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hermes-agent/tests/tools
Teknium e3f8347be3 feat(file_tools): harden read_file with size guard, dedup, and device blocking (#4315)
* feat(file_tools): harden read_file with size guard, dedup, and device blocking

Three improvements to read_file_tool to reduce wasted context tokens and
prevent process hangs:

1. Character-count guard: reads that produce more than 100K characters
   (≈25-35K tokens across tokenisers) are rejected with an error that
   tells the model to use offset+limit for a smaller range.  The
   effective cap is min(file_size, 100K) so small files that happen to
   have long lines aren't over-penalised.  Large truncated files also
   get a hint nudging toward targeted reads.

2. File-read deduplication: when the same (path, offset, limit) is read
   a second time and the file hasn't been modified (mtime unchanged),
   return a lightweight stub instead of re-sending the full content.
   Writes and patches naturally change mtime, so post-edit reads always
   return fresh content.  The dedup cache is cleared on context
   compression — after compression the original read content is
   summarised away, so the model needs the full content again.

3. Device path blocking: paths like /dev/zero, /dev/random, /dev/stdin
   etc. are rejected before any I/O to prevent process hangs from
   infinite-output or blocking-input devices.

Tests: 17 new tests covering all three features plus the dedup-reset-
on-compression integration.  All 52 file-read tests pass (35 existing +
17 new).  Full tool suite (2124 tests) passes with 0 failures.

* feat: make file_read_max_chars configurable, add docs

Add file_read_max_chars to DEFAULT_CONFIG (default 100K).  read_file_tool
reads this on first call and caches for the process lifetime.  Users on
large-context models can raise it; users on small local models can lower it.

Also adds a 'File Read Safety' section to the configuration docs
explaining the char limit, dedup behavior, and example values.
2026-03-31 12:53:19 -07:00
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