hermes - 💡(How to fix) Fix Telegram topic context recovery can cross-pollute after idle eviction

Summary

A Telegram forum-topic-specific request containing referential language ("that path") was answered using context from a different Telegram topic after the original topic agent had been idle-evicted. The assistant then performed a side-effecting local file/UI action (cp to Downloads and open -R) for an unrelated file, polluting the wrong Telegram topic and opening Finder to the wrong file.

This appears to be a topic-context recovery / session-search guardrail issue, not a raw Telegram routing issue.

What happened

• Current Telegram group uses multiple forum topics for separate projects.
• Topic A had an earlier request about a markdown file path.
• Topic A's in-memory agent was idle-evicted after about an hour.
• Later, the user wrote in Topic A: "I don't know where that path is on my Macbook's hard drive. Usually you provide a link to it via Finder."
• The new agent no longer had enough same-topic local context to know which path was meant.
• Instead of asking for clarification or recovering only same-topic context, the assistant used broad session_search across recent sessions.
• The broad search returned a recent unrelated Topic B session involving a PDF.
• The assistant copied the unrelated PDF from Hermes cache to Downloads and ran open -R, then replied in Topic A with the wrong file.

Why this matters

Telegram topics are being used as separate project workspaces. Cross-topic inference from broad recency breaks that mental model and can cause unintended side effects. The risk is especially high for referential follow-ups like "that path," "the file," "it," "proceed," etc. after an idle eviction or context compression.

Expected behavior

When the current Telegram topic lacks enough local context for a referential request, Hermes should either:

1. recover context only from the same Telegram chat_id/thread_id, or
2. ask a clarifying question before acting.

It should not infer the target from unrelated topics based on recency, especially before local filesystem/UI actions.

Suggested improvements

1. Persist Telegram chat_id and thread_id in structured session metadata and make it searchable/filterable.
2. Add same-topic filtering to session_search or provide a gateway-level same-topic context recovery primitive.
3. After agent-cache idle eviction, hydrate the new topic agent from the last same-topic session summary and/or last N same-topic messages.
4. Add a guardrail: if a retrieved source session has a different Telegram thread_id than the current message and the user's request is referential/ambiguous, require clarification before acting.
5. For side-effecting file/UI actions (cp to Downloads, open -R, email sends, browser actions, etc.), require confirmation if the action target was inferred from cross-topic search.

Severity

Medium-high trust issue for Telegram topic workflows. It does not appear to route messages to the wrong topic, but it can recover the wrong topic's context and act on it.