existing enum + errorMessage slot rather than adding a new state value to keep the data class surface small.
• Dedup. ChatHandler.dispatchedMediaMarkers is a per-session set that prevents double-firing between real-time streaming scans (scanForMediaMarkers called from onTextDelta) and the post-stream reconciliation pass (finalizeMediaMarkers called from onTurnComplete / onStreamComplete). Marker parsing runs unconditionally — not gated on the parseToolAnnotations feature flag.
• Settings UI. New "Inbound media" subsection in Settings (between Chat and Appearance) exposes four DataStore-backed knobs: max inbound attachment size (5–100 MB, default 25), auto-fetch threshold (0–50 MB, default 2 — persisted but not currently enforced; only the cellular toggle gates fetches today, with the threshold reserved for forward-compatibility), auto-fetch on cellular (default off), and cached media cap (50–500 MB, default 200) with a "Clear cached media" button that calls MediaCacheWriter.clear() and shows a Toast with the freed byte count. LRU eviction on the cache is by file mtime.
• Auth parity. The media GET endpoint uses the same relay session token that gates the WSS channel itself — no stronger, no weaker. On the question of whether the media endpoint needed its own auth given that chat is optionally unauthenticated: the relay session token (issued at pairing, stored in EncryptedSharedPreferences) is a separate and always-required credential, so /media/<token> inherits exactly the WSS trust level and adds unguessable per-file entropy on top. Opt-in insecure (ws://) mode intentionally does nothing to strengthen this — it matches the existing "trusted LAN" assumption for local dev.
• Tests. 11 registry tests (happy path, expiry, LRU eviction, LRU reorder on get, relative path rejection, nonexistent path rejection, directory rejection, outside-allowed-roots rejection, symlink-escape rejection [skipped on Windows without symlink priv], oversized rejection, empty content_type rejection) + 8 route tests (/media/register non-loopback 403, happy path 200, validation 400, bad JSON 400; /media/{token} no auth 401, bad bearer 401, valid + streamed 200, expired 404, unknown 404). Uses unittest.IsolatedAsyncioTestCase + aiohttp.test_utils.AioHTTPTestCase (no pytest-asyncio dep required).

Why this wasn't Option A (inline base64 in tool output):

• Inline base64 bloats the LLM context on every call (~135 KB per 1080p screenshot, growing with history), matters for video/audio scalability, and forces the agent to pay for bytes it's just routing to the phone. That tradeoff was explicitly rejected.
• Option B (plugin-owned file endpoint) decouples the wire format from the file bytes: tokens are ~25 chars, bytes flow out-of-band over a separate authenticated HTTP channel. Costs: new endpoint surface area, new phone-side fetch path, FileProvider plumbing — but all of it lives in files we already own.

Files created:

Server (Python):

• plugin/relay/media.py — MediaRegistry, _MediaEntry, MediaRegistrationError, _default_allowed_roots()
• plugin/relay/client.py — stdlib urllib.request-based register_media() + _post_loopback() helper (kept separate from plugin/pair.py's existing register_relay_code to avoid weakening that function's narrower error surface)
• plugin/tests/test_media_registry.py — 11 tests, unittest.IsolatedAsyncioTestCase
• plugin/tests/test_relay_media_routes.py — 8 tests, aiohttp.test_utils.AioHTTPTestCase

Phone (Kotlin):

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/RelayHttpClient.kt — OkHttp GET, ws→http URL rewrite, Content-Disposition filename parse, Result
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/data/MediaSettings.kt — DataStore-backed MediaSettings + MediaSettingsRepository
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/util/MediaCacheWriter.kt — LRU-capped cache at cacheDir/hermes-media/, FileProvider URI generation, MIME→ext map
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/InboundAttachmentCard.kt — single component dispatching on state × renderMode
• app/src/main/res/xml/file_provider_paths.xml — <cache-path name="hermes-media" path="hermes-media/"/>

Files modified:

Server:

• plugin/relay/config.py — 4 new fields (media_max_size_mb, media_ttl_seconds, media_lru_cap, media_allowed_roots), from_env() parsing
• plugin/relay/server.py — self.media = MediaRegistry(...) in RelayServer.__init__, handle_media_register + handle_media_get + route registration in create_app
• plugin/tools/android_tool.py — android_screenshot() calls register_media() → emits hermes-relay://<token> on success, falls back to bare path with a logging.warning on failure
• plugin/android_tool.py — identical change to the top-level duplicate copy

Phone:

• app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml — <provider> for androidx.core.content.FileProvider with authority ${applicationId}.fileprovider
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/data/ChatMessage.kt — AttachmentState + AttachmentRenderMode enums, extended Attachment with state/errorMessage/relayToken/cachedUri, textLikeMimes companion, renderMode computed property
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/network/handlers/ChatHandler.kt — mediaRelayRegex + mediaBarePathRegex, onMediaAttachmentRequested + onUnavailableMediaMarker as var callbacks (not ctor params), mediaLineBuffer + dispatchedMediaMarkers dedupe set, scanForMediaMarkers called unconditionally from onTextDelta, finalizeMediaMarkers called from onTurnComplete/onStreamComplete, mutateMessage helper exposed so the ViewModel can flip attachment state on the private _messages StateFlow
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — new initializeMedia(context, relayHttpClient, mediaSettingsRepo, mediaCacheWriter), onMediaAttachmentRequested, performFetch, manualFetchAttachment, onUnavailableMediaMarker, MEDIA_TAP_TO_DOWNLOAD companion constant
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt — owns media singletons (mediaSettingsRepo, mediaCacheWriter, relayHttpClient), shared OkHttpClient, _cachedMediaCapMb mirror loop so the writer's cap lambda is synchronous
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/RelayApp.kt — chatViewModel.initializeMedia(...) wired inside the existing LaunchedEffect(apiClient) block
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/MessageBubble.kt — replaced outbound-only attachment rendering with attachments.forEachIndexed { InboundAttachmentCard(...) }, added onAttachmentRetry + onAttachmentManualFetch params
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt — empty-bubble skip now respects attachments.isNotEmpty(), wires manualFetchAttachment to both retry + manual-fetch slots
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — new InboundMediaSection(connectionViewModel) composable between Chat and Appearance (coexists with the other team's unified Connection section; no collision)

Files NOT touched (other team owns them or out-of-scope): AuthManager.kt (other team added applyServerIssuedCodeAndReset for the manual-code-entry dialog), ConnectionInfoSheet.kt (other team's new bottom-sheet component for Connection rows), plugin/pair.py, anything under relay_server/ (thin shim — untouched), any upstream hermes-agent code.

Next:

• Wire the auto-fetch threshold slider to the actual fetch logic — currently only the cellular toggle gates fetches, and the threshold is persisted-but-unused as a forward-compatibility placeholder. Real enforcement would need either a HEAD preflight to get the size before committing to the fetch, or we accept the post-hoc reject (byte-count comparison after the body lands, wasted bytes on oversize).
• Phone-side persistence of fetched media so session replay works across relay restarts. Currently the FileProvider cache is opaque to ChatHandler — if the user scrolls back into a session from yesterday, the tokens in the stored message text are stale (relay registry is in-memory) and the fetch 404s. Phone-side token-or-hash-indexed cache would survive this.
• Consider wiring the same pipeline into any future tools that want to emit files (voice, plots, reports). The MediaRegistry + register_media() helper is tool-agnostic — only android_screenshot uses it today.
• Unit-test coverage for the Kotlin side: ChatHandler marker parsing, RelayHttpClient URL-rewrite, MediaCacheWriter LRU eviction. The Python side has 19 tests; the Kotlin side currently has none for the media pipeline.
• Possible upstream contribution to hermes-agent: make gateway/platforms/api_server.py's _write_sse_chat_completion route deltas through GatewayStreamConsumer so the _MEDIA_RE stripper in gateway/stream_consumer.py:188 engages. That would at least keep raw MEDIA: tags out of the chat display for other HTTP-API clients that don't implement their own phone-side parser. Would not solve the actual file-delivery problem (still no send_document impl) but would at least stop the leakage. Track in docs/upstream-contributions.md.

Blockers:

• None. The feature is ready for on-device testing.

Test plan (for on-device smoke):

• Start relay (scripts/dev.bat relay or equivalent), pair phone, open chat.
• Invoke a tool that produces a screenshot (e.g., via an agent command that triggers android_screenshot). Verify the screenshot renders inline as an image, not as raw text.
• Kill the relay mid-session, trigger another screenshot, verify the ⚠️ Image unavailable — relay offline placeholder renders.
• In Settings → Inbound media: adjust the max-size slider, toggle cellular, hit "Clear cached media", verify toast with freed bytes.
• Tap a non-image attachment (test with a PDF tool result if available) and verify ACTION_VIEW opens an external app with a valid content:// URI.

---

2026-04-11 — Install Flow Canonicalization (external_dirs + pip install -e + skill category layout)

Done:

• Install flow rewritten to match Hermes canonical distribution patterns (per ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/website/docs/user-guide/features/skills.md). The new install.sh clones the repo to ~/.hermes/hermes-relay/ (override with $HERMES_RELAY_HOME) instead of a throwaway tmpdir, pip install -es the package into the hermes-agent venv, and registers the clone's skills/ directory under skills.external_dirs in ~/.hermes/config.yaml via an idempotent YAML edit. The plugin is symlinked into ~/.hermes/plugins/hermes-relay, and a thin ~/.local/bin/hermes-pair shim execs python -m plugin.pair in the venv.
• Updates are now cd ~/.hermes/hermes-relay && git pull — one command updates plugin (editable install picks up changes automatically) + skill (external_dirs is scanned fresh on every hermes-agent invocation) + docs. No hermes skills update step — that only applies to hub-installed skills, not external_dirs-scanned ones.
• Skill directory now follows canonical category layout — skills/devops/hermes-relay-pair/SKILL.md (category subdir matching the metadata.hermes.category: devops frontmatter), not the old flat skills/hermes-relay-pair/.
• skills/hermes-pairing-qr/ deleted entirely — the pre-plugin bash script + SKILL.md. Replaced by skills/devops/hermes-relay-pair/ + plugin/pair.py (Python module) + hermes-pair shell shim.
• plugin/skill.md deleted — old lowercase-s flat-file artifact from before the skill system existed.
• Documented the upstream CLI gap — hermes-agent v0.8.0's PluginContext.register_cli_command() is wired on the plugin side, but hermes_cli/main.py:5236 only reads plugins.memory.discover_plugin_cli_commands() and never consults the generic _cli_commands dict. Third-party plugin CLI commands never reach the top-level argparser. Docs no longer promise hermes pair (with a space) works — only /hermes-relay-pair (slash command via the skill) and hermes-pair (dashed shell shim) are documented as working entry points.

