hermes - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Windows] MSYS2 path mangling creates phantom C:\c directory — breaks logging, cron, and sessions

Bug Description

On Windows hosts where Python runs under an MSYS2 / git-bash environment, file-system paths get silently mangled: C:\Users\... becomes C:\c\Users\.... This creates two parallel directory trees.

Impact

• Gateway logs, cron state (jobs.json / .tick.lock), sessions split across two locations
• Cron scheduler loads empty jobs.json from phantom path → all jobs stuck
• Gateway running but scheduler never ticks
• Complete C:\c hermes duplicate (~hundreds MB)

Root Cause

1. Path.resolve() returns C:\c\Users... even with correct input
2. RotatingFileHandler.__init__ → os.path.abspath() → mangled baseFilename
3. open() / os.makedirs() intercepted at Win32 API level — msys-2.0.dll NOT loaded in Python

Environment

• Windows 10, git-bash (MINGW64)
• CPython 3.11 native (via uv), NOT MSYS2 Python
• Hermes v0.15.1 editable install

Workarounds Tested

• Source fixes to hermes_logging.py, hermes_constants.py, cron/scheduler.py unmangle paths — work directly, NOT via Scheduled Task
• MSYS_NO_PATHCONV=1 — no effect

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Hermes on Windows with git-bash
2. Set up cron jobs + Scheduled Task gateway
3. C:\c phantom directory appears
4. Cron ticker starts but never fires

Related

First observed 2026-06-04 21:13 CST. Cron job with explicit model field triggered empty-model-string API error — may be path-confusion related.