FreelineGuide opened #106261 from a Windows remote-desktop client talking to hermes serve on a Mac. They said “my browser.” The agent drove the Mac’s Chrome with AppleScript. Their Windows Chrome was still logged in.

I read current origin/main 498abb677ec3. I did not run a remote-desktop session.

What session.create writes

session.create calls _new_runtime_ids, which stores _resolve_session_source(params["source"]). Empty falls through to _resolve_session_platform(): HERMES_DESKTOP without HERMES_DESKTOP_TERMINAL is "desktop", else "tui". That is the backend process env. A local Desktop session and a remote-desktop client against the same serve each mint a new session and store the same source value. There is still no kind on session.create.

The live record also stores transport = current_transport() and auth_user_id from that transport’s WS-upgrade credential (<provider>:<user id>, or None for stdio/legacy token). That is the JSON-RPC peer and its login, not the machine the person sits at.

What the agent is told

The runtime block is _local_host_hints(): Host, home, and cwd of the Hermes process. PLATFORM_HINTS["desktop"] adds “You are chatting inside the Hermes desktop app”. platform_hint selects that string from agent.platform. Neither names a client OS.

_remote_backend_hint is a different remote: TERMINAL_ENV in {docker, singularity, modal, daytona, ssh, vercel_sandbox, managed_modal}. A remote-desktop client with local tools still gets _local_host_hints() of the serve host.

tui prompt accepted logs ui_session, session_key, agent_session_id, kind, chars, images. That line exists so a muted window is distinguishable from a request that never arrived (#86647). kind here is display_kind (user vs synthesized). It still cannot reconstruct which screen.

teknium1 asked whether this is a hint or a client-side browser. The expected outcome on the issue is already the hint: know the client differs, or say you can only touch this machine. I wrote that on the thread. The issue is still OPEN, parked P4 awaiting FreelineGuide.

If you connect a remote client to hermes serve, read Host and source as this process.