Files changed:

• README.md — Quick Start replaces hermes pair with /hermes-relay-pair + hermes-pair, adds update-via-git pull note, updates repo structure to show skills/devops/hermes-relay-pair/
• docs/relay-server.md — pairing description and /pairing/register row updated to reference the new entry points
• docs/decisions.md — new ADR 13 on skill distribution via external_dirs
• user-docs/guide/getting-started.md — full install-flow rewrite covering the 5-step canonical installer, update mechanism, slash command vs shell shim entry points, upstream CLI gap warning
• user-docs/reference/configuration.md — new Skills (external_dirs) subsection, command references updated
• user-docs/reference/relay-server.md — pairing model + troubleshooting updated
• CLAUDE.md — Repo Layout shows skills/devops/hermes-relay-pair/; Key Files gains install.sh, drops deprecated hermes-pairing-qr rows and plugin/skill.md references; integration points updated
• AGENTS.md — Setup steps rewritten around the canonical installer
• DEVLOG.md — this entry

Files NOT touched (main session owns them): plugin/**, relay_server/**, app/**, pyproject.toml, skills/devops/hermes-relay-pair/SKILL.md, install.sh. The deleted skills/hermes-pairing-qr/ and plugin/skill.md paths are referenced only as historical deletions in this entry and ADR 13.

Next:

• Verify /hermes-relay-pair renders correctly once the skill is at skills/devops/hermes-relay-pair/SKILL.md and hermes-agent reloads from external_dirs.
• Confirm install.sh's YAML edit is actually idempotent against a pre-existing external_dirs list with a trailing comment — regression-test with a pathological config.
• Upstream patch to hermes_cli/main.py that dispatches to the generic _cli_commands dict — would let us restore hermes pair as a first-class CLI verb. Track in docs/upstream-contributions.md.

Blockers:

• Upstream argparser doesn't forward to plugin CLI dict (see above). Not blocking the install flow — the slash command + shell shim cover the same surface.

---

2026-04-11 — Settings Connection UX Rework (QR-first, collapsible manual + bridge)

Done:

• Unified Connection section on the Settings screen. Replaced the three separate top-level cards (API Server, Relay Server, Pairing) with a single Connection section containing three stacked cards:
  • Pair with your server — always visible, primary entry point. Large Scan Pairing QR button + a unified status summary line showing API Server (Reachable / Unreachable), Relay (Connected / Disconnected), and Session (Paired / Unpaired). This is the one-button flow: scan the QR from hermes pair on the host and everything is configured.
  • Manual configuration — collapsible. Starts collapsed when the user is already paired and reachable, expanded otherwise. Holds the manual-entry fields (API Server URL, API Key, Relay URL, Insecure Mode toggle) and the Save & Test button. Power-user / troubleshooting path.
  • Bridge pairing code — collapsible, gated by the relayEnabled feature flag, starts collapsed. Shows the locally-generated 6-char pairing code with copy / regenerate icons. Explicitly labelled "For the Phase 3 bridge feature — the host approves this code to enable Android tool control. Not used for initial pairing." Replaces the old Pairing card, which was visually prominent but semantically misleading in the new QR-driven flow.
• Why. The old layout buried the QR button inside the API Server card next to Save & Test, so new users couldn't tell which button was the primary setup path. The old Pairing card prominently displayed a phone-generated code that's no longer used for initial pairing — only for the future Phase 3 bridge direction. The rework makes the happy path (one QR scan → chat + relay) the obvious default and demotes both manual config and the bridge code to collapsibles for users who actually need them.
• User docs updated. user-docs/guide/getting-started.md (Manual Pairing section now walks through Settings → Connection → Manual configuration), user-docs/reference/configuration.md (Onboarding Settings renamed to Connection Settings + describes the three-card layout), and the CLAUDE.md Key Files entry for SettingsScreen.kt.

Files changed:

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — three-card Connection section, collapsible state, unified status summary
• user-docs/guide/getting-started.md — Manual Pairing section updated for Settings → Connection layout
• user-docs/reference/configuration.md — Onboarding Settings → Connection Settings, three-card layout described
• CLAUDE.md — Key Files SettingsScreen.kt entry updated
• DEVLOG.md — this entry

Next:

• Update splash / onboarding completion screen so the "you can change this later in Settings" hint points at the Connection section, not the old API Server card.
• Screenshot pass for Play Store listing — the old screenshots still show the three-section layout.
• Consider whether the Bridge pairing code card should be hidden entirely (not just collapsed) until Phase 3 lands, to avoid confusing users who enable the relay feature flag for terminal alone.

Blockers:

• None.

---

2026-04-11 — QR-Driven Relay Pairing (one scan → chat + relay)

Done:

• Extended QR payload schema — HermesPairingPayload (in plugin/pair.py + app/.../QrPairingScanner.kt) now carries an optional relay block alongside the existing API server fields: { "hermes": 1, "host", "port", "key", "tls", "relay": { "url": "ws://host:port", "code": "ABCD12" } }. The relay field is nullable and kotlinx.serialization runs with ignoreUnknownKeys = true, so old API-only QRs still parse cleanly — no migration required.
• New relay endpoint POST /pairing/register (plugin/relay/server.py → handle_pairing_register) — Pre-registers an externally-provided pairing code with the running relay. Accepts {"code": "ABCD12"}, returns {"ok": true, "code": "ABCD12"}. Gated to loopback callers only (127.0.0.1 / ::1) — any non-local request.remote gets HTTP 403. Matches the trust model: only a process with host shell access can inject codes; a LAN attacker cannot. Validation delegates to PairingManager.register_code() which enforces the 6-char A-Z / 0-9 format.
• hermes pair probes + pre-registers the relay — When invoked, the command calls probe_relay() against http://127.0.0.1:RELAY_PORT/health; on success, mints a fresh 6-char code (random.SystemRandom, alphabet string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits), posts it to /pairing/register, and embeds {url, code} in the QR. If the relay isn't running it prints an [info] pointing at hermes relay start and renders an API-only QR. If registration fails it prints a [warn] and also falls back. New --no-relay flag skips the probe entirely for operators who only want direct chat.
• Output format — render_text_block() now renders a second "Relay (terminal + bridge)" section when a relay block is present, showing the ws://host:port URL and the pairing code (with "expires in 10 min, one-shot" note) alongside the existing "Server" section. Unified warning at the bottom notes the QR contains credentials whenever an API key OR a relay code is present.
• Pairing alphabet widened — plugin/relay/config.py — PAIRING_ALPHABET went from "ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ23456789" (32 chars, no ambiguous 0/O/1/I) to "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789" (36 chars). The phone-side PAIRING_CODE_CHARS = ('A'..'Z') + ('0'..'9') in AuthManager.kt could previously emit codes that PairingManager.register_code() silently rejected as "invalid format". The old restriction only mattered when a human had to retype a code from a display; with QR + HTTP the full alphabet is correct.
• Relay config env vars — RELAY_HOST / RELAY_PORT are now consumed by plugin/pair.py's read_relay_config() too (in addition to plugin/relay/config.py), so hermes pair and hermes relay start agree on where the relay lives.
• Phase 3 note — Phone-side generatePairingCode() in AuthManager.kt is retained. The bridge channel (Phase 3) will use the opposite flow — phone generates, host approves — and POST /pairing/register is written generically enough to serve both directions.

Files changed/added:

• plugin/relay/server.py — handle_pairing_register + route registration on /pairing/register
• plugin/relay/auth.py — PairingManager.register_code() validation helper
• plugin/relay/config.py — widened PAIRING_ALPHABET, comment explaining why
• plugin/pair.py — probe_relay(), register_relay_code(), _generate_relay_code(), _relay_lan_base_url(), read_relay_config(); extended build_payload() / render_text_block() / pair_command()
• plugin/cli.py — --no-relay flag on hermes pair
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/QrPairingScanner.kt — RelayPairing data class + nullable relay field on HermesPairingPayload
• README.md — Quick Start pairing section now mentions one-scan chat + relay
• docs/spec.md — pairing flow section and QR wire format
• docs/decisions.md — new ADR entry on QR-carries-both-credentials trust model
• docs/relay-server.md — routes table includes /pairing/register, loopback restriction note
• user-docs/guide/getting-started.md — updated pairing steps
• user-docs/reference/relay-server.md — routes + pairing model
• user-docs/reference/configuration.md — RELAY_HOST / RELAY_PORT + alphabet note
• CLAUDE.md — Integration Points + Repo Layout references updated to plugin/relay/
• DEVLOG.md — this entry

Next:

• End-to-end test: start relay → hermes pair → scan QR on phone → verify both API and relay auto-configure → verify terminal tab attaches without asking for a pairing code.
• If the phone's stored relay session token is still valid from a previous pairing, the new code should be a no-op (session reconnect takes priority over pairing in _authenticate()). Verify that path doesn't accidentally consume the freshly-registered code.

Blockers:

• None.

