Persist structured exhaustion metadata from provider errors, use explicit reset timestamps when available, and expose label-based credential targeting in the auth CLI. This keeps long-lived Codex cooldowns from being misreported as one-hour waits and avoids forcing operators to manage entries by list position alone.
Constraint: Existing credential pool JSON needs to remain backward compatible with stored entries that only record status code and timestamp
Constraint: Runtime recovery must keep the existing retry-then-rotate semantics for 429s while enriching pool state with provider metadata
Rejected: Add a separate credential scheduler subsystem | too large for the Hermes pool architecture and unnecessary for this fix
Rejected: Only change CLI formatting | would leave runtime rotation blind to resets_at and preserve the serial-failure behavior
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: moderate
Reversibility: clean
Directive: Preserve structured rate-limit metadata when new providers expose reset hints; do not collapse back to status-code-only exhaustion tracking
Tested: Focused pytest slice for auth commands, credential pool recovery, and routing (272 passed); py_compile on changed Python files; hermes -w auth list/remove smoke test with temporary HERMES_HOME
Not-tested: Full repository pytest suite, broader gateway/integration flows outside the touched auth and pool paths
Three bugs prevented credential pool rotation from working when multiple
Codex OAuth tokens were configured:
1. credential_pool was dropped during smart model turn routing.
resolve_turn_route() constructed runtime dicts without it, so the
AIAgent was created without pool access. Fixed in smart_model_routing.py
(no-route and fallback paths), cli.py, and gateway/run.py.
2. Eager fallback fired before pool rotation on 429. The rate-limit
handler at line ~7180 switched to a fallback provider immediately,
before _recover_with_credential_pool got a chance to rotate to the
next credential. Now deferred when the pool still has credentials.
3. (Non-issue) Retry budget was reported as too small, but successful
pool rotations already skip retry_count increment — no change needed.
Reported by community member Schinsly who identified all three root
causes and verified the fix locally with multiple Codex accounts.
