Authored by @ch3ronsa. Fixes UnicodeEncodeError/UnicodeDecodeError on
Windows with non-UTF-8 system locales (e.g. Turkish cp1254).
Adds encoding='utf-8' to 10 open() calls across gateway/session.py,
gateway/channel_directory.py, and gateway/mirror.py.
On Windows, Python's open() defaults to the system locale encoding
(e.g. cp1254 for Turkish, cp1252 for Western European) instead of
UTF-8. The gateway already uses ensure_ascii=False in json.dumps()
to preserve Unicode characters in chat messages, but the
corresponding open() calls lack encoding="utf-8". This mismatch
causes UnicodeEncodeError / UnicodeDecodeError when users send
non-ASCII messages (Turkish, Japanese, Arabic, emoji, etc.) through
Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, or Slack on Windows.
The project already fixed this for .env files in hermes_cli/config.py
(line 624) but the gateway module was missed.
Files fixed:
- gateway/session.py: session index + JSONL transcript read/write (5 calls)
- gateway/channel_directory.py: channel directory read/write (3 calls)
- gateway/mirror.py: session index read + transcript append (2 calls)
- Introduced a new channel directory to cache reachable channels/contacts for messaging platforms, enhancing the send_message tool's ability to resolve human-friendly names to numeric IDs.
- Added functionality to mirror sent messages into the target's session transcript, providing context for cross-platform message delivery.
- Updated the send_message tool to support listing available targets and improved error handling for channel resolution.
- Enhanced the gateway to build and refresh the channel directory during startup and at regular intervals, ensuring up-to-date channel information.