---

2026-04-11 — Phase 2: Terminal Channel MVP (server + app)

Done:

• Server-side TerminalHandler (relay_server/channels/terminal.py) — Replaced the stub with a real PTY-backed shell handler. Uses pty.openpty() + fork + TIOCSCTTY (not pty.fork()) so we can set O_NONBLOCK on the master fd before handing it to loop.add_reader(). Output is batched on a ~16 ms window (via loop.call_later) or flushed immediately on 4 KiB buffer — that keeps 60 fps refresh from a shell dumping megabytes without flooding the WebSocket. Supports terminal.attach/input/resize/detach/list. Resize uses TIOCSWINSZ ioctl for SIGWINCH. Graceful teardown on disconnect: flush pending buffer → remove reader → SIGHUP → waitpid(WNOHANG) loop (up to 1 s grace) → SIGKILL fallback → os.close. Shell resolution checks absolute-path candidates (request → config → $SHELL → /bin/bash → /bin/sh) and rejects relative paths. Per-client cap of 4 concurrent sessions. Child gets TERM=xterm-256color, COLORTERM=truecolor, and HERMES_RELAY_TERMINAL=<session_name> as a debug marker. Unix-only: pty/termios/fcntl imports are guarded with try/except ImportError so the relay still starts on Windows — attach attempts return a clean terminal.error instead of crashing the whole server at import time.
• Config — Added terminal_shell: str | None to RelayConfig (RELAY_TERMINAL_SHELL env var, None = auto-detect). Wired into TerminalHandler(default_shell=...) in relay.py.
• xterm.js asset bundle (app/src/main/assets/terminal/) — Downloaded @xterm/xterm@5.5.0 + @xterm/addon-fit@0.10.0 + @xterm/addon-web-links@0.11.0 from jsDelivr into assets/terminal/. Wrote index.html with a Hermes-themed palette (navy #1A1A2E background, purple #B794F4 cursor/magenta, magenta/cyan/green ANSI mapping that matches the app's Material 3 primary). Disables autocorrect/overscroll/zoom. Uses base64-encoded output payloads (window.writeTerminal('<b64>')) to avoid JS string-escape headaches with control bytes and escape sequences.
• TerminalViewModel.kt — AndroidViewModel mirroring ChatViewModel init pattern. Registers a ChannelMultiplexer handler for "terminal". State flow tracks attached/sessionName/pid/shell/cols/rows/tmuxAvailable/ctrlActive/altActive/error. Output flows on a MutableSharedFlow<String> (replay=0, buffer=256) — explicitly not a StateFlow because terminal chunks must be delivered exactly once; StateFlow would conflate rapid deltas and drop output. Sticky CTRL translates a–z/A–Z + [\] to their control bytes; sticky ALT prefixes ESC. Both auto-clear after the next keypress. Pending-attach queue: if the WebView signals ready before the relay connects, the cols/rows are held and the attach fires once ConnectionState.Connected lands.
• TerminalWebView.kt — Compose WebView wrapper. Loads file:///android_asset/terminal/index.html, installs AndroidBridge @JavascriptInterface (onReady/onInput/onResize/onLink). viewModel.outputFlow is collected in a LaunchedEffect on the UI thread and piped into webView.evaluateJavascript("window.writeTerminal('$b64')"). DisposableEffect tears down the WebView cleanly on recomposition out. Uses the modern shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView, WebResourceRequest) signature (minSdk 26), routes non-asset URLs to the system browser via ACTION_VIEW.
• ExtraKeysToolbar.kt — RowScope-extension ToolbarKey composable for the 8-key bottom toolbar: ESC, TAB, CTRL (sticky), ALT (sticky), ←↓↑→. Active state highlights with primary.copy(alpha=0.22f) background + primary border. Haptic LongPress feedback on every tap.
• TerminalScreen.kt — Replaced the "Coming Soon" placeholder. TopAppBar with monospace subtitle line that shows session name / "attaching…" / "relay disconnected" / error. ConnectionStatusBadge in the actions slot (green when attached, amber when attaching/reconnecting, red otherwise) + Refresh IconButton for manual reattach. WebView fills weight(1f), ExtraKeysToolbar is anchored at the bottom with navigationBarsPadding() + imePadding() so it slides up with the IME. Overlay card appears when relay is disconnected or there's an error, explaining state and pointing at Settings.
• RelayApp.kt wiring — Imported TerminalViewModel, added viewModel() instance, one-time LaunchedEffect calls terminalViewModel.initialize(multiplexer, relayConnectionState) so the channel handler registers and auto-attaches on reconnect. Screen.Terminal composable now passes both view models into TerminalScreen.

Files changed/added:

• relay_server/channels/terminal.py (rewritten — 560 lines of real PTY handling)
• relay_server/config.py (new terminal_shell field + env var)
• relay_server/relay.py (pass default_shell into TerminalHandler)
• app/src/main/assets/terminal/index.html (new)
• app/src/main/assets/terminal/xterm.js + xterm.css + addon-fit.js + addon-web-links.js (new — ~300 KB bundled, no CDN dependency at runtime)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/TerminalViewModel.kt (new)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/TerminalWebView.kt (new)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/components/ExtraKeysToolbar.kt (new)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/TerminalScreen.kt (rewritten)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/RelayApp.kt (import + instantiate + init + pass to screen)
• DEVLOG.md (this entry)

Build: gradlew :app:assembleDebug — BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 1m 59s. Only pre-existing deprecation warnings remain; no warnings or errors from new code. Server-side Python is not covered by CI; change is additive and gated by _PTY_AVAILABLE on Windows hosts so the existing chat/bridge channels remain unaffected.

Not yet tested on real hardware. This session produced compiling code, not verified feature behavior. Before declaring Phase 2 MVP shipped we need:

1. A Linux/macOS host running the relay server + tmux (or not — raw PTY fallback is what we actually built) with a shell the host user can actually log into.
2. Deploy the debug APK, connect the relay, open the Terminal tab, verify: prompt appears → soft keyboard typing reaches the shell → arrow keys work → CTRL+C interrupts → resize on rotation / IME show reflows prompt correctly → htop renders with box chars → disconnect/reconnect reattaches cleanly.
3. Check for WebView keyboard quirks on at least two devices (the plan flags this as the highest device-side risk).

Deferred from the Phase 2 plan (will land in follow-up sessions):

• Plugin consolidation — relay_server/ is still a separate process; the plan wants it absorbed into plugin/relay/ with a unified hermes relay CLI. Pure refactor, no user-visible change. Separate session.
• tmux session persistence — self.tmux_available is detected and surfaced in terminal.attached payloads but we're not using libtmux yet. Current implementation is raw PTY only. Adding tmux is additive (same envelope protocol, swap the spawn path).
• P1/P2 polish — pinch-to-zoom, mouse reporting (needed for htop/vim mouse), font bundling (JetBrains Mono NF), multiple themes, settings screen entries, visual bell, scroll-to-bottom FAB, URL-detection config, multi-session picker dropdown, hardware keyboard edge cases.
• CLI commands — hermes relay status/sessions/kill are spec'd but not wired. Nothing to wire them to until plugin consolidation lands.

Next:

• Smoke-test on a real device with the relay running against a real Linux host.
• Fix whatever that surfaces (WebView keyboard oddities, resize timing, PTY race conditions we haven't seen yet).
• Decide whether to ship MVP as-is under a feature flag or continue straight through 2B polish → tmux → consolidation before any user sees it.

Blockers:

• None in code. Need a Linux/macOS relay host to exercise the PTY path end-to-end.

---

2026-04-10 — v0.1.0 Play Store Release (Internal Testing)

Done:

• Keystore — Generated release.keystore (RSA 2048, SHA384withRSA, 10000-day validity, alias hermes-relay) via keytool -genkey. Certificate subject: CN=Bailey Dixon, OU=Hermes-Relay, O=Codename-11, L=Tampa, ST=Florida, C=US. SHA1 fingerprint C9:8E:1B:74:A6:D8:A6:6E:0A:3A:C9:00:96:C2:0B:B7:44:B0:B7:FC; SHA256 A9:A4:2D:94:20:8B:94:B3:68:5B:01:93:E3:94:9B:90:50:AD:80:60:56:E7:16:3C:FC:E5:11:AF:68:0D:79:4B. Stored at repo root as release.keystore (gitignored via .gitignore:31). Password stored in password manager; must back up file + password to a separate encrypted location before closing this session.
• local.properties — Added hermes.keystore.path, hermes.keystore.password, hermes.key.alias, hermes.key.password lines pointing at the absolute path (Gradle's file() resolves relative paths against the app/ module, not repo root, so absolute path with forward slashes is required on Windows).
• Local bundle build — gradlew bundleRelease — BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 4m 41s, produced app/build/outputs/bundle/release/app-release.aab (19,071,575 bytes / 18.2 MB). Fingerprint-verified with keytool -printcert -jarfile — AAB is release-signed with the correct cert (serial eaaf7de55766c57e), not the debug fallback.
• GitHub Secrets — Set all four via gh secret set CLI so .github/workflows/release.yml will release-sign CI artifacts on future tags: HERMES_KEYSTORE_BASE64 (from base64 -w 0 release.keystore), HERMES_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD, HERMES_KEY_ALIAS=hermes-relay, HERMES_KEY_PASSWORD. Used printf '%s' (no trailing newline) piped to gh secret set for the non-base64 values — a trailing \n would get baked into the secret and cause "Keystore was tampered with" failures in CI.
• Play Console upload — Uploaded the local app-release.aab to the Internal testing track on Google Play Console. versionCode=1, versionName=0.1.0. Enrolled in Play App Signing (Google re-signs installs with their HSM-held key; the keystore is now only an upload key with reset-via-support recovery). Release rolled out successfully. One non-blocking warning about missing native debug symbols (deferred — see Next section).
• Git tag — git tag -a v0.1.0 pushed to origin, triggering .github/workflows/release.yml to build APK + AAB + SHA256SUMS.txt and attach them to a GitHub Release named v0.1.0. Tag landed on commit 089e011 (the play-publisher 4.0.0 AGP 9 compat bump from a parallel session), which means the CI-built AAB is byte-different from the Play Console AAB (different libs.versions.toml) but functionally identical and signed with the same cert — acceptable for Internal testing because only the Play Console artifact reaches testers; the GitHub Release is a secondary distribution channel.

