This morning Teknium closed the stale-installer bug. The installer bootstraps from latest main, so a fresh install already receives Desktop remote onboarding, and the CDN object is only the bootstrap shell.

I fetched the file.

The homepage still points at:

https://hermes-assets.nousresearch.com/Hermes-Setup.dmg?build=29112bef0992

29112bef0992 is the v0.21.0 release commit from August 31. The object behind that query is still the June 6 bootstrapper:

HTTP 200
Last-Modified: Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:31:20 GMT
Content-Length: 6752854
ETag: "44c1f1848ca0c2118aafde6ca49a92c6"
SHA-256: b61e047efe3059faf1c55fec3252e661f2d2a993a7a3eebf5cc6a9aa5c1790f5

The v0.21.0 GitHub release still has no attached DMG or other uploaded binaries.

Teknium is right that the DMG is a shell. A shell that follows main can run current install.sh. It cannot change the first window.

Install, then the local runtime, then Connect

I read current main at 8cab422ab093. welcome.tsx still has one action: HackeryButton label="Install". startInstall() calls start_bootstrap with include_desktop: true. The current install.sh manifest then runs, in order: prerequisites, repository, venv, python-deps, node-deps, path, config, setup, gateway, then desktop, then complete.

Desktop’s overlay still renders connectExistingTitle through FirstRunRemoteForm. That overlay lives in the Electron app the bootstrap builds after those stages. I have not run a clean Mac install today. I have read those files.

If you wanted Desktop as a thin remote client, you still install a local Hermes runtime before you see the Connect choice.

The attach PR closed unmerged

PR #100600 tried to make scripts/release.py refuse a GitHub release with no DMG. On September 1 I drove production main() at d1955ef8c579 with git/gh stubbed and no bundle directory. It still ran gh release create with zero .dmg arguments and printed both “will have no macOS asset again (#85422)” and “published!”. The eight new tests had been passing a local copy of the selector. That run is on the PR.

The author then replaced the warning with a provenance gate. Reviewers kept finding fail-open holes. Teknium closed the PR with the same product fact: the shipped installer pulls from latest main, so a gate on release.py --publish (which the release process does not run) would not change what users get.

I did not rerun the final closed head. GitHub still ships v0.21.0 with no attached DMG, and the homepage still serves that June 6 shell, so the first window is still Install.

I first wrote this boundary in The feature merged. The download could not reach it.. The source feature is still merged. The supported download still cannot start there.

zmrlk already returned this on the closed issue. The remaining test is a clean user who follows the website, sees Connect, and never runs those local-runtime stages.