[Pavel-Tk]

Hermes plugin fixes from the 2026-10-11 customer test. Version 0.9.1 (CHANGELOG entry added).

CON-04: search survives slow servers (P1)

• memory_search, memory_expand, memory_evidence: 15 s total budget (SUBSTRATE_TOOL_TIMEOUT_SECONDS, clamped 3-60 s). First attempt 7 s; one retry with the remaining budget, only for timeout, transport_error, server_error, internal. No retry for 4xx-class answers.
• When the retry is spent the tool returns {"error":"timeout","message":"Substrate memory is busy or slow right now. Try again in a moment. ..."}, so the agent does not say it lacks access to a source.
• Per-turn recall TURN_CONTEXT_TIMEOUT 2.0 -> 2.5 s, so it stays above the server's 1500 ms deadline with about 1 s of headroom.
• Tested: retry on timeout, busy message after two timeouts (parametrised over timeout/transport/5xx), no retry on 400/404/429/413, budget env override and clamping, evidence uses the same budget, turn-context budget.

HER-10: no false version warning

• host_version_notice: 0.0.0, vgit.*, dev, empty are unknown and get no note.
• The note is no longer added to pre_llm_call (it was repeated on answers; the process flag did not survive a host that reloads the plugin per message). It is added once to the connect announcement.
• Tested: unknown builds silent; an old host (0.20.3) gets the note once in the connect announcement and never on ordinary turns.

HER-09: install picked up dependency tooling (P2), partly fixed

• Cause: the repository root had pyproject.toml (dev tooling with [project] and [dev] extras) plus uv.lock. Hermes treats a root pyproject.toml as a plugin dependency project (see CHANGELOG 0.8.1). plugin.yaml already said python_runtime: external, which the owner's Hermes evidently does not stop.
• Change: pyproject.toml and uv.lock move to tooling/ (lock content unchanged). pytest config moves to root pytest.ini, ruff config to root ruff.toml. CI, release workflows, README, CONTRIBUTING, docs/releasing and dependabot now use uv sync --project tooling --frozen --extra dev with UV_PROJECT_ENVIRONMENT=$PWD/.venv.
• Tested: the tooling venv syncs from tooling/uv.lock with --frozen; full suite on 3.11 and 3.12; test_packaging asserts there is no root pyproject.toml.
• Not verified: the owner's newer Hermes installer source is not on this machine (the checkout at plugin_compare is 0.21.0 and does no plugin dependency install), so I could not reproduce the 2 min 47 s install. The fix removes the file that triggers it per the 0.8.1 notes. Re-test with hermes plugins install <repo URL> on a Hermes build that shows the problem.

HER-12: lookups take 10-28 s (P2), not fixable from the plugin

• Hermes (checkout at ~/plugin_compare/hermes-agent, tools/tool_search.py) defers every non-core plugin tool behind the tool_search / tool_describe / tool_call bridge when tools.tool_search.enabled is auto (default) or on. _HERMES_CORE_TOOLS is Hermes-owned and register_tool has no always-load option. The only direct surfaces are the desktop_ui and project toolsets, which are not for this.
• Plugin-side: the memory_search description is now short and direct (see follow-ups).
• Workaround for users, documented in the plugin README and not applied automatically: tools.tool_search.enabled: off.
• Needs a Hermes-side change: an always-load flag for plugin tools.

Follow-ups from substrate-v5 PR #83

• memory_search description: the server's tools/list description (which names the connected sources) is used when present. Fetched once per process in a background thread, cached; fallback text kept when missing, non-string, empty, over 1000 chars or failing. Failures are retried after 5 minutes.
• payload_too_large added to _PERMANENT_TOOL_ERRORS (tool errors), so oversized captures are split or quarantined, not retried.
• Rejected import/capture items: logged at WARNING on substrate.spool with kind, event_id and the server's error plus hint (bounded, control characters stripped). Logged in both the batch and single-item paths.

Tests

• .venv built exactly as CI does (uv sync --project tooling --frozen --extra dev), Python 3.11 and 3.12: full suite 426 passed, 5 skipped each (server and host checkouts absent). ruff check ., compileall, check_public_hygiene.py, JSON validation, build_release.py and --check all pass.
• New tests in tests/test_substrate_plugin.py (+ fake-server hooks in tests/conftest.py) and tests/test_packaging.py.
• Test fix: test_tool_404_carries_permanent_signal asserted fake_mcp.hits == 1, which was racy (the spool sender can post memory_import in the same window) and counted the initialize POST. The hit count is removed; permanence is still asserted via the quarantine counter and transient is False.
• Autouse conftest fixture keeps the background description fetch out of the suite.

Version

VERSION, root and plugin plugin.yaml, client.PLUGIN_VERSION, release workflow version check, packaging tests, README/COMPATIBILITY current-release rows: 0.9.0 -> 0.9.1.

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