Files changed:

• local.properties (gitignored) — added release signing properties
• release.keystore (gitignored) — new
• DEVLOG.md — this entry

Next:

• Back up release.keystore + password to an encrypted off-machine location before closing this session. Losing both = losing ability to submit future upload keys (Play App Signing reset flow takes ~2 days).
• Add native debug symbols for v0.1.1 — Add ndk { debugSymbolLevel = "SYMBOL_TABLE" } to the release build type in app/build.gradle.kts. Fixes the Play Console warning and gives readable native stack traces for crashes in transitive deps (ML Kit, CameraX, OkHttp BoringSSL, Compose/Skia).
• Promote through tracks — New personal Play accounts need 14 continuous days of Closed testing with ≥12 opted-in testers before production rollout. Create a Closed testing track and recruit testers ASAP if the production timeline matters.
• Verify GitHub Release assets — Once release.yml finishes, confirm the Release has APK + AAB + SHA256SUMS.txt and that the workflow summary says "Release-signed" (not the debug-signed warning banner).

Blockers:

• None.

---

2026-04-10 — Smooth Chat Auto-Scroll Fix + Compose Deprecation Cleanup

Done:

• Smooth chat auto-scroll — Rewrote ChatScreen.kt auto-scroll logic to fix five bugs surfaced while recording the demo video. (1) The LaunchedEffect keys only watched messages.size and lastMessage?.content?.length, so growth of the reasoning block (thinkingContent) and tool-card additions (toolCalls) silently froze auto-follow during long thinking and tool execution phases. (2) animateScrollToItem(messages.size - 1) defaulted to scrollOffset = 0, which aligns the top of the item with the top of the viewport — for tall streaming bubbles this snapped the user back to the start of the message instead of staying with the latest token. (3) There was no "user is reading history" gate, so any delta would yank a user reading scrollback back to the bottom. (4) The isStreaming flag was a snapshot key, so the stream-complete transition (true → false) re-triggered animateScrollToItem even when no content actually changed — producing a visible jiggle. (5) Sessions endpoint reloads the entire message list on stream complete via loadMessageHistory(), and the resulting animateItem() placement animations on every bubble fought with our concurrent animateScrollToItem — producing a flash where the viewport visibly settled twice.
• The fix — Added a ChatScrollSnapshot data class that captures all five streaming-state fields (message count, content length, thinking length, tool-call count, isStreaming). A snapshotFlow over the snapshot, debounced with distinctUntilChanged, drives auto-scroll via collectLatest (which cancels in-flight animations when newer deltas arrive — prevents pile-ups during rapid SSE bursts). The scroll target is (totalItemsCount - 1, scrollOffset = Int.MAX_VALUE) so Compose pins the absolute end of the list to the bottom of the viewport regardless of how tall the streaming bubble has grown. A userScrolledAway flag, tracked via a separate snapshotFlow on listState.isScrollInProgress to isAtBottom, gates the auto-follow — scrolling up to read history pauses it; scrolling back to the bottom (or tapping the FAB) resumes it. The FAB now uses !listState.canScrollForward for its isAtBottom derivation (replaces the off-by-one lastVisible < messages.size - 2 arithmetic) and clears userScrolledAway on tap so live-follow resumes immediately even before the scroll animation settles. The collectLatest lambda also tracks the previous snapshot in a coroutine-scoped var, which lets it (a) skip "state-only" deltas where only the isStreaming flag changed (the viewport was already correct from the last content delta — re-animating causes a jiggle on stream complete) and (b) detect "list rebuild" deltas (sessions-mode loadMessageHistory collapsing one streaming message into multiple final messages with proper boundaries) and use the instant scrollToItem path instead of animateScrollToItem so the items can run their animateItem() placement animations without competing with our scroll animation.
• Compose deprecation cleanup — Migrated Icons.Filled.Chat → Icons.AutoMirrored.Filled.Chat in RelayApp.kt (auto-mirrors for RTL locales). Migrated LocalClipboardManager → LocalClipboard (suspend-based Clipboard.setClipEntry(ClipEntry) API) in both ChatScreen.kt and SettingsScreen.kt. Both clipboard call sites now wrap in the existing rememberCoroutineScope().launch {} since the new API is suspend; the underlying clipboard write now runs off the UI thread, which is a small responsiveness win on lower-end devices. Removed the now-unused AnnotatedString imports from both files. Build is now warning-clean.
• Settings toggle — Added smoothAutoScroll boolean preference to ConnectionViewModel (DataStore key smooth_auto_scroll, default true), mirroring the existing animationEnabled/animationBehindChat pattern. New row in Settings > Chat under "Show reasoning". When disabled, the entire auto-scroll LaunchedEffect early-returns and the chat is fully manual.
• Docs — Updated README.md features list, docs/spec.md Settings Tab section, and user-docs/guide/chat.md (new "Smooth Auto-Scroll" subsection explaining the pause-on-scroll-up behavior).
• Brand rename — "Hermes Relay" → "Hermes-Relay" across 57 files (docs, app strings, scripts, workflows, plugin, relay server). Aligns the display name with the canonical repo slug. The Android app_name in strings.xml is now Hermes-Relay; PascalCase code identifiers (HermesRelayApp, HermesRelayTheme, logcat tag HermesRelay) were intentionally left alone since they're internal symbols, not user-facing text.
• Docs landing redesign — Restructured user-docs/index.md to put install above features. Created InstallSection.vue (mounted via VitePress home-hero-after slot) and HeroDemo.vue (mounted via home-hero-image slot). Hero is now a phone-framed <video> that autoplays the demo, then crossfades to the brand logo after 12s for the rest of the session via Vue <Transition mode="out-in"> — bandwidth fetches stop when the video unmounts. Fixed two raw-HTML /guide/getting-started hrefs that VitePress base-rewriting silently skipped (they were 404ing on the deployed site under the /hermes-relay/ base path).
• Demo video pipeline — Re-encoded source chat_demo.mp4 from 20.5 MB / 102 fps / 1080×2340 down to 1.95 MB / 30 fps / 720×1560 via ffmpeg (-vf scale=720:-2,fps=30 -crf 28 -preset slow -an -movflags +faststart) — 90% size reduction, mostly from dropping the wildly oversampled framerate. Extracted poster JPEG from first frame at 0.5s for instant LCP. Embedded with autoplay+muted+playsinline+preload=metadata in the docs hero, with controls in Getting Started's "Verify Connection" section, and as a <video> tag in README pointing at the GitHub raw URL. Used portable imageio-ffmpeg Python package since system ffmpeg wasn't installed.
• Release infrastructure hardening — .github/workflows/release.yml now builds APK + AAB in one Gradle invocation, decodes a HERMES_KEYSTORE_BASE64 GitHub Secret to $RUNNER_TEMP/release.keystore, signs with the release keystore when secrets are set, falls back to debug signing with a warning banner in $GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY when they're not. Generates SHA256 checksums for both artifacts and attaches all three (APK, AAB, SHA256SUMS.txt) to the GitHub Release.
• gradle-play-publisher plugin — Added com.github.triplet.play v3.13.0 (latest stable compatible with AGP 8.13.2 — v4.0.0 requires AGP 9). Configured in app/build.gradle.kts with track=internal, releaseStatus=DRAFT, defaultToAppBundles=true, reading credentials from <repo-root>/play-service-account.json (gitignored). Plugin is fully optional — assembleRelease/bundleRelease work without the JSON; only the explicit publishReleaseBundle/promoteReleaseArtifact tasks require it. Verified settings.gradle.kts already has gradlePluginPortal() in pluginManagement.
• RELEASE.md — New canonical doc (312 lines) covering: SemVer versioning conventions with optional -alpha/-beta/-rc.N prereleases and monotonic appVersionCode; one-time setup (keystore generation via keytool, local.properties config, base64 encoding for CI, Play Console account + 14-day closed testing rule for new personal accounts, Play Developer API service account creation in Google Cloud Console, GitHub Actions secrets); the 7-step release process (bump → notes → build → verify → tag/push → upload → post-release); CI behavior; hotfix recipe; troubleshooting. CLAUDE.md "Dev Workflow" section now references it.

Files changed:

• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt (preference key + StateFlow + setter)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt (new toggle row in Chat section + LocalClipboard migration)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt (data class, scroll-tracking effect, rewritten auto-scroll effect with previous-snapshot diffing, FAB fix, LocalClipboard migration)
• app/src/main/kotlin/com/hermesandroid/relay/ui/RelayApp.kt (Icons.AutoMirrored.Filled.Chat)
• README.md, docs/spec.md, user-docs/guide/chat.md, DEVLOG.md
• Rebrand — 57 files across app/src/main/res/, docs/, user-docs/, scripts/, plugin/, relay_server/, skills/, .github/workflows/
• Docs landing — user-docs/index.md (frontmatter trim), user-docs/.vitepress/theme/index.ts (slot wiring + dead-link fix), new user-docs/.vitepress/theme/components/{InstallSection,HeroDemo}.vue
• Demo video — assets/chat_demo.mp4 + assets/chat_demo_poster.jpg (canonical), user-docs/public/chat_demo.mp4 + user-docs/public/chat_demo_poster.jpg (VitePress-served copies), README.md (<video> tag), user-docs/guide/getting-started.md (full video in Verify Connection section)
• Release infra — .github/workflows/release.yml (AAB build + keystore decode + checksums + summary), gradle/libs.versions.toml (play-publisher = 3.13.0), app/build.gradle.kts (alias(libs.plugins.play.publisher) + play { } block), .gitignore (play-service-account.json + keystore.properties)
• Release docs — new RELEASE.md (312 lines), CLAUDE.md (Release Process subsection)

Next:

• Test on device with a long streaming response (verify auto-follow during reasoning + tool cards + text deltas)
• Test the pause-on-scroll-up gesture and the FAB resume
• Verify the disabled-pref path leaves the chat fully manual

Blockers:

• None — compileDebugKotlin passes clean (only pre-existing LocalClipboardManager deprecation warnings unrelated to this change)

---

2026-04-09 — Play Store Prep, Plugin CLI Migration, One-Line Install

Done:

