hermes - 💡(How to fix) Fix feat: persistent history for background tasks (finished tasks archive) [2 comments, 2 participants]

Feature Description

Background tasks started via /background have no history after Hermes restarts. The ProcessRegistry keeps finished tasks in an in-memory _finished dict that is lost on restart. The checkpoint file ~/.hermes/processes.json only persists running tasks for crash recovery — finished tasks vanish entirely.

This means:

• /tasks shows "Recently finished" only until restart, then they're gone
• No way to review what a background task did after the session ends
• No persistent log of background task outputs, exit codes, or file changes

Motivation

Sessions have full SQLite persistence — you can browse, search, and resume any past session. Background tasks should have equivalent lifecycle management. Currently, a task that ran for 2 hours and produced useful output becomes invisible the moment Hermes restarts.

Related: #8568 (background tasks have no observable state), #1144 (closed — background processes lost on restart).

Proposed Solution

Persist finished background task metadata alongside running tasks:

1. Extend processes.json (or migrate to SQLite) to include finished tasks with:

   • session_id, command, pid, exit_code
   • started_at, finished_at, uptime
   • output preview (last N chars)
   • associated session_id (the foreground session that spawned it)

2. Add archive subcommands:

   • /tasks history — list recently finished tasks
   • /tasks log <id> — view full output of a finished task
   • /tasks prune — clean old entries (e.g. older than 7 days)

3. Optional: Write structured logs per task to ~/.hermes/background_tasks/<task_id>/ containing:

   • log.jsonl — tool calls and results
   • summary.txt — final agent response

Alternatives Considered

• Just use sessions: Background tasks already create separate sessions, so hermes sessions list shows them. But sessions don't expose task-specific info (exit code, uptime, command) and the association between foreground/background is implicit.
• Log files only: Writing logs to disk without a registry query means no way to list/search finished tasks. A registry entry is needed for discoverability.

Environment

• Hermes Agent v0.11.0
• Ubuntu 24.04