The non-streaming API call path (_interruptible_api_call) had no
wall-clock timeout. When providers keep connections alive with SSE
keep-alive pings but never deliver a response, httpx's inactivity
timeout never fires and the call hangs indefinitely.
Subagents always used the non-streaming path because they have no
stream consumers (quiet_mode=True). This caused delegate_task to
hang for 40+ minutes in production.
The streaming path has two layers of protection:
- httpx read timeout (60s, HERMES_STREAM_READ_TIMEOUT)
- Stale stream detection (90s, HERMES_STREAM_STALE_TIMEOUT)
Both work because streaming sends chunks continuously — a 90-second
gap between chunks genuinely means the connection is broken, even for
reasoning models that take minutes to complete.
Now run_conversation() always prefers the streaming path. The streaming
method falls back to non-streaming automatically if the provider
doesn't support it. Stream delta callbacks are no-ops when no
consumers are registered, so there's no overhead for subagents.
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