Hermes session acquisition

Prompt-first procedure: Describe the outcome you want in your agent conversation. The agent should select and load the appropriate AIWG assets, explain material changes, request any needed approval, and report verification evidence. Exact commands and flags appear only in the CLI reference.

AIWG supports Hermes under canonical provider `hermes`, preferring the native export:

Use AIWG to complete this documented outcome: AIWG supports Hermes under canonical provider hermes, preferring the native export
Have it inspect the current state, explain the plan, ask before material
changes, and report the result with verification evidence.

Hermes JSONL writes one full session per line. The adapter validates native schema 23 and exposes AIWG parser schema `1.0.0`. It preserves canonical session/message/tool IDs, gateway routing identity, workspace and Git fields, compression lineage, archive and inactive state, token and cost totals, model configuration, reasoning metadata, opaque content, and additive unknown fields.

Active exports are provisional. Ended, archived, inactive, and provider-deleted sessions are complete snapshots. Archive, compaction lineage, deletion of an exported file, and deletion from Hermes remain separate metadata:

archive hides a session while retaining messages and search data;
compaction creates a continuation linked to its parent;
removing an export does not affect `state.db`;
`hermes sessions delete` removes provider data and is not invoked by AIWG.

SQLite and local API fallback

Hermes's canonical `state.db` runs in WAL mode. AIWG rejects a raw database copy because omitting or racing `state.db-wal` can yield a partial snapshot. A SQLite fallback must first be created with SQLite's backup API and converted to the documented snapshot JSONL form carrying `snapshotConsistency: "sqlite-backup"`.

A caller may instead inject a local Sessions API transport, but it remains unavailable until explicitly configured and authorized with operation `hermes.local.sessions.read`. The standard CLI import performs no network operations.

Evidence and tested boundary

Verified 2026-07-27 against:

Synthetic fixtures cover schema-23 active/ended sessions, parent/compression lineage, archived/inactive state, tools, opaque content, consistent and inconsistent snapshots, unknown-major drift, malformed input, redaction, replay, and deletion limitations.