Instead of a blocking first-run questionnaire, show a one-time hint the first
time the user hits each behavior fork:
1. First message while the agent is working — appends a hint to the busy-ack
explaining the /busy queue vs /busy interrupt knob, phrased to match the
mode that was just applied (don't tell a queue-mode user to switch to
queue).
2. First tool that runs for >= 30s in the noisiest progress mode
(tool_progress: all) — prints a hint about /verbose to cycle display
modes (all -> new -> off -> verbose). Gated on /verbose actually being
usable on the surface: always shown on CLI; on gateway only shown when
display.tool_progress_command is enabled.
Each hint is latched in config.yaml under onboarding.seen.<flag>, so it
fires exactly once per install across CLI, gateway, and cron, then never
again. Users can wipe the section to re-see hints.
New:
- agent/onboarding.py — is_seen / mark_seen / hint strings, shared by
both CLI and gateway.
- onboarding.seen in DEFAULT_CONFIG (hermes_cli/config.py) and in
load_cli_config defaults (cli.py). No _config_version bump — deep
merge handles new keys.
Wired:
- gateway/run.py: _handle_active_session_busy_message appends the hint
after building the ack. progress_callback tracks tool.completed
duration and queues the tool-progress hint into the progress bubble.
- cli.py: CLI input loop appends the busy-input hint on the first busy
Enter; _on_tool_progress appends the tool-progress hint on the first
>=30s tool completion. In-memory CLI_CONFIG is also updated so
subsequent fires in the same process are suppressed immediately.
All writes go through atomic_yaml_write and are wrapped in try/except
so onboarding can never break the input/busy-ack paths.