• Play Store listing prep (v0.1.0) — 512x512 hi-res icon + 1024x500 feature graphic rendered from assets/logo.svg via scripts/gen-store-assets.mjs (pure-Node, @resvg/resvg-js). Feature graphic shows centered logo + three channel labels (Chat, Terminal, Bridge). Listing doc at docs/play-store-listing.md with short/full descriptions, release notes, and category. Interactive scripts/screenshots.bat TUI for capturing clean device screenshots with Android demo mode enabled.
• Privacy policy page — user-docs/privacy.md published at /privacy for Google Play's required URL. Formal language (effective date, COPPA disclosure, contact, change policy). Added Privacy link to top nav.
• Plugin CLI migration — hermes-pair → hermes pair — Rewrote the standalone bash script as a Python module (plugin/pair.py) with plugin/cli.py registering hermes pair via the v0.8.0 register_cli(subparser) convention. Pure-Python QR rendering via segno (no qrencode binary). Always shows connection details as plain text alongside the QR, so hermes pair works inside Hermes Rich TUI and over limited SSH sessions. Cross-platform LAN IP detection via socket trick (replaces Linux-only ip route). Config fallback chain: config.yaml → ~/.hermes/.env → env vars → defaults. Wrapped ctx.register_cli_command() call in try/except so 14 android_* tools still register cleanly on hermes-agent v0.7.0.
• One-line server install — install.sh at repo root: curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash clones plugin, installs Python deps (requests, aiohttp, segno), and prints next steps. Deleted the old plugin/install.sh since its own URL comment pointed to the root. Supports HERMES_HOME and HERMES_RELAY_BRANCH env overrides.
• README + docs restructure — Replaced README ## Install with ## Quick Start leading with the curl | bash one-liner. Homepage (user-docs/index.md) gets a custom "Install in 30 seconds" block below feature cards. Guide landing page (user-docs/guide/index.md) leads with the same one-liner. Getting Started page restructured into 3-step Quick Start. VitePress copy buttons on code blocks already in place.
• Tool annotations default OFF — The chat parse tool annotations feature was causing messages to wait for stream end before displaying. Defaulted to false in ChatHandler.kt and ConnectionViewModel.kt; subtitle now warns about the streaming delay behavior.
• Deprecated the standalone skill — skills/hermes-pairing-qr/SKILL.md and hermes-pair script keep working for v0.7.0 users but print deprecation warnings pointing to the plugin.

Files changed:

• plugin/pair.py (new), plugin/cli.py (new), plugin/__init__.py (wire CLI registration), plugin/setup.py / pyproject.toml / requirements.txt / plugin.yaml (bumped to 0.3.0 + segno)
• install.sh (new at root, replaces plugin/install.sh)
• docs/play-store-listing.md (new), assets/play-store-icon-512.png (new), assets/play-store-feature-1024x500.png (new), scripts/gen-store-assets.mjs (new), scripts/screenshots.bat (new)
• user-docs/privacy.md (new), user-docs/.vitepress/config.mts (nav link), user-docs/index.md (install section), user-docs/guide/index.md (Quick Install), user-docs/guide/getting-started.md (restructured)
• README.md (Quick Start up top), CLAUDE.md (key files updated)
• skills/hermes-pairing-qr/SKILL.md + hermes-pair (deprecation notices)

Next:

• Test hermes pair against local hermes-agent v0.8.0 once available
• Finalize Play Store screenshots (curate ones without real server IPs/keys)
• Submit v0.1.0 to Google Play Console

Blockers:

• hermes-agent v0.8.0 not yet released at time of writing — the register_cli_command plumbing exists in v0.7.0 but general plugin CLI commands aren't wired into the main argparse yet. Plugin still installs and registers tools fine on v0.7.0; users fall back to the deprecated standalone script for pairing until v0.8.0 ships.

---

2026-04-08 — Tool Call Reload on Stream Complete, Keyboard Gap Fix, Placeholder Dedup

Done:

• Tool call reload on stream complete — Sessions endpoint doesn't emit structured tool events during streaming; tool calls only exist as tool_calls JSON on stored server messages. Added server history reload in onCompleteCb when using sessions mode — replaces the single streaming message with the server's authoritative multi-message structure (proper message boundaries + tool call cards). Queue drain deferred until reload completes.
• Annotation finalization pass — Added finalizeAnnotations() as a post-stream reconciliation hook in onStreamComplete() and onTurnComplete(). Re-scans final message content for surviving annotation text, strips it, creates missing ToolCall objects, and marks incomplete annotation tools as completed. Safety net for servers that emit inline annotation markers.
• Placeholder message dedup — When message.started fires with a server-assigned ID, the empty placeholder message's ID is now replaced via replaceMessageId() (only acts on empty+streaming messages). Prevents orphan placeholder bubbles showing duplicate streaming dots alongside the real message.
• Keyboard gap fix — Bottom navigation bar now hides when keyboard is visible (WindowInsets.ime.getBottom > 0). Eliminates the gap between input bar and keyboard caused by innerPadding (bottom nav height) stacking with imePadding() (keyboard height).

Files changed:

• network/handlers/ChatHandler.kt — Added replaceMessageId(), finalizeAnnotations(), matchAnnotationToolName(). Wired finalization into onStreamComplete() and onTurnComplete().
• viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — onMessageStartedCb calls replaceMessageId(). onCompleteCb reloads session history for sessions mode.
• ui/RelayApp.kt — Bottom nav hidden when keyboard visible via IME insets check.

---

2026-04-07 — ASCII Morphing Sphere, Ambient Mode, Animation Settings, Polish Fixes

Done:

• ASCII morphing sphere — animated visualization on the empty chat screen, inspired by AMP Code CLI. Pure Compose Canvas rendering (no OpenGL). Characters . : - = + * # % @ form a sphere shape with 3D lighting. Color pulses green to purple. Contained in square aspect ratio box above "Start a conversation" text.
• Ambient mode — toggle button (AutoAwesome icon) in chat header bar hides messages and shows the sphere fullscreen. Tap the ChatBubble icon to return to chat.
• Animation behind messages — sphere renders at 15% opacity behind the chat message list as a subtle ambient background. Toggleable in Settings.
• Animation settings — new section in Settings under Appearance: "ASCII sphere" toggle (on by default), "Behind messages" toggle (on by default, disabled when animation is off).
• Parse tool annotations — marked as "Experimental" badge, disabled/dimmed when streaming endpoint is "Runs" mode (only relevant for Sessions mode).
• Empty bubble fix — messages with blank content and no tool calls are now hidden from chat.
• App icon fix — adaptive icon foreground scaled to 75% via <group> transform for proper safe zone padding.
• Dev scripts — added release, bundle, version commands to scripts/dev.bat.
• MCP tooling — android-tools-mcp v0.1.1 (IDE/build layer) + mobile-mcp (device/runtime layer) configured as companion MCP servers. Full reference in docs/mcp-tooling.md.
• Audit fixes — MIT LICENSE added, orphaned companion/ and companion_relay/ removed, FOREGROUND_SERVICE permission removed, CHANGELOG URLs fixed, version refs updated to 0.1.0, .gitignore updated, plugin refs updated from raulvidis to Codename-11.

New files:

• ui/components/MorphingSphere.kt — ASCII morphing sphere composable (Canvas-based, 3D lighting, color pulse)

Files changed:

• ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt — Empty state sphere, ambient mode toggle, behind-messages background layer
• ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — Animation settings section (ASCII sphere toggle, behind messages toggle), parse tool annotations experimental badge
• viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt — Animation preference DataStore keys/flows
• app/build.gradle.kts — Version and build config updates
• res/mipmap-anydpi-v26/ic_launcher.xml — 75% scale group transform on foreground
• scripts/dev.bat — Added release, bundle, version commands

---

2026-04-07 — Token Tracking Fix, Stats Enhancements, Keyboard Gap, Configurable Limits

Done:

• Token tracking fix — Root cause: OpenAI-format SSE events (e.g. chat.completion.chunk) have no type/event field, so the val eventType = type ?: event.resolvedType ?: return line exited before usage was ever checked. Moved usage extraction before the type resolution in both sendChatStream() and sendRunStream(). Also added prompt_tokens/completion_tokens (OpenAI naming) support in UsageInfo via resolvedInputTokens/resolvedOutputTokens helper properties.
• Stats for Nerds enhancements — Reset button with confirmation dialog, tokens per message average in summary line (~Xk/msg), peak TTFT and slowest completion times (tertiary color), formatMsWithSeconds() helper shows 1234ms (1.2s) for all time displays >= 1s.
• Configurable limits — Expandable "Limits" section in Chat settings with segmented button rows for max attachment size (1/5/10/25/50 MB, default 10) and max message length (1K/2K/4K/8K/16K chars, default 4K). Persisted to DataStore, read reactively in ChatScreen.
• Keyboard gap fix — Set contentWindowInsets = WindowInsets(0) on the Scaffold in RelayApp.kt. The Scaffold was adding system bar padding to innerPadding that stacked with ChatScreen's imePadding(), causing a visible gap between input bar and keyboard.

