NeMo Relay Shared Metrics

Hermes includes NeMo Relay as a normal runtime dependency on platforms for which Relay publishes a native wheel. The shared-metrics integration is built into Hermes and does not require hermes plugins enable observability/nemo_relay. Hermes remains importable without Relay on other native targets. Those targets use an explicit reduced-capability no-op host: Hermes execution remains available, while Relay scopes, middleware, plugins, and subscribers are unavailable. The hermes-agent[nemo-relay] extra remains as a no-op compatibility alias for existing installation commands.

Hermes requires NeMo Relay 0.6.0 or later within the 0.6 release line. That release establishes the lossless provider-codec contract used for Anthropic Messages, OpenAI Chat Completions, and OpenAI Responses requests.

Runtime Dependency and Data Boundary

Hermes installs the platform-specific nemo-relay native wheel from the bounded >=0.6.0,<0.7 dependency range. The published package is built from the NVIDIA NeMo Relay repository. Unsupported platforms use the explicit no-op runtime described above rather than downloading a different implementation.

When Relay managed execution is active, the provider request and response pass through that native module in the Hermes process so configured interceptors can operate on the real call. This is separate from the shared-metrics data contract. Shared-metrics mode installs no network exporter and its subscriber accepts only the versioned, allowlisted projection described below. Enabling a separately configured rich-observability or dynamic plugin can create a different data path and requires its own policy review.

Collection remains off unless Hermes policy enables it:

telemetry:
  shared_metrics:
    enabled: true

This choice is read from the profile's own config.yaml. A machine-managed configuration overlay cannot enable or disable shared metrics on the profile's behalf.

The existing observability/nemo_relay plugin remains separate. Enable that plugin only for its opt-in rich observability exporters, adaptive execution, or dynamic Relay plugins.

Hermes core owns one Relay host and one isolated Relay session scope per Hermes session. Core lifecycle producers use hermes_cli.observability.relay_runtime to obtain the shared session handle or run Relay scope, LLM, tool, and mark APIs in that session context. New product marks do not require Hermes plugin registration. Shared-metrics marks must still contain only fields approved by the versioned allowlist; the hard dependency does not change the collection or privacy policy.

Current Slices

The current vertical slices record pseudonymous profile activity, logical model calls, top-level task runs, tool and approval outcomes, and skill lifecycle and reuse:

Hermes turn, API, tool, and approval hooks
  -> Relay session, task, LLM, tool, and mark lifecycle
  -> Hermes shared-metrics subscriber
  -> SQLite counters
  -> immutable JSON delta package

Hermes sends an empty LLMRequest into the metrics-owned lifecycle. This does not describe the separate managed-execution call through the native runtime documented above. The terminal metrics event contains the model identifier and provider route that Hermes used for the logical call, such as nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra through openrouter. These identifiers are lowercased and structurally bounded, but they are not normalized through a checked-in model catalog. Pricing and model-family classification belong to the metrics backend. Prompts, responses, endpoints, errors, session IDs, task IDs, and request IDs are not included in the metrics event or package. New calls use hermes.model_route.count. The previous hermes.model_call.count contract remains readable only so pending local counters created by older builds can be exported without losing data.

The first consented session start emits an empty hermes.client.active Relay mark. The profile-scoped subscriber creates a random UUID install identity and uses a transactional compare-and-set to record at most one client-active counter in any rolling 24-hour window. The metric has no dimensions; Hermes version, OS family, architecture, and install method remain bounded package resources. Concurrent Hermes processes share the SQLite latch, so simultaneous starts cannot double-count one install. A later session or task can attempt the mark again, but the subscriber suppresses it until the rolling window expires.

Each task run is a Relay Function scope named hermes.task_run, parented to the owning Hermes session. The start counter contains only bounded execution surface and entrypoint values. The terminal counter contains bounded outcome, end reason, termination status, duration, logical model-call count, terminal tool-call count, and provider-retry count buckets. Retries are additional provider attempts for the same Hermes API request ID; they do not inflate the logical model-call count. Tool calls are deduplicated by their Hermes tool-call ID after a terminal tool result is observed. The outer AIAgent execution boundary closes the task for normal returns, early returns, exceptions, and cancellations. Active task ownership follows the task ID if Hermes rotates its conversation session during context compression.

