From 2ef1ad280beee581e0f023901d0d040efec380ac Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Frank Song <franksong2702@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 1 May 2026 13:42:50 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] fix: prefer ~/.hermes/.env over os.environ when seeding
 credential pool
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

When _seed_from_env() reads API keys to populate the credential pool, it
should treat ~/.hermes/.env as the authoritative source — not os.environ.
Stale env vars inherited from parent shell processes (Codex CLI, test
scripts, etc.) can shadow deliberate changes to the .env file, causing
auth.json to cache an outdated key that leads to silent 401 errors.

This is especially visible with OpenRouter: if a parent process exported
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=test-key-fresh and the user later updates .env with a
valid key, restarting Hermes still picks up the stale os.environ value,
writes it back to auth.json, and all API calls fail with 401.

Fixes #18254
---
 agent/credential_pool.py | 23 +++++++++++++++++------
 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/agent/credential_pool.py b/agent/credential_pool.py
index 004b5749..27a16bd4 100644
--- a/agent/credential_pool.py
+++ b/agent/credential_pool.py
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 from __future__ import annotations
 
 import logging
+import os
 import random
 import threading
 import time
@@ -13,7 +14,7 @@ from datetime import datetime
 from typing import Any, Dict, List, Optional, Set, Tuple
 
 from hermes_constants import OPENROUTER_BASE_URL
-from hermes_cli.config import get_env_value
+from hermes_cli.config import get_env_value, load_env
 import hermes_cli.auth as auth_mod
 from hermes_cli.auth import (
     CODEX_ACCESS_TOKEN_REFRESH_SKEW_SECONDS,
@@ -1380,6 +1381,16 @@ def _seed_from_singletons(provider: str, entries: List[PooledCredential]) -> Tup
 def _seed_from_env(provider: str, entries: List[PooledCredential]) -> Tuple[bool, Set[str]]:
     changed = False
     active_sources: Set[str] = set()
+
+    # Prefer ~/.hermes/.env over os.environ — the user's config file is the
+    # authoritative source for Hermes credentials. Stale env vars from parent
+    # processes (Codex CLI, test scripts, etc.) should not override deliberate
+    # changes to the .env file.
+    def _get_env_prefer_dotenv(key: str) -> str:
+        env_file = load_env()
+        val = env_file.get(key) or os.environ.get(key) or ""
+        return val.strip()
+
     # Honour user suppression — `hermes auth remove <provider> <N>` for an
     # env-seeded credential marks the env:<VAR> source as suppressed so it
     # won't be re-seeded from the user's shell environment or ~/.hermes/.env.
@@ -1391,8 +1402,8 @@ def _seed_from_env(provider: str, entries: List[PooledCredential]) -> Tuple[bool
         def _is_source_suppressed(_p, _s):  # type: ignore[misc]
             return False
     if provider == "openrouter":
-        # Check both os.environ and ~/.hermes/.env file
-        token = (get_env_value("OPENROUTER_API_KEY") or "").strip()
+        # Prefer ~/.hermes/.env over os.environ
+        token = _get_env_prefer_dotenv("OPENROUTER_API_KEY")
         if token:
             source = "env:OPENROUTER_API_KEY"
             if _is_source_suppressed(provider, source):
@@ -1418,7 +1429,7 @@ def _seed_from_env(provider: str, entries: List[PooledCredential]) -> Tuple[bool
 
     env_url = ""
     if pconfig.base_url_env_var:
-        env_url = (get_env_value(pconfig.base_url_env_var) or "").strip().rstrip("/")
+        env_url = _get_env_prefer_dotenv(pconfig.base_url_env_var).rstrip("/")
 
     env_vars = list(pconfig.api_key_env_vars)
     if provider == "anthropic":
@@ -1429,8 +1440,8 @@ def _seed_from_env(provider: str, entries: List[PooledCredential]) -> Tuple[bool
         ]
 
     for env_var in env_vars:
-        # Check both os.environ and ~/.hermes/.env file
-        token = (get_env_value(env_var) or "").strip()
+        # Prefer ~/.hermes/.env over os.environ
+        token = _get_env_prefer_dotenv(env_var)
         if not token:
             continue
         source = f"env:{env_var}"