Allow users to interact with Hermes by sending and receiving emails.
Uses IMAP polling for incoming messages and SMTP for replies with
proper threading (In-Reply-To, References headers).
Integrates with all 14 gateway extension points: config, adapter
factory, authorization, send_message tool, cron delivery, toolsets,
prompt hints, channel directory, setup wizard, status display, and
env example.
65 tests covering config, parsing, dispatch, threading, IMAP fetch,
SMTP send, attachments, and all integration points.
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.
