hermes - 💡(How to fix) Fix Feature: Telegram forum topic identity routing — each topic acts as a different agent

Problem

When using Telegram forum topics for a multi-agent system, each topic should act as a different agent with its own identity, persona, and behavior. Currently, all messages in a group go to the same agent session regardless of which forum topic they originate from.

Use Case

I run a multi-agent system (AgentOS) with 5 specialist agents — Scout (research), Scribe (writing), Assistant (personal ops), Dev (coding), Ops (infrastructure). I want each Telegram forum topic to feel like I'm talking directly to that agent, not to a dispatcher who then delegates.

Desired Behavior

1. Each Telegram forum topic has its own isolated session
2. Each topic gets its own system prompt identity — the agent "becomes" the specialist for that topic
3. The General topic remains the coordinator/orchestrator

Implementation (source patch)

Two source files were patched to achieve this:

1. agent/conversation_loop.py (line ~966)

The ephemeral prompt (containing the channel_prompt) is currently appended after the cached SOUL.md identity. The patch changes the logic so that when the ephemeral prompt contains an H1 heading, it replaces the SOUL.md portion:

for _line in trimmed_ephemeral.split("\n"):
    if _line.startswith("# ") and not _line.startswith("## "):
        _h1_match = _line.strip("# ")
        break
if _h1_match:
    _existing_soul = load_soul_md()
    if _existing_soul and _existing_soul in effective_system:
        effective_system = effective_system.replace(
            _existing_soul, trimmed_ephemeral, 1
        )

2. agent/chat_completion_helpers.py (line ~1291)

Same logic applied to the secondary code path.

3. Configuration

telegram:
  extra:
    thread_sessions_per_user: true
  channel_prompts:
    'THREAD_ID': |
      # Agent Name — Role
      ...full agent identity...

Edge Cases & Pitfalls

1. Session context wraps channel_prompt: The gateway prepends session context before the channel_prompt, so detection must scan line-by-line (not startswith).

2. Local import breaks module: Adding import logging inside a function where logging.getLogger() is used elsewhere causes UnboundLocalError.

3. Stale .pyc files: Multiple Python versions leave stale bytecode.

4. File ownership on write: write_file/yaml.dump creates files as root with 600 perms. Gateway can't read them, falls back to hardcoded defaults.

5. Existing session history: Pre-patch sessions have old identity in history. /new resolves it.

6. Surviving updates: hermes update overwrites patched source files.

Feature Request

Native config-driven support rather than a source patch:

telegram:
  channel_prompts:
    'THREAD_ID':
      prompt: |
        # Agent Identity...
      replace_identity: true

Or a dedicated topic_agents: section mapping topics to personas and toolsets.