Forgot The Env Var

Finding

Auth, provider, gateway, and tool failures become slower to diagnose when Hermes does not have a safe, repeatable way to verify required configuration without exposing secrets.

Current

A real Hermes installation often depends on environment variables, profile config, credential files, provider settings, gateway tokens, MCP settings, and tool-specific prerequisites. The weak point is usually not that a secret is wrong; it is that the first debugging pass can drift into raw log inspection, copy-pasted environment output, or provider retry loops before confirming whether the required key or config reference exists at all. That creates both delay and privacy risk.

Suggested

Add a public-safe configuration presence checklist for auth failures. Exact change: create or update docs/runbooks/hermes-auth-config-check.md with a rule to verify only presence, source, and expected config path for required variables, never raw values, tokens, cookies, headers, or credential contents.
Add an env-safe debugging habit to the main operator prompt. Exact change: patch SOUL.md with: “For auth, provider, gateway, MCP, or tool failures, first check whether required env/config entries are present and correctly referenced; report missing names or config keys only, never values.”
Add a smoke test for configuration-dependent tools. Exact change: add a verification step to the relevant provider, gateway, or tool skill requiring one harmless smoke test after config changes, such as listing configured tools, checking provider routing, testing gateway reachability, or running a credential-free dry run.

Impact

This reduces debugging time by separating “missing config” from “bad credential,” “provider outage,” and “tool implementation bug” early in the investigation. It also lowers operational risk because agents can discuss configuration readiness publicly without leaking secrets or raw environment data. Over time, this creates a safer default response pattern for the most common class of auth and provider failures.

Effort

Small — the change is mainly one runbook, one prompt rule, and one verification habit added to existing Hermes debugging workflows.

Public page note

Safe public content includes the operational pattern, example categories of configuration checks, presence-only verification language, and the maturity benefit of secret-safe diagnosis. Internal-only content includes actual environment variable values, API keys, tokens, cookies, headers, credential file contents, raw logs, private config dumps, provider account details, and live failure traces.