fix(hermes): preserve dashboard profile on rebuild

[chengjiew]

Summary

Preserve Hermes' Web Dashboard profile during sandbox rebuilds. Previously, .hermes/dashboard-home was omitted from the manifest-driven backup, causing Dashboard MEMORY.md and USER.md data to disappear after a successful rebuild.

Related Issue

Fixes #6681

Changes

• Add dashboard-home to the Hermes durable state directories used by backup and restore.
• Add a manifest regression assertion so the Dashboard profile cannot be silently removed from the durable-state contract.

Type of Change

• Code change (feature, bug fix, or refactor)
• Code change with doc updates
• Doc only (prose changes, no code sample modifications)
• Doc only (includes code sample changes)

Quality Gates

• Tests added or updated for changed behavior
• Existing tests cover changed behavior — justification:
• Tests not applicable — justification:
• Docs updated for user-facing behavior changes
• Docs not applicable — justification: this restores the existing rebuild persistence contract without adding commands, configuration, or user workflows.
• Sensitive paths changed (security, policy, credentials, preflight, onboarding, inference, runner, sandbox, or messaging)
• Sensitive-path review completed or maintainer-approved waiver recorded — reviewer/approval link/justification:
• Non-success, skipped, or missing CI check accepted by maintainer — check name, approval link, and follow-up issue:

Verification

• PR description includes the DCO sign-off declaration and every commit appears as Verified in GitHub
• Normal pre-commit, commit-msg, and pre-push hooks passed, or npm run check:diff passed when hooks were skipped or unavailable
• Targeted behavior tests pass for the current change set, or tests are marked not applicable above — npx vitest run --project cli src/lib/agent/defs.test.ts (31 passed)
• Applicable broad gate passed — npm test for broad runtime/test-harness changes; npm run check for repo-wide validation/coverage changes — command/result:
• Quality Gates section completed with required justifications or waivers
• No secrets, API keys, or credentials committed
• npm run docs builds without warnings (doc changes only)
• Doc pages follow the style guide (doc changes only)
• New doc pages include SPDX header and frontmatter (new pages only)

Live E2E

• NemoClaw v0.0.80 + OpenShell 0.0.72 + Hermes 0.18.0: real rebuild --verbose omitted dashboard-home; Dashboard remained healthy but MEMORY.md and USER.md were missing afterward.
• This change under the same OpenShell/Hermes setup: backup and restore both included dashboard-home; Dashboard remained healthy and both sentinel files retained identical SHA-256 hashes.

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Signed-off-by: Chengjie Wang chengjiew@nvidia.com

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes

  • Preserved the Hermes Web dashboard profile and settings across rebuilds, preventing them from being reset.

• Tests

  • Added coverage to verify that the dashboard profile storage is retained.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Enterprise

Run ID: 2ade7ea2-1e80-4e62-98d3-21565c1ac93d

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between cb1b54f and 91c8a1c.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• agents/hermes/manifest.yaml
• src/lib/agent/defs.test.ts

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Hermes persistence configuration now includes dashboard-home, and the manifest test verifies that the directory is included in the loaded stateDirs.

Changes

Hermes dashboard persistence

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Configure and validate dashboard state agents/hermes/manifest.yaml, src/lib/agent/defs.test.ts	Adds dashboard-home to Hermes persisted state directories and verifies its presence in the manifest test.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• NVIDIA/NemoClaw#5594: Creates and configures the Hermes dashboard-home directory during startup and image build.

Suggested labels: integration: hermes, area: sandbox

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly summarizes the main change: preserving the Hermes dashboard profile on rebuild.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The change adds dashboard-home to durable state and a regression test, which addresses issue #6681's backup/restore requirement.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	The PR stays focused on durable-state configuration and its test coverage, with no unrelated changes visible.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch fix/6681_dashboard-home-backup-signed

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_{Comment @coderabbitai help to get the list of available commands.}

[github-code-quality]

Code Coverage Overview

Languages: TypeScript

TypeScript / code-coverage/plugin

The overall coverage remains at 96%, unchanged from the main branch.

TypeScript / code-coverage/cli

The overall coverage in the fix/6681_dashboard-h... branch remains at 78%, unchanged from the main branch.

Show a code coverage summary of the most impacted files.

File	main cb1b54f	fix/6681_dashboard-h... 91c8a1c	+/-
src/lib/actions...backup-phase.ts	96%	100%	+4%
src/lib/onboard...conciliation.ts	88%	94%	+6%

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_{Updated July 11, 2026 16:09 UTC
Code Coverage is in Public Preview. Learn more and provide us with your feedback.}

[github-actions]

E2E Advisor Recommendation

Required E2E: rebuild-hermes
Optional E2E: hermes-e2e, state-backup-restore

Dispatch hint: rebuild-hermes

Workflow run

Full advisor summary

E2E Recommendation Advisor

Base: origin/main
Head: HEAD
Confidence: high

Required E2E

• rebuild-hermes: Hermes state_dirs changes directly affect which in-sandbox state is preserved across rebuild. Run the existing Hermes rebuild E2E to validate live backup/rebuild/restore behavior for the Hermes sandbox manifest.

Optional E2E

• hermes-e2e: Useful adjacent confidence that the modified Hermes manifest still supports fresh hosted onboarding, gateway health, and Hermes runtime/dashboard lifecycle on a real sandbox.
• state-backup-restore: Useful adjacent confidence for generic backup/restore machinery that consumes manifest-declared durable state paths, though the Hermes-specific rebuild job is the required floor for this PR.

New E2E recommendations

• hermes-dashboard-state-preservation (high): Existing Hermes rebuild coverage verifies preservation of memories, config.yaml, .env, registry/session metadata, and backup credential scanning, but does not appear to seed /sandbox/.hermes/dashboard-home and assert that dashboard profile state survives rebuild. This PR adds that directory to the manifest contract.
  • Suggested test: Extend rebuild-hermes or add a focused Hermes dashboard-home rebuild/state preservation E2E that writes a marker under /sandbox/.hermes/dashboard-home before rebuild and verifies it after rebuild.

Dispatch hint

• Workflow: .github/workflows/e2e.yaml
• jobs input: rebuild-hermes

[github-actions]

PR Review Advisor — No blocking findings

Merge posture: No blocking advisor findings
Primary next action: No advisor follow-up required beyond maintainer review.
Open items: 0 required · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions · 0 test follow-ups
Since last review: 0 prior items resolved · 0 still apply · 0 new items found

Workflow run details

This is an automated, non-binding review; it still expects maintainers and agents to respond to each required or warning item. Treat suggestions as current-PR improvements when they touch changed code; defer only with maintainer rationale or a linked follow-up. A human maintainer must make the final merge decision.

[github-actions]

PR Review Advisor (Nemotron Ultra) — No blocking findings

Merge posture: No blocking advisor findings
Primary next action: No advisor follow-up required beyond maintainer review.
Open items: 0 required · 0 warnings · 0 suggestions · 0 test follow-ups
Since last review: 0 prior items resolved · 0 still apply · 0 new items found

Workflow run details

This is an automated, non-binding review; it still expects maintainers and agents to respond to each required or warning item. Treat suggestions as current-PR improvements when they touch changed code; defer only with maintainer rationale or a linked follow-up. A human maintainer must make the final merge decision.