Summary

hermes doctor rejects model.provider: "ollama" (and "lmstudio", "vllm", "llamacpp") with "is unknown" even though hermes_cli/providers.py ALIASES maps these to virtual canonicals ("custom", "local") and the config template documents them as user-facing values:

# scripts/install/.../cli-config.yaml (excerpt)
#   "custom"       - Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Set base_url below.
#   Aliases: "lmstudio", "ollama", "vllm", "llamacpp" all map to "custom".
#   Example for LM Studio:
#     provider: "lmstudio"

So provider: "ollama" is the documented surface for "local Ollama via OpenAI-compatible endpoint" — but doctor surfaces it as a configuration error.

Repro

# ~/.hermes/config.yaml
model:
  provider: "ollama"
  base_url: "http://localhost:11434/v1"
  default: "qwen3.6:27b-coding-nvfp4"

$ hermes doctor
...
Found 2 issue(s) to address:

  1. model.provider 'ollama' is unknown. Valid providers: ai-gateway, alibaba, ...
     Fix: run 'hermes config set model.provider <valid_provider>'

(End user — me — hit this trying to point Hermes at a local Ollama for qwen3.6:27b-coding-nvfp4. The agent ran fine; only doctor complained.)

Root cause

Two separate gaps in hermes_cli/doctor.py:

1. _resolve_provider_full("ollama") returns None. normalize_provider("ollama") returns "custom" per ALIASES, but get_provider("custom") is None because "custom" is a sentinel for "use whatever base_url is set" — not a real entry in models.dev / built-in registry. So provider_def is None → canonical_provider = None → the membership check fails.

2. known_providers is missing virtual canonicals like "local" and "lmstudio". Built from PROVIDER_REGISTRY.keys() | {"openrouter", "custom", "auto"}, it excludes alias targets that aren't in the registry — so even if step 1 is fixed, vllm → local and bare lmstudio would still fail.

Fix

Two-part, both in hermes_cli/doctor.py:

1. When _resolve_provider_full returns None, fall back to normalize_provider so the ALIASES table's canonical value is honored.
2. Extend known_providers |= set(ALIASES.values()) so virtual canonicals are accepted.

Net effect: ollama → custom ✓, lmstudio → lmstudio ✓, vllm → local ✓, llamacpp → local ✓. Real typos (ollam, gpt, etc.) still fail because normalize_provider is the identity for unknown keys, and unknown keys aren't in known_providers.

Test

New parametrized test test_run_doctor_accepts_local_provider_aliases covering all four aliases. Modeled on existing test_run_doctor_accepts_named_provider_from_providers_section (added in ccc8fccf).

Full tests/hermes_cli/test_doctor.py — 26 tests, 0 failures, 14 prior audioop deprecation warnings (unrelated).

Test plan

• Run tests/hermes_cli/test_doctor.py — all pass (26 tests, 4 new)
• Confirmed provider: "ollama" config now passes hermes doctor on local install
• Maintainer: run full CI suite

Notes

• No behavioral change for the agent path — provider: "ollama" already worked at runtime (ALIASES is consulted at every other call site). This only fixes the doctor's report.
• No new public API. ALIASES is already exported as a module-level dict.
• I'm a downstream user, not a regular contributor — happy to adjust the fix shape if a different layering is preferred (e.g., move the alias-known-providers union into providers.py as a new helper).