hermes - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Feature]: Cron: allow per-job opt-in to send_message tool [1 comments, 2 participants]

Problem or Use Case

Cron jobs that need to actively send messages to specific channels (e.g., a WhatsApp/Discord/Slack group) cannot do so because the cron runner:

1. Hard-disables the messaging toolset (disabled_toolsets=["cronjob", "messaging", "clarify"] in cron/scheduler.py:1045)
2. Injects a system instruction telling the agent not to use send_message (cron/scheduler.py:744)

This makes sense for the common case where deliver handles everything. But it creates a gap for a legitimate use case: cron jobs that need to send formatted messages to a channel different from the deliver target, while keeping deliver for execution summaries.

The current workaround is agents falling back to curl against platform bridge APIs directly. This bypasses all framework safety layers (rate limiting, chunking, platform auth), is fragile and platform-specific, and wastes tokens while the agent searches for alternative send methods.

There is no clean workaround within the framework. enabled_toolsets on the job config cannot override disabled_toolsets — the disabled list is always applied as the final subtraction step in model_tools.py _compute_tool_definitions().

Proposed Solution

Add a per-job opt-in field allow_messaging that re-enables the messaging toolset for specific cron jobs:

{
  "name": "daily-group-report",
  "allow_messaging": true,
  "deliver": "origin",
  "prompt": "Generate the report and send it to the group chat using send_message..."
}

When allow_messaging: true:

1. Remove "messaging" from disabled_toolsets for this job
2. Skip injecting the "do NOT use send_message" preamble for this job
3. Keep "cronjob" and "clarify" disabled (recursion guard and no-op for cron)

Backward compatible — default behavior is unchanged.

Implementation sketch in cron/scheduler.py run_job():

_job_disabled = ["cronjob", "clarify"]
if not job.get("allow_messaging"):
    _job_disabled.append("messaging")
disabled_toolsets=_job_disabled,

And conditionally adjust the cron_hint preamble to skip the "do NOT use send_message" line when allow_messaging is true.

Alternatives Considered

1. Multi-target deliver (#13469) — Letting deliver accept an array of targets. This solves multi-destination but doesn't cover cases where the agent needs to compose different messages per target (e.g., a detailed report to a group, a one-line summary to DM). The two proposals are complementary.

2. enabled_toolsets escape hatch — Setting enabled_toolsets: ["messaging"] per job. Doesn't work because disabled_toolsets is always applied as a final subtraction step (by design, see model_tools.py:369).

3. Global cron platform config — Enabling messaging for all cron jobs via hermes tools per-platform config. Too broad — most cron jobs don't need send_message, and enabling it globally re-introduces the risk the restriction was designed to prevent.

Feature Type

Gateway / messaging improvement

Scope

Small (single file, < 50 lines)