Summary

hermes claw migrate fails near the end of execution with a shutil.copy() error when the source OpenClaw workspace contains symlinks pointing to files outside the workspace. The migration applies ~32 items correctly (memories, SOUL, USER, skills, secrets, providers, config) and then aborts during what appears to be a final workspace asset copy step that wasn't shown in the dry-run preview.

Environment

• Hermes Agent v0.13.0 (2026.5.7) "Tenacity"
• macOS 26 (arm64, Apple Silicon)
• Installed via official scripts/install.sh
• Python 3.11.15 in ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv

Reproduction

1. OpenClaw installation at ~/.openclaw-myagent/ with a workspace at ~/OpenClaw-Workspace-myagent/ that contains a mix of physical files and symlinks (e.g. BRIEFING.md → ../OpenClaw-Workspace/BRIEFING.md, MEMORY-global.md → ../OpenClaw-Workspace/MEMORY-global.md, etc.). Physical files include IDENTITY.md, AGENTS.md, and others.

2. Run dry-run preview first — completes successfully:

   hermes claw migrate --source ~/.openclaw-myagent/ --dry-run --preset full --migrate-secrets

   Output: 31 would migrate, 2 conflict(s), 19 skipped. Workspace items appear under "Skipped: workspace-agents — No workspace target was provided".

3. Run real migration with --overwrite:

   hermes claw migrate --source ~/.openclaw-myagent/ --preset full --migrate-secrets --overwrite

4. Preview shows 33 would migrate, 0 skipped. User confirms.

5. Auto-backup zip is written to ~/.hermes/backups/.

6. ~32 items apply correctly to ~/.hermes/ (verifiable by ls ~/.hermes/memories/, ~/.hermes/skills/openclaw-imports/, etc.).

7. Migration aborts with the error below.

Error output

✓ Pre-migration backup: /Users/USER/.hermes/backups/pre-migration-2026-05-13-093752.zip (2.3 MB)
  Restore with: hermes import pre-migration-2026-05-13-093752.zip

✗ Migration failed: PosixPath('/Users/USER/OpenClaw-Workspace-myagent/IDENTITY.md') and PosixPath('/Users/USER/OpenClaw-Workspace-myagent/IDENTITY.md') are the same file
  A pre-migration backup is available at: /Users/USER/.hermes/backups/pre-migration-2026-05-13-093752.zip
  Restore with: hermes import pre-migration-2026-05-13-093752.zip

Probable cause

Python's shutil.copy() raises SameFileError when source and destination resolve to the same inode. The error message shows identical source and destination paths, which suggests the migration script either:

• Resolved the workspace destination to the source workspace itself (no --workspace-target was provided, so it may have defaulted to the source path), or
• Followed a symlink during workspace traversal, resolved to the same physical file, and attempted to copy it back to itself.

The traceback isn't shown in the CLI output, so I cannot confirm which code path produces the duplicate paths.

Inconsistency with dry-run

The dry-run reported workspace-agents — Skipped: No workspace target was provided. The non-dry-run execution attempted to copy a workspace file regardless of that decision, suggesting different code paths between preview and apply for the workspace assets stage.

Impact

• The ~32 items applied before the abort remain in place; partial success is recoverable.
• The auto-backup zip allows full rollback via hermes import.
• For my case the impact is low because the physical IDENTITY.md already exists in the workspace and Hermes accesses it via the terminal.cwd config. Other users with stricter expectations of workspace materialization in ~/.hermes/ could lose more.

Suggested fix

In the workspace copy step:

1. If source and destination resolve to the same inode, skip silently (with debug log) instead of raising.
2. If no --workspace-target is provided, either skip the workspace copy step entirely (matching the dry-run behavior) or fail fast before any items are applied so users don't end up with partial migrations.
3. Make the preview consistent with apply for the workspace stage.

Workaround

For users hitting this: the migration already applied everything important (memories, SOUL, USER, skills, secrets, providers, config). The IDENTITY.md and other workspace files can be referenced directly via terminal.cwd in config.yaml pointing to the original workspace, no copy needed.