Files changed:

• network/HermesApiClient.kt — Usage check moved before eventType resolution in both streaming methods
• network/models/SessionModels.kt — UsageInfo now accepts prompt_tokens/completion_tokens, added resolvedInputTokens/resolvedOutputTokens/resolvedTotalTokens
• viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — Uses usage.resolvedInputTokens etc
• viewmodel/ConnectionViewModel.kt — maxAttachmentMb + maxMessageLength DataStore keys/flows/setters
• ui/components/StatsForNerds.kt — Reset button+dialog, tokens/msg, peak/slowest times, formatMsWithSeconds()
• ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — Expandable "Limits" section with segmented buttons
• ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt — Reads charLimit/maxAttachmentMb from settings
• ui/RelayApp.kt — contentWindowInsets = WindowInsets(0) on Scaffold

---

2026-04-07 — File Attachments

Done:

• Generic file attachments — users can attach any file type via + button in the input bar. Uses Android OpenMultipleDocuments picker (accepts */*). Files base64-encoded and sent in the Hermes API attachments array ({contentType, content}).
• Attachment preview strip — horizontal scrollable row above input bar showing pending attachments. Image attachments show decoded thumbnails, other files show document icon + filename + size. Each attachment has a remove (X) button.
• Attachment rendering in bubbles — user messages display attached images inline (decoded from base64), non-image attachments show as file badge with name. Forward-compatible with agent-sent images.
• 10 MB file size limit — enforced client-side with toast warning.
• Send with attachments only — send button enabled when attachments are present even without text. Sends [attachment] as placeholder text.
• API integration — attachments parameter added to both sendChatStream() and sendRunStream() in HermesApiClient. Serialized as JSON array matching Hermes WebAPI spec.
• Message history support — MessageItem.imageUrls extracts image_url content blocks from OpenAI-format content arrays for future server-side image rendering.

Files changed:

• data/ChatMessage.kt — Added Attachment data class, attachments field on ChatMessage
• network/models/SessionModels.kt — Added imageUrls property to MessageItem
• network/HermesApiClient.kt — attachments param on sendChatStream() + sendRunStream(), JSON array serialization
• viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — _pendingAttachments StateFlow, add/remove/clear, snapshot-and-clear on send, pass through to API
• ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt — + button, OpenMultipleDocuments picker, attachment preview strip, formatFileSize() helper
• ui/components/MessageBubble.kt — Inline image rendering (base64 decode), file badge for non-images

---

2026-04-07 — Client-Side Message Queuing

Done:

• Message queuing — Users can now send messages while the agent is streaming. Messages are queued locally and auto-sent when the current stream completes. Queue drains one at a time, maintaining proper ordering.
• Input bar redesign — During streaming, both Stop and Send buttons are visible side by side. Send button uses tertiary color during streaming to indicate "queue" mode. Placeholder changes to "Queue a message..." when streaming.
• Queue indicator — Animated bar above the input field shows queued message count ("1 message queued" / "3 messages queued") with a Clear button to discard the queue. Uses AnimatedVisibility for smooth entrance/exit.
• Queue lifecycle — Queue is cleared on stream cancellation (Stop button) and on stream error, preventing stale messages from auto-sending after failures.

Design decisions:

• Client-side queuing (not server-side /queue command) because the Hermes HTTP API doesn't support concurrent SSE streams to the same session. The gateway's /queue is a CLI-level feature, not an HTTP endpoint.
• Queue drains automatically — no manual "send next" required. Provides a seamless conversation flow.
• No purple glow on Send button during streaming — visual distinction between "send now" and "queue for later".

Files changed:

• viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — _queuedMessages StateFlow, sendMessage() queues during streaming, sendMessageInternal() extracted, drainQueue() on complete, clearQueue(), queue cleared on error/cancel
• ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt — Queue indicator row, input bar with both Stop+Send buttons, tertiary send tint during streaming, "Queue a message..." placeholder

---

2026-04-07 — Feature Gating, MCP Tooling, v0.1.0 Release Prep

Done:

• Feature gating system — FeatureFlags.kt singleton with compile-time defaults (BuildConfig.DEV_MODE) and runtime DataStore overrides. Debug builds have all features unlocked; release builds gate experimental features behind Developer Options.
• Developer Options — Hidden settings section activated by tapping version number 7 times (same UX as Android system Developer Options). Contains relay features toggle and lock button. Uses tertiary color scheme for visual distinction.
• Gated relay/pairing settings — Relay Server and Pairing sections in Settings hidden by default in release builds. Only visible when relay feature flag is enabled via Developer Options.
• Gated onboarding pages — Terminal, Bridge, and Relay pages dynamically excluded from onboarding flow when relay feature is disabled. Page count and indices adjust automatically.
• Version bump — 0.1.0-beta → 0.1.0 for Google Play submission.
• BuildConfig.DEV_MODE — true for debug, false for release. Used by FeatureFlags as compile-time default.
• android-tools-mcp v0.1.1 — Fixed MCP server path, built plugin from fork, committed wrapper jar fix, repo cleanup (fork attribution, VM option name fix, cross-platform release script), released to GitHub.
• mobile-mcp added — Added mobile-next/mobile-mcp as companion MCP server for device/runtime testing (tap, swipe, screenshot, app management). Configured with telemetry disabled.
• MCP tooling docs — Created docs/mcp-tooling.md with full reference for both MCP servers (setup, prerequisites, 40 tools listed, when-to-use guide, overlap analysis).

New files:

• data/FeatureFlags.kt — Feature flag singleton
• docs/mcp-tooling.md — MCP tooling reference

Files changed:

• app/build.gradle.kts — Added DEV_MODE BuildConfig field, buildConfig = true
• gradle/libs.versions.toml — Version 0.1.0
• ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — Feature-gated relay/pairing, added Developer Options section with tap-to-unlock
• ui/onboarding/OnboardingScreen.kt — Dynamic page list based on feature flags
• CLAUDE.md — Updated current state, added FeatureFlags to key files, MCP tooling section, related projects

Next:

• Build release APK and submit to Google Play (closed testing track)
• Test feature gating on release build (relay settings hidden, dev options tap unlock)
• Phase 2: Terminal channel
• Phase 3: Bridge channel

---

2026-04-07 — Session Management Audit, Play Store Release Prep

Done:

• Session management audit — Full review of session CRUD, persistence, capability detection, error handling. Implementation is complete and solid against upstream Hermes API (both /api/sessions non-standard and /v1/runs standard endpoints).
• Fixed SessionDrawer highlight bug — backgroundColor variable was computed but never applied to the Row modifier. Active sessions now properly highlighted with secondaryContainer.
• Added Privacy Policy link — New "Privacy Policy" button in Settings → About, linking to GitHub-hosted docs/privacy.md. Required for Google Play Store submission.
• Fixed privacy.md inaccuracies — Added CAMERA permission to the permissions table (used for QR scanning, declared required="false"). Corrected network security description to accurately reflect cleartext policy.
• Fixed RELEASE_NOTES.md URL — Changed generic user/hermes-android to actual Codename-11/hermes-android.
• Improved network_security_config.xml docs — Expanded comment explaining why cleartext is globally permitted (Android doesn't support IP range restrictions, users connect to arbitrary LAN IPs) and how security is enforced at the application layer (insecure mode toggle + warning badge).

Session management features confirmed working:

• List/create/switch/rename/delete sessions with optimistic updates + rollback
• Message history loading with tool call reconstruction
• Auto-session creation on first message send with auto-title
• Session ID persistence via DataStore across app restarts
• Capability detection (detectChatMode()) with graceful degradation
• Both Sessions and Runs streaming endpoints

Play Store readiness:

• Signing config loads from env vars / local.properties ✅
• ProGuard rules comprehensive ✅
• Release workflow with version validation ✅
• Privacy policy link in app ✅
• Network security documented ✅
• No hardcoded debug flags in release ✅
• Version: 0.1.0-beta (versionCode 1) — ready for open testing track

Files changed:

• ui/components/SessionDrawer.kt — Added background import + applied backgroundColor to Row
• ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — Added Shield icon import + Privacy Policy button in About card
• docs/privacy.md — Added CAMERA permission, fixed network security description
• RELEASE_NOTES.md — Fixed issues URL
• res/xml/network_security_config.xml — Expanded documentation comment

---

2026-04-07 — Chat UI Polish, Annotation Stripping, Reasoning Extraction

Done:

• Scroll-to-bottom FAB — SmallFloatingActionButton appears when scrolled up from bottom. Animated fade + slide. Haptic on click. Positioned bottom-end of message area.
• Message entrance animations — animateItem() on all LazyColumn items (messages, spacers, streaming dots). Smooth fade + slide when items appear/reorder.
• Date separators — "Today", "Yesterday", or "EEE, MMM d" chips between messages from different calendar days. Subtle surfaceVariant pill style.
• Message grouping — Consecutive same-sender messages have tighter spacing (2dp base + 1dp vs 6dp padding), suppressed agent name on non-first messages, grouped bubble corner shapes (flat edges where messages meet).
• Pre-first-token indicator — Placeholder assistant message with streaming dots appears immediately after send, before any SSE delta. Fills naturally when first delta arrives.
• Copy feedback toast — Snackbar "Copied to clipboard" on long-press copy. Previously only haptic with no visual confirmation.
• Annotation stripping — When the tool annotation parser matches inline text (`💻 terminal`), it now strips that text from the message content. Previously the raw annotation text remained visible alongside the ToolCall card.
• Inline reasoning extraction — <think>/<thinking> tags in assistant text are detected and redirected to thinkingContent for the ThinkingBlock. Handles tags split across streaming deltas. Resets on stream complete.

Files changed:

• ui/screens/ChatScreen.kt — FAB, date separators, grouping, snackbar, animation modifiers, Box wrapper for message area
• ui/components/MessageBubble.kt — isFirstInGroup/isLastInGroup params, grouped bubble shapes, conditional agent name
• network/handlers/ChatHandler.kt — addPlaceholderMessage(), stripLineFromContent(), processInlineReasoning(), thinking tag parser, parseAnnotationLine returns Boolean
• viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — placeholder message before stream start

Note: Code block copy button already existed (MarkdownContent.kt → CodeBlockWithCopyButton).

