Fresh profiles (created without --clone) now:
- Auto-seed a default SOUL.md immediately, so users have a file to
customize right away instead of discovering it only after first use
- Print a clear warning that the profile has no API keys and will
inherit from the shell environment unless configured separately
- Show the SOUL.md path for personality customization
Previously, fresh profiles started with no SOUL.md (only seeded on
first use via ensure_hermes_home), no mention of credential isolation,
and no guidance about customizing personality. Users reported confusion
about profiles using the wrong model/plan tokens and SOUL.md not
being read — both traced to operational gaps in the creation UX.
Closes#8093 (investigated: code correctly loads SOUL.md from profile
HERMES_HOME; issue was operational, not a code bug).
In Docker, HERMES_HOME=/opt/data (set in Dockerfile) and users mount
their .hermes directory to /opt/data. However, profile operations used
Path.home() / '.hermes' which resolves to /root/.hermes in Docker —
an ephemeral container path, not the mounted volume.
This caused:
- Profiles created at /root/.hermes/profiles/ (lost on container recreate)
- active_profile sticky file written to wrong location
- profile list looking at wrong directory
Fix: Add get_default_hermes_root() to hermes_constants.py that detects
Docker/custom deployments (HERMES_HOME outside ~/.hermes) and returns
HERMES_HOME as the root. Also handles Docker profiles correctly
(<root>/profiles/<name> → root is grandparent).
Files changed:
- hermes_constants.py: new get_default_hermes_root()
- hermes_cli/profiles.py: _get_default_hermes_home() delegates to shared fn
- hermes_cli/main.py: _apply_profile_override() + _invalidate_update_cache()
- hermes_cli/gateway.py: _profile_suffix() + _profile_arg()
- Tests: 12 new tests covering Docker scenarios
The original PR excluded auth.json from _DEFAULT_EXPORT_EXCLUDE_ROOT and
filtered both auth.json and .env from named profile exports, but missed
adding .env to the default profile exclusion set. Default exports would
still leak .env containing API keys.
Added .env to _DEFAULT_EXPORT_EXCLUDE_ROOT, added test coverage, and
updated the existing test that incorrectly asserted .env presence.
- Add _DEFAULT_EXPORT_EXCLUDE_ROOT constant with 25+ entries to exclude
from default profile exports: repo checkout (hermes-agent), worktrees,
databases (state.db), caches, runtime state, logs, binaries
- Add _default_export_ignore() with root-level and universal exclusions
(__pycache__, *.sock, *.tmp at any depth)
- Remove redundant shutil/tempfile imports from contributor's if-block
- Block import_profile() from accepting 'default' as target name with
clear guidance to use --name
- Add 7 tests covering: archive creation, inclusion of profile data,
exclusion of infrastructure, nested __pycache__ exclusion, import
rejection without --name, import rejection with --name default,
full export-import roundtrip with a different name
Addresses review feedback on PR #4370.
Fixes a zip-slip path traversal vulnerability in hermes profile import.
shutil.unpack_archive() on untrusted tar members allows entries like
../../escape.txt to write files outside ~/.hermes/profiles/.
- Add _normalize_profile_archive_parts() to reject absolute paths
(POSIX and Windows), traversal (..), empty paths, backslash tricks
- Add _safe_extract_profile_archive() for manual per-member extraction
that only allows regular files and directories (rejects symlinks)
- Replace shutil.unpack_archive() with the safe extraction path
- Add regression tests for traversal and absolute-path attacks
Co-authored-by: Gutslabs <gutslabsxyz@gmail.com>
