fix(discord): skip history backfill when channel lacks `.history` by briandevans · Pull Request #26301 · NousResearch/hermes-agent

briandevans · 2026-05-15T11:13:37Z

What does this PR do?

Adds a defensive hasattr(channel, "history") guard at the start of _fetch_channel_context in gateway/platforms/discord.py. Restores 4 e2e tests in tests/e2e/test_discord_adapter.py that have been failing on every open PR since commit 4abfb6bc2 (feat(discord): default history backfill on, expand to per-user + threads). Adds a focused regression test in tests/gateway/test_discord_free_response.py.

Root cause: the _handle_message path added by 4abfb6bc2 unconditionally calls _fetch_channel_context for non-DM channels, which jumps straight into async for msg in channel.history(...). Channel-like objects that don't implement history — Forum parent channels, voice channels in some deployments, and the SimpleNamespace channel proxies used by tests/e2e/test_discord_adapter.py — raise AttributeError. The outer except discord.Forbidden: at gateway/platforms/discord.py:3730 cannot catch it cleanly: under mocked-discord test setups discord is a MagicMock, so Python evaluates discord.Forbidden as the except class before matching, which raises TypeError: catching classes that do not inherit from BaseException is not allowed. That TypeError then masks the original AttributeError and bubbles past the broader except Exception handler.

Related Issue

Follow-up to commit 4abfb6bc2. No standalone bug issue — surfaced as 4 e2e regressions on every open PR.

Type of Change

🐛 Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)
✨ New feature (non-breaking change that adds functionality)
🔒 Security fix
📝 Documentation update
✅ Tests (adding or improving test coverage)
♻️ Refactor (no behavior change)
🎯 New skill (bundled or hub)

Changes Made

gateway/platforms/discord.py — early return "" from _fetch_channel_context when the channel doesn't expose history. Same end state as a real fetch that yielded zero usable messages.
tests/gateway/test_discord_free_response.py — new test_fetch_channel_context_returns_empty_when_channel_lacks_history covering a bare SimpleNamespace channel, asserting empty-string return and no exception.

How to Test

uv run --with pytest --with pytest-xdist --with pytest-asyncio python3 -m pytest tests/gateway/test_discord_free_response.py tests/e2e/test_discord_adapter.py -v
Expected: 41/41 passing (35 free-response + 6 e2e).
Regression guard: temporarily revert the production line; the new test fails with the exact TypeError: catching classes that do not inherit from BaseException is not allowed from CI logs. Restore the fix — all 6 _fetch_channel_context unit tests pass.

The 4 previously-failing e2e tests now restored:

TestMentionStrippedCommandDispatch::test_mention_then_command
TestMentionStrippedCommandDispatch::test_nickname_mention_then_command
TestMentionStrippedCommandDispatch::test_text_before_command_not_detected
TestAutoThreadingPreservesCommand::test_command_detected_after_auto_thread

Checklist

Code

I've read the Contributing Guide
My commit messages follow Conventional Commits (fix(scope):, feat(scope):, etc.)
I searched for existing PRs to make sure this isn't a duplicate
My PR contains only changes related to this fix/feature (no unrelated commits)
I've run focused tests for the touched code and all pass (41/41)
I've added tests for my changes (required for bug fixes, strongly encouraged for features)
I've tested on my platform: macOS 15.x

Documentation & Housekeeping

I've updated relevant documentation (README, docs/, docstrings) — N/A
I've updated cli-config.yaml.example if I added/changed config keys — N/A
I've updated CONTRIBUTING.md or AGENTS.md if I changed architecture or workflows — N/A
I've considered cross-platform impact (Windows, macOS) per the compatibility guide — defensive guard is platform-independent
I've updated tool descriptions/schemas if I changed tool behavior — N/A

Related / Positioning

Follow-up to commit 4abfb6bc2 (feat(discord): default history backfill on, expand to per-user + threads).
No other open PR touches _fetch_channel_context or channel.history (verified via gh search prs).

Audited siblings: gateway/platforms/discord.py has no other call sites of channel.history(...) — the guard is appropriately localised. No widening needed.

Copilot

Pull request overview

Note

Copilot was unable to run its full agentic suite in this review.