---

2026-04-07 — Tool Call Rendering Fix, Runs API, SSE Architecture Correction

Done:

• Fixed premature stream completion — assistant.completed was calling onComplete(), terminating the stream before tool events arrived in multi-turn agent loops. Now only run.completed/done end the stream. assistant.completed calls new onTurnComplete() which marks one message done without stopping the stream.
• Added message.started handling — Server-assigned message IDs now tracked via onMessageStarted callback. Enables proper multi-turn message tracking (each assistant turn gets its own message).
• Dynamic message ID tracking — ChatViewModel.startStream() uses currentMessageId variable that updates when the server sends new message IDs, instead of hardcoding one UUID for the whole stream.
• Rewrote tool annotation parser — Regex patterns now match actual Hermes format: `💻 terminal` (any emoji + tool name in backticks). Uses state tracking: first occurrence = start, second = complete. Also handles explicit completion/failure emojis (✅/❌) and verbose format (🔧 Running: tool_name).
• Fixed message history tool calls — loadMessageHistory() now reconstructs ToolCall objects from assistant messages' tool_calls field and matches tool results from role:"tool" messages. Previously skipped all tool data.
• Runs API event coverage — Added message.delta, reasoning.available, run.failed event handling. Updated HermesSseEvent model with event field (alias for type), tool field (Runs API format), duration, output, text, timestamp. Added resolvedType and resolvedToolName helpers.
• SSE debug logging — All events logged with HermesApiClient tag. Filter with adb logcat -s HermesApiClient to see what the server actually sends.
• Updated decisions.md — Documented the two streaming endpoints (Sessions vs Runs), tool call transparency differences, upstream API notes.
• Updated settings description — Streaming endpoint toggle now explains the difference.

Architecture correction (from upstream research):

• /api/sessions CRUD endpoints are NOT in upstream hermes-agent source. They may be version-specific (v0.7.0). Standard endpoints are /v1/chat/completions, /v1/responses, /v1/runs.
• /v1/chat/completions streaming embeds tool calls as inline markdown text (`💻 terminal`), NOT as separate SSE events. The annotation parser is the primary detection path.
• /v1/runs + /v1/runs/{run_id}/events provides structured lifecycle events with real tool.started/tool.completed — this is the correct endpoint for rich tool display.
• Hermes has no "channels" API (Discord/Telegram-style). The channel_directory.py is for cross-platform message routing, not a chat API.

Files changed:

• network/HermesApiClient.kt — new callbacks, fixed completion flow, debug logging
• network/handlers/ChatHandler.kt — onTurnComplete(), annotation rewrite, history tool calls
• network/models/SessionModels.kt — new fields for Runs API compatibility
• viewmodel/ChatViewModel.kt — dynamic message ID tracking, new callback wiring
• ui/screens/SettingsScreen.kt — updated endpoint toggle description
• docs/decisions.md — corrected API architecture documentation

Next:

• Deploy to device and test tool call rendering with adb logcat -s HermesApiClient
• Test with both "Sessions" and "Runs" endpoint modes
• Verify annotation parser matches actual Hermes verbose output
• If Runs API works well, consider making it the default endpoint

Blockers:

• Need a running hermes-agent server with tools configured to validate tool event flow end-to-end

---

2026-04-06 — Personality System, Command Palette, QR Pairing, Chat Header

Done:

• Personality system fix — getProfiles() was reading wrong JSON path and returning empty list. Replaced with getPersonalities() reading config.agent.personalities + config.display.personality. Server default personality shown first in picker. Switching sends personality's system prompt via system_message (previous profile field was ignored by server).
• Agent name on chat bubbles — Added agentName field to ChatMessage. Active personality name displayed above assistant messages.
• Chat header redesign — Messaging-app style: avatar circle with initial letter + ConnectionStatusBadge pulse overlay, agent name (titleMedium), model name subtitle from /api/config.
• Command palette — Searchable bottom sheet with category filter chips (2-row limit, expandable), 29 gateway built-in commands + dynamic personality commands + 90+ server skills from GET /api/skills. / button on input bar opens palette.
• Inline autocomplete improved — Extracted to InlineAutocomplete component with LazyColumn, 2-line descriptions, up to 8 results.
• QR code pairing — ML Kit barcode scanner + CameraX. Detects {"hermes":1,...} payload, auto-fills server URL + API key, triggers connection test. Available in Settings and Onboarding.
• hermes-pair skill — Added to skills/hermes-pairing-qr/ for users to install on their server. Generator script + SKILL.md.
• ConnectionStatusBadge — Reusable animated status indicator with pulse ring (green connected, amber connecting, red disconnected). Wired into Settings, Onboarding, and chat header.
• Relay server docs — docs/relay-server.md, relay_server/Dockerfile, relay_server/hermes-relay.service, relay_server/SKILL.md.
• Upstream contributions doc — docs/upstream-contributions.md — proposed GET /api/commands, personality parameter, terminal HTTP API.

Corrections to previous session:

• "Server profile picker" was actually fetching from wrong path — now correctly reads config.agent.personalities
• "Sends profile field" — server ignores this; now sends system_message with personality prompt
• "13 personality commands" were hardcoded — now generated dynamically from server config
• ProfilePicker renamed to PersonalityPicker

---

2026-04-06 — v0.1.0-beta Polish, Profiles, Analytics, Splash

Done:

• Package rename — com.hermesandroid.companion → com.hermesandroid.relay. All files moved, manifest updated, app name changed to "Hermes-Relay".
• Server profile picker — Replaced hardcoded 8-personality system with dynamic server profiles fetched from GET /api/config. ProfilePicker in top bar shows Default + server-configured profiles. Sends profile field in chat requests.
• Personality switching — 13 built-in Hermes personalities available via /personality <name> slash commands (server-side, session-level switching).
• Slash command autocomplete — Type / in chat input to see built-in commands (/help, /verbose, /clear, /status) + 13 personality commands + dynamically fetched server skills via GET /api/skills. Filterable dropdown overlay.
• In-app analytics (Stats for Nerds) — AppAnalytics singleton tracking response times (TTFT, completion), token usage, health check latency, stream success rates. Canvas bar charts in Settings with purple gradient. Accessible via Settings > Chat > Stats for Nerds.
• Tool call display config — Off/Compact/Detailed modes in Settings. CompactToolCall inline component for compact mode. ToolProgressCard auto-expands while tool is running, auto-collapses on complete.
• App context prompt — Toggleable system message telling the agent the user is on mobile. Enabled by default in Settings > Chat.
• Animated splash screen — AnimatedVectorDrawable with scale + overshoot + fade animation. Icon background color matches theme. Hold-while-loading (stays until DataStore ready). Smooth fade-out exit transition. Separate splash_icon.xml at 0.9x scale.
• Chat empty state — Logo + "Start a conversation" + suggestion chips that populate input.
• Animated streaming dots — Replaces static "streaming..." text with pulsing 3-dot animation.
• Haptic feedback — On send, copy, stream complete, error.
• About section redesign — Logo on dark background, dynamic version from BuildConfig, Source + Docs link buttons, credits line.
• Hermes docs links — In onboarding welcome page, API key help dialog, and Settings About section.
• Release signing config — Environment variables + local.properties fallback with graceful debug-signing fallback.
• Centralized versioning — libs.versions.toml as single source of truth (appVersionName, appVersionCode).
• Logo fix — Removed vertical H bars from ghost layer, now matches actual SVG (V-crossbar + diagonal feathers only).
• SSE debug logging — Unhandled event types now logged for diagnostics.
• Release infrastructure (from ARC patterns) — 3-job release workflow (validate → CI → release) reading from libs.versions.toml. Claude automation workflows (issue triage, fix, code review). Dependabot auto-merge. CHANGELOG.md + RELEASE_NOTES.md for v0.1.0-beta. Updated PR template with Android checklist.

New files:

• data/AppAnalytics.kt — In-app analytics singleton
• ui/components/StatsForNerds.kt — Canvas bar charts for analytics
• ui/components/CompactToolCall.kt — Inline compact tool call display
• network/models/SessionModels.kt — Session, message, SSE event models
• res/drawable/splash_icon.xml — Static splash icon (0.9x scale)
• res/drawable/splash_icon_animated.xml — Animated splash vector
• res/animator/ — Splash animation resources
• .github/workflows/claude.yml — Claude automation
• .github/workflows/claude-code-review.yml — Claude code review
• .github/workflows/dependabot-auto-merge.yml — Dependabot auto-merge

Next:

• Build and test against running Hermes API server
• Test on emulator and physical device (S25 Ultra)
• Set up keystore/signing secrets for release CI
• Deploy docs site (GitHub Pages or similar)
• Phase 2: Terminal channel (xterm.js in WebView, tmux integration)
• Phase 3: Bridge channel migration

Blockers:

• None — ready for on-device testing

---

2026-04-05 — Project Scaffolding

Done:

• Wrote spec (docs/spec.md) and decisions (docs/decisions.md)
• Created CLAUDE.md handoff for agent development
• Created DEVLOG.md

2026-04-05 — MVP Phase 0 + Phase 1 Implementation

Done:

• Created Android app — full Jetpack Compose project (30+ files, 2500+ lines)
  • Bottom nav scaffold with 4 tabs (Chat, Terminal, Bridge, Settings)
  • WSS connection manager (OkHttp, auto-reconnect with exponential backoff)
  • Channel multiplexer (typed envelope protocol)
  • Auth flow (6-char pairing code → session token in EncryptedSharedPreferences)
  • Chat UI: message bubbles, streaming text, tool progress cards, profile selector
  • Settings UI: server URL, connection status, theme selector
  • Material 3 + Material You dynamic theming
  • @Preview composables for MessageBubble and ToolProgressCard
  • Terminal and Bridge tabs stubbed for Phase 2/3
• Created relay server — Python aiohttp WSS server (10 files, 1500+ lines)
  • WSS server on port 8767 with health check
  • Auth: pairing codes (10min expiry), session tokens (30-day expiry), rate limiting
  • Chat channel: proxies to Hermes WebAPI SSE, re-emits as WS envelopes
  • Terminal/bridge channel stubs
  • Runnable via python -m relay_server
• Created CI/CD — GitHub Actions
  • CI: lint → build (debug APK) → test, relay syntax check
  • Release: tag-triggered, version validation, signed APK → GitHub Release

2026-04-05 — Repo Restructure + Build Fixes

Done:

• Promoted Android project to repo root (Android Studio opens root directly)
• Removed hermes-android-bridge/ (upstream absorbed into Compose rewrite)
• Renamed hermes-android-plugin/ → plugin/
• Moved root tools/, skills/, tests/ into plugin/
• Resolved build issues: gradle.properties, launcher icons, SDK path, compileSdk 36
• Pinned AGP 8.13.2 + Gradle 8.13 + JVM toolchain 17
• Added dev scripts (scripts/dev.sh + scripts/dev.bat)
• Updated all docs (README, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, DEVLOG.md, spec directory structure)
• Build verified: debug APK builds successfully