Each tool invocation is represented by a Relay tool lifecycle named hermes.tool_call. The terminal counter contains only bounded tool category, outcome, approval outcome, latency, and explicit retry-count buckets. Hermes derives the category from the toolset already declared in its runtime registry; custom and unrecognized toolsets collapse to other rather than exporting tool or plugin names. Hermes does not infer retries from repeated tool names or adjacent calls; when the hook does not provide an explicit retry relationship, the retry bucket is unknown. Approval decisions are emitted as hermes.tool_approval marks and recorded as attributed to a tool call or explicitly unattributed. Tool names, call IDs, arguments, results, commands, descriptions, and error text are not included in shared-metrics events or packages. A started tool that is still open when its task terminates is closed as failed, timed out, or cancelled and remains in the task's tool-count bucket.

Successful skill mutations emit hermes.skill.lifecycle marks with only a bounded action and provenance. Successful loads emit hermes.skill.load marks with bounded provenance, first-use or reuse state, reuse-after-patch state, and a use-count bucket. Hermes derives reuse and patch-generation continuity transactionally in its existing skills/.usage.json state; skill names and exact counts or generations never enter Relay metrics events, SQLite dimensions, or packages. A use after a new patch is counted once as reused_after_patch; later uses remain ordinary reuse until another patch. Task-outcome attribution after a patch remains deferred until its window and multi-skill semantics are defined.

Local state is written under:

$HERMES_HOME/telemetry/shared_metrics/metrics.sqlite3
$HERMES_HOME/telemetry/shared_metrics/outbox/*.json

The database keeps transactional aggregate and package-outbox state. Package files are immutable delta documents that conform to a closed JSON schema and are written with atomic replacement. Each package records the Hermes version, OS family, architecture, and install method as bounded client resources. Unrecognized platform or installation values are exported as unknown; raw platform strings, hostnames, and paths are never included. Fully packaged aggregate rows and successfully exported package rows and files are retained locally for 30 days. Pending package rows and counters with unexported deltas are never pruned. Package schema v1 remains unchanged for existing outbox files. New packages use v2, which accepts both the retired model-call contract and the current model-route contract so upgrades can drain pending counters safely.

Each package contains an install_id generated as a random UUID. Despite the schema field name, its current scope is one HERMES_HOME, so it is more precisely a persistent pseudonymous profile identifier. It is not derived from hardware, account, host, path, or credential data. It remains stable across packages from that profile and can therefore link those local packages. Deleting $HERMES_HOME/telemetry/shared_metrics resets the identifier together with all aggregates and package files.

This slice has no remote-delivery path. A future remote exporter must not reuse the persistent local identifier by default. It requires a separate product and privacy decision covering consent, identity scope, rotation or keyed pseudonymization, reset behavior, retention, and deletion.

The install identity is scoped to one HERMES_HOME. To reset it, stop Hermes processes and remove $HERMES_HOME/telemetry/shared_metrics. This deliberately removes the old identity, aggregate database, and queued local packages together; the next consented session creates a new identity. Disabling shared metrics stops new collection but does not silently delete previously collected local state.

Smoke Test

Run a real Hermes CLI turn against the deterministic local model server:

./.venv/bin/python scripts/smoke_nemo_relay_shared_metrics.py

The script uses the installed nemo-relay dependency by default. Pass --relay-python ../nemo-relay/python only when testing a locally built Relay binding.

The smoke has the local model request a real read_file tool call before its final response, then drives create, load, reuse, patch, edit, stale, archive, restore, and install skill transitions through the installed Relay binding. It verifies model, provider, task, tool, and skill counters in SQLite, validates all exported delta packages against the closed schema, verifies the pseudonymous client-active counter, and checks that prompt, response, tool-call ID, tool-result, and skill-name canaries are absent from the packages.