This PR prevents Discord channel context backfill from raising when a “channel-like” object doesn’t implement history, and adds a regression test to lock in the behavior.

Changes:

Add an early return in _fetch_channel_context when channel.history is missing.
Add an async regression test covering channel objects without history.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
tests/gateway/test_discord_free_response.py	Adds a regression test ensuring missing `history` returns empty context instead of raising.
gateway/platforms/discord.py	Guards `_fetch_channel_context` against channel objects that lack `history`.

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+        # channels, voice channels, and custom proxies in tests can lack it.
+        # Skip rather than raise: the outer ``except`` swallows ``discord.Forbidden``
+        # only when ``discord`` is the real library, so an AttributeError that
+        # leaks past would surface as a TypeError under mocked-discord test
+        # setups (the except clause can't evaluate a MagicMock as an exception).
+        if not hasattr(channel, "history"):


briandevans · 2026-05-15T13:10:56Z

CI audit — all 3 Tests failures are pre-existing baselines on clean origin/main (db84a78). Zero failures are in touched code.

Test	Symptom	Root cause on main
`tests/run_agent/test_provider_parity.py::TestDeveloperRoleSwap::test_developer_role_via_nous_portal`	`ValueError: Model has a context window of 15,000 tokens`	Test instantiates Nous Portal with empty `model=`; fallback resolves to a 15,000-token context which trips the 64K minimum guard at `run_agent.py:2349`.
`TestBuildApiKwargsNousPortal::test_includes_nous_product_tags`	(same)	(same)
`TestBuildApiKwargsNousPortal::test_uses_chat_completions_format`	(same)	(same)

Reproduces locally on clean main; already being addressed by #26048.

The new `_fetch_channel_context` path added by 4abfb6b calls `channel.history(...)` unconditionally. Channel-like objects that do not implement history — Forum parent channels, voice channels in some deployments, and custom proxies in tests — raise AttributeError. The outer `except discord.Forbidden:` cannot catch it: under mocked-discord test setups (e.g. tests/e2e/test_discord_adapter.py), `discord` is a MagicMock and evaluating `discord.Forbidden` as an exception class raises `TypeError: catching classes that do not inherit from BaseException is not allowed`, which masks the original error and bubbles up. Symptom: 4 e2e tests in `tests/e2e/test_discord_adapter.py` started failing on every PR after 4abfb6b landed: test_mention_then_command test_nickname_mention_then_command test_text_before_command_not_detected test_command_detected_after_auto_thread The fix is a defensive guard: if the channel does not expose `history`, silently return an empty backfill string. This is the same end state as any successful backfill that yields zero usable messages. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

briandevans · 2026-05-30T17:13:15Z

Closing to focus the queue on security/file-safety work where civilian merges are landing. Happy to reopen if maintainers want this picked up.

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings May 15, 2026 11:13

Copilot AI reviewed May 15, 2026

View reviewed changes

alt-glitch added type/bug Something isn't working P2 Medium — degraded but workaround exists comp/gateway Gateway runner, session dispatch, delivery platform/discord Discord bot adapter labels May 15, 2026

aqilaziz mentioned this pull request May 15, 2026

test(ci): stabilize Discord e2e and Nous Portal parity tests #26310

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This was referenced May 15, 2026

fix(google_chat): restore nested format_message placeholders in reverse insertion order (#24567) #24582

Closed

fix(providers): treat custom:<name> as aggregator for vendor-prefixed slugs (#26578) #26594

Closed

briandevans force-pushed the fix/discord-backfill-history-guard branch 3 times, most recently from 7ba870f to 53e43d3 Compare May 24, 2026 07:21

briandevans force-pushed the fix/discord-backfill-history-guard branch 2 times, most recently from 4e46359 to 07edd4a Compare May 28, 2026 22:17

briandevans force-pushed the fix/discord-backfill-history-guard branch from 07edd4a to 934a3c0 Compare May 30, 2026 05:11

briandevans closed this May 30, 2026

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fix(discord): skip history backfill when channel lacks `.history`#26301

fix(discord): skip history backfill when channel lacks `.history`#26301
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briandevans:fix/discord-backfill-history-guard

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