Current state:

• Phase 0 + Phase 1 complete
• Android Studio opens and syncs from repo root
• Debug APK builds and deploys to emulator/device
• Dev scripts ready for build/install/run/test/relay workflows

2026-04-05 — Direct API Chat Refactor

Done:

• Refactored chat to connect directly to Hermes API Server (/v1/chat/completions)
  • Chat no longer routes through relay server — bypasses it entirely
  • Uses OpenAI-compatible HTTP/SSE with X-Hermes-Session-Id for session continuity
  • Auth via Authorization: Bearer <API_SERVER_KEY> stored in EncryptedSharedPreferences
• New HermesApiClient — OkHttp-SSE client with health check and streaming chat
• New ApiModels.kt — OpenAI-format request/response models (ChatCompletionChunk, etc.)
• Refactored ChatHandler — removed envelope-based dispatch, added typed SSE entry points
• Refactored ConnectionViewModel — dual connection model:
  • API Server (HTTP) for chat — URL, key, health check, reachability state
  • Relay Server (WSS) for bridge/terminal — separate URL, connect/disconnect
• Refactored ChatViewModel — sends via HermesApiClient.sendChatStream() with cancel support
• Updated Onboarding — collects API Server URL + API Key (required) + Relay URL (optional)
• Updated Settings — split into "API Server" and "Relay Server" cards
• Updated ChatScreen — gates on API reachability, added stop button for streaming
• Updated DataManager — backup format v2 with separate apiServerUrl/relayUrl fields
• Updated docs/decisions.md with ADR for direct API chat
• Updated docs/spec.md with new chat architecture

Architecture change:

Before: Phone (WSS) → Relay (:8767) → WebAPI (:8642)  [everything]
After:  Phone (HTTP/SSE) → API Server (:8642)          [chat — direct]
        Phone (WSS) → Relay (:8767)                     [bridge, terminal]

2026-04-05 — Edge Case Fixes + CI/CD Hardening

Done:

• Fixed SSE thread safety — all callbacks dispatched to main thread via Handler
• Fixed overlapping streams — previous stream cancelled before new send
• Fixed tool call completion — now matches by toolCallId instead of first incomplete
• Fixed onboarding test connection — client properly cleaned up on exception via try/finally
• Fixed health check loop — only runs when API client is configured
• Added network_security_config.xml — cleartext restricted to localhost/127.0.0.1/emulator
• Added ProGuard rules for okhttp-sse (okhttp3.sse., okhttp3.internal.sse.)
• Added id field to ToolCall data class for proper matching
• SSE read timeout set to 5 minutes (was 0/infinite — detects dead connections)
• OkHttpClient.shutdown() now uses awaitTermination for clean teardown
• Used AtomicBoolean for completeCalled flag (thread-safe)
• Created CHANGELOG.md (Keep a Changelog format)
• Created RELEASE_NOTES.md (used as GitHub Release body)
• Updated release.yml — uses RELEASE_NOTES.md body, SHA256 checksums, prerelease detection
• Created .github/dependabot.yml (Gradle + GitHub Actions, weekly, grouped)
• Created .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md with checklist
• Added in-app "What's New" dialog in Settings (reads from bundled whats_new.txt asset)
• Bumped versionCode=2, versionName=0.2.0

2026-04-05 — Session Management + What's New Auto-Show

Done:

• Switched chat streaming from /v1/chat/completions to /api/sessions/{id}/chat/stream
  • Proper Hermes session API — not the undocumented X-Hermes-Session-Id header
  • Parses Hermes-native SSE events (assistant.delta, tool.started, tool.completed, assistant.completed)
• Full session CRUD in HermesApiClient:
  • listSessions(), createSession(), deleteSession(), renameSession(), getMessages()
• Session drawer UI (ModalNavigationDrawer):
  • List sessions with title, timestamp, message count
  • New Chat button, switch sessions, rename/delete with confirmation dialogs
  • Hamburger menu icon in ChatScreen top bar
• Session lifecycle:
  • Auto-creates session on first message if none active
  • Auto-titles session from first user message (truncated to 50 chars)
  • Message history loads when switching sessions
  • Last session ID persisted to DataStore — resumes on app restart
  • Optimistic deletes and renames
• What's New auto-show:
  • Tracks last seen version in DataStore (KEY_LAST_SEEN_VERSION)
  • Shows WhatsNewDialog automatically when version changes
  • Dismisses and records current version
• New models: SessionModels.kt (SessionItem, MessageItem, HermesSseEvent, etc.)
• Updated ChatHandler with session management methods (updateSessions, removeSession, etc.)
• Updated ChatMessage.ChatSession with messageCount and updatedAt fields
• Updated whats_new.txt with session management features

2026-04-05 — MVP Polish: Markdown, Reasoning, Tokens, Personalities, UX

Done:

• Markdown rendering — assistant messages render with full markdown (code blocks, bold, italic, links, lists) via mikepenz multiplatform-markdown-renderer-m3
• Message copy — long-press on any message bubble to copy text to clipboard
• Reasoning/thinking display — collapsible ThinkingBlock above assistant responses when agent uses extended thinking; toggle in Settings
• Token & cost tracking — per-message token count (↑input ↓output) and estimated cost displayed below timestamp
• Personality picker — dropdown in chat top bar with 8 built-in personalities (default, concise, creative, technical, teacher, formal, pirate, kawaii); injects system_message into chat stream
• Error retry button — "Retry" button in error banner re-sends last failed message
• Offline detection — ConnectivityObserver via ConnectivityManager; shows offline banner when network is lost
• Streaming state fix — onStreamError now clears isStreaming/isThinkingStreaming on all affected messages
• Haptic feedback — on send, stream complete, error, and message copy
• Input character limit — 4096 char limit with counter shown near the limit
• Responsive layout — bubble width adapts by screen width: 300dp (phone), 480dp (medium), 600dp (tablet)
• Enriched tool cards — tool-type-specific icons (terminal, search, file, tap, keyboard, etc.), duration tracking ("Completed in X.Xs")
• Accessibility — content descriptions on message bubbles, tool cards, thinking blocks, all interactive elements
• Dead code cleanup — deleted unused ApiModels.kt and ChatModels.kt
• Settings: Chat section — new "Show reasoning" toggle
• Added ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE permission to AndroidManifest

New files:

• ui/components/MarkdownContent.kt — Compose markdown renderer wrapper
• ui/components/ThinkingBlock.kt — collapsible reasoning/thinking display
• ui/components/TokenDisplay.kt — per-message token + cost display
• ui/components/PersonalityPicker.kt — personality selection dropdown
• network/ConnectivityObserver.kt — reactive network connectivity listener

New dependencies:

• com.mikepenz:multiplatform-markdown-renderer-m3:0.30.0
• com.mikepenz:multiplatform-markdown-renderer-code:0.30.0
• material3-window-size-class (responsive layout)

2026-04-05 — Full Audit + Bug Fixes + VitePress Docs Site

Audit findings fixed (9 bugs):

• CRITICAL: Added ProGuard rules for mikepenz markdown renderer + intellij-markdown parser
• CRITICAL: Cached fallback StateFlows in ChatViewModel (was creating new instances per access)
• MAJOR: Fixed MessageItem.id type from Int? to String? (server returns string IDs)
• HIGH: Added !isStreaming guard to send button (prevented double-send)
• HIGH: Added personality fallback when ID not found (prevents null system message)
• MEDIUM: Session rename dialog remember key now includes session (prevents stale state)
• MEDIUM: ToolProgressCard duration guard against negative values
• LOW: Error banner text limited to 2 lines with ellipsis
• BUILD: Unified AGP version to 8.13.2 in libs.versions.toml

VitePress documentation site created:

• 20 pages across 4 sections: Guide, Features, Architecture, Reference
• Landing page with hero section and 8 feature cards
• Full user guide: getting started, chat, sessions, troubleshooting
• Feature docs: direct API, markdown, reasoning, personalities, tokens, tools
• Architecture docs: overview diagram, ADRs adapted from docs/decisions.md, security model
• API reference with all endpoints and request/response examples
• Configuration reference with all DataStore keys and settings
• VitePress config with nav, sidebar, local search
• Run with: npm install && npm run dev:docs

Next:

• Build and test against running Hermes API server
• Test on emulator and physical device (S25 Ultra)
• Set up keystore/signing secrets for release CI
• Deploy docs site (GitHub Pages or similar)
• Phase 2: Terminal channel (xterm.js in WebView, tmux integration)
• Phase 3: Bridge channel migration

2026-07-30 — Wake-word strictness tuning

• Lowered the unset Android wake-word strictness default from 0.6 to 0.3 after physical-device testing showed reliable activation only at the lower slider positions.
• Added the live numeric strictness value to Voice settings so tuning is observable.
• Preserved saved user values and the existing three-frame confirmation default; this adjustment does not migrate working installations or broaden the detector acceptance window beyond the selected threshold.

2026-07-30 — OEM assistant-picker compatibility

• Added the standard android.intent.action.ASSIST activity filter because some OEM assistant pickers enumerate Assist activities even when a valid VoiceInteractionService is present.
• Routed activity-based Assist invocations through the existing system-assistant activation protocol so both Android entry points share microphone ownership and session lifecycle behavior.
• Added the required recognitionService metadata and a bounded recognition component after device validation showed Samsung could grant the package role while leaving the active voice-interaction service empty. The component does not open the microphone; Hermes assistant sessions continue to use the established transcription pipeline.
• Declared CATEGORY_VOICE on the Assist activity and retained ACTION_ASSIST on the explicit activation intent. VoiceInteractionSession.startVoiceActivity() adds the voice category, and Android rejects the launch as START_NOT_VOICE_COMPATIBLE unless the target filter matches both.