Follow-up to #53791 addressing review feedback: the footgun checker treated
capture_output=/stdout=/stderr=/check_output as proof a subprocess can't pop a
Windows console. That invariant is false — stream redirection controls where a
child's output goes, not whether a console is allocated. From a console-less
parent (Desktop/Electron, pythonw.exe, detached gateway/cron) a console-subsystem
child still flashes a window even when fully captured.
- check-windows-footguns.py: capture/redirect/check_output is no longer a blanket
safe-pass. Added _WINDOWS_FLASHING_PROGRAMS (git/gh/npm/node/python/uv/ffmpeg/
docker/powershell/…); calls to those are flagged even when captured. Non-flashing
programs keep the capture exemption (no 271-site noise). _subprocess_compat.run/
popen calls are inherently safe (wrapper injects CREATE_NO_WINDOW).
- Routed the 35 genuine flashing git/gh/npm/uv/ffmpeg/docker spawns through the
_subprocess_compat.run/popen chokepoint (Brooklyn's wrapper from #53810) — the
durable fix, not per-site annotations. cmd.exe /c start stays # ok (intentional).
- Updated tests + CONTRIBUTING.md rule #17 to the corrected invariant.
When Hermes runs in TUI mode, the gateway child process communicates with
the Node.js parent over a JSON-RPC protocol on stdin. Subprocess calls that
inherit this stdin fd can trigger a race condition where the child's stdin
read returns EOF, causing the gateway to exit cleanly (exit code 0) mid-tool-
execution.
This is the same root cause as issue #14036 (byterover plugin) and PR #39257
(SSH environment backend). This commit applies the fix — stdin=subprocess.DEVNULL
— to all 85 subprocess.run() and subprocess.Popen() calls that execute inside
the TUI gateway child process.
Scope: TUI-context code only (agent/, tools/, plugins/, tui_gateway/server.py).
CLI code (cli.py, hermes_cli/), tests, scripts, and gateway process management
are excluded — they don't run inside the TUI child and inherit the terminal's
stdin, not the JSON-RPC pipe.
85 call sites across 28 files. All files pass syntax check.
* feat(discord): voice-channel mixer — ambient idle bed + verbal acks that overlap TTS
Discord voice mode can now feel conversational: the bot speaks a short
acknowledgement before it starts working, and a subtle ambient 'thinking' bed
plays underneath while tools run, ducking under speech and swelling back — the
Grok-voice-mode feel.
discord.py plays only one audio stream per voice connection, so this adds a
software mixer (VoiceMixer, a discord.AudioSource) installed once per guild on
join. It sums an ambient loop, verbal acks, and TTS replies into that single
20ms/48kHz/stereo stream (numpy int16 add + clip), so they overlap instead of
stop-and-swap. Speech ducks the ambient gain down and releases it smoothly.
- plugins/platforms/discord/voice_mixer.py: VoiceMixer + MixerChild (gain,
loop, fade, duck/release), decode_to_pcm (ffmpeg), synth_ambient_pcm (no
asset needed — synthesised pad).
- adapter: install mixer on join, tear down on leave, route
play_in_voice_channel through the mixer (legacy one-shot path kept as
fallback), play_ack_in_voice, voice_mixer_active. Defensive getattr for the
object.__new__ test helpers.
- gateway/run.py: tool_start_callback fires a one-time verbal ack on the first
tool call of a turn when in a voice channel (independent of the text
tool-progress gate). No system-prompt or message-flow changes.
- config: discord.voice_fx.* (OFF by default; ambient/duck/speech gains, ack
phrases). All in config.yaml, not .env.
- docs + tests (mixer unit + adapter integration).
Verified: 19 new tests pass, existing voice suite green (2 pre-existing
davey-module env failures unchanged), and a real-mixer E2E confirms ambient
streams, TTS overlaps it, acks layer in, and teardown is clean.
* fix(discord): make voice mixer numpy import lazy (numpy is voice-extra-only)
numpy ships in the optional 'voice' extra, not [all,dev], so a module-level
'import numpy' broke CI test collection (and would break the always-imported
Discord adapter on any install without the voice extra). Defer numpy to the
functions that actually mix audio via _require_numpy(); guard the test module
with pytest.importorskip('numpy').
Teknium
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