ARC Adaptive Refresh Cycle package

Package name: arc-adaptive-refresh-cycle-2026-05-17 Source checkout: /Users/Kit/.hermes/hermes-agent Generated: 2026-05-17 AEST

ARC is a Hermes Agent context-runtime prototype that performs safe-boundary physical session refreshes. It watches context usage, writes a redacted restart packet from live in-memory messages, rotates to a new physical session id, injects the packet as a hydration message, and continues work in a cleaner context.

This package includes:

• code/: source files and tests needed to review or apply ARC
• docs/: developer, technician, and user documentation
• reports/: product/upstreaming HTML report
• diffs/: current working-tree patch against the local checkout
• scripts/: helper scripts for verification and local application
• metadata/: git status, source revision, file lists, checksums

Important constraints:

• Do not mix unrelated changes into ARC. gateway/platforms/bluebubbles.py is intentionally excluded.
• ARC refresh must run only at safe turn boundaries.
• ARC must use live in-memory messages, not scrape session files.
• ARC packets must exclude system prompts and redact credential-like strings as [REDACTED].
• context.arc.mode=off must preserve standard Hermes context/compression behavior.

Recommended reading order:

1. docs/USER_GUIDE.md
2. docs/TECHNICIAN_INSTALL_RUNBOOK.md
3. docs/DEVELOPER_GUIDE.md
4. reports/arc-product-report-2026-05-17.html
5. diffs/arc-working-tree.patch

Verification command from the Hermes checkout:

uv run --with pytest python -m pytest tests/hermes_cli/test_context_command_registry.py tests/agent/test_context_rollover.py tests/run_agent/test_arc_turn_end.py -q -o 'addopts='

Known current result: 26 passed in 1.04s.