fix(delegation): preserve child workspace hints and queue busy input while subagents run

[MestreY0d4-Uninter]

Summary

• inject a concrete local workspace hint into delegated child prompts when Hermes knows the parent workspace path
• explicitly steer child agents away from guessing container-style paths like /workspace/... for local repo tasks
• queue busy input instead of interrupting when delegated child agents are still active in the CLI

Problem

A real delegated batch hit two separate failure modes at once:

1. A child agent guessed an invalid local workdir (/workspace/hermes-agent) and immediately failed terminal calls on the local backend.
2. While other children were still running, a follow-up user message triggered the parent interrupt path, which propagated to active children and discarded in-flight delegated work.

These are independent failures, so fixing only one still leaves the delegation flow fragile.

Root cause

1. Missing explicit workspace hint for child agents

Repo-centric child tasks had enough context to know they should inspect a repository, but not enough to know the exact local path. In that situation, the child could guess a container-style path and emit invalid terminal tool calls.

2. CLI interrupt policy was too aggressive during active delegation

display.busy_input_mode: interrupt is reasonable for a single active agent, but when delegated child agents are still running it is too destructive. Interrupting the parent propagates directly to active children, which turns an ordinary follow-up message into delegated work loss.

What changed

Delegation workspace hinting

• extended tools/delegate_tool.py:_build_child_system_prompt() with an optional workspace_path
• added explicit prompt guidance telling child agents not to assume /workspace/... unless that path is explicitly provided
• added _resolve_workspace_hint(parent_agent) to derive a best-effort absolute local path from the parent runtime (TERMINAL_CWD, subdirectory hints, or parent cwd fields)
• _build_child_agent() now injects that workspace hint into the child prompt when available

Busy-input handling during active child runs

• added HermesCLI._should_queue_busy_input()
• queue mode still always queues
• interrupt mode now also queues when delegated child agents are active
• applied the guard in both:
  • busy Enter-path input handling
  • the interrupt-monitor loop inside HermesCLI.chat()

This preserves the normal interrupt behavior when no children are active, while protecting active delegated work from being aborted by a routine follow-up message.

Files changed

• tools/delegate_tool.py
• cli.py
• tests/tools/test_delegate.py
• tests/test_cli_init.py

Validation

Focused tests on the patched checkout

• uv run pytest tests/tools/test_delegate.py -q -o addopts=''
• uv run pytest tests/test_cli_init.py -q -o addopts=''
• uv run pytest tests/test_real_interrupt_subagent.py -q -o addopts=''

Focused tests on a clean worktree from latest origin/main

Applied the patch on top of a clean worktree created from the latest upstream main, then ran:

• uv run pytest tests/tools/test_delegate.py -q -o addopts=''
• uv run pytest tests/test_cli_init.py -q -o addopts=''
• uv run pytest tests/test_real_interrupt_subagent.py -q -o addopts=''

Additional runtime smoke

Ran a small runtime harness against the clean worktree to verify the intended CLI behavior:

• with active child agents, a second message was queued and interrupt() was not called
• without active child agents, the same second message still followed the normal interrupt path

Why this shape

This keeps the change small and local:

• prompt shaping solves the invalid guessed workdir case without inventing new delegation API surface
• CLI queueing only activates for the risky case (active child agents), so the existing interrupt UX remains intact elsewhere

[teknium1]

Partially merged via PR #5748 — the workspace path hints from delegate_tool.py were cherry-picked with authorship preserved. The cli.py queue-busy-input changes were excluded. Thanks @MestreY0d4-Uninter!