Hermes Agent pushed 10 commits in 3 hours — all targeted at gateway context budget enforcement, @ reference scoping correctness, and compaction reliability. This is a cleanup cycle, but the fixes close real gaps.
What Changed
Gateway context budgets honored (#62788, #62789). The gateway wasn’t applying runtime context budgets to queued references — @ context references like @profile or @workspace could bypass the effective budget limit. Two scoping fixes ensure queued and runtime-profile references respect the configured budget. Also fixed: the @ context reference expansion code never ran due to an AttributeError masked during startup.
Compaction anti-thrash cleared (#62790). Stale anti-thrash verdicts were accumulating in the compaction subsystem, causing unnecessary backoff on legitimate compaction requests. The fix clears verdicts once the triggering condition resolves.
Codex manual compaction hardened (#62791 area). Three commits handle edge cases in Codex’s manual compaction path: rejecting compaction when an interrupt is in flight, consuming usage gaps from previous compaction cycles, and correctly evaluating native compaction usage before deciding whether to compact. New tests cover the no-usage compaction response path.
Why It Matters
Budget enforcement and @ reference scoping are correctness-critical for any session that stitches context from multiple profiles or workspaces. If you’ve ever seen Hermes silently ignore a @profile reference or hit mysterious compaction backoff, these fixes directly address those symptoms. The Codex compaction hardening prevents data loss scenarios where an interrupted compaction leaves usage gaps.
The Takeaway
Hermes is tidying up its context management layer — budget enforcement, reference expansion, and compaction all get tighter. If you rely on @ context references or run long Codex sessions, this batch is worth pulling immediately. Check our full Hermes tool overview for capabilities.