Adds a new bundled web search provider plugin backed by xAI's agentic
Web Search tool (server-side `web_search` on the Responses API). Slots
in alongside the existing Firecrawl / Tavily / Exa / Brave / SearXNG /
DDGS providers; opt in via `web.backend: xai` (or auto-selected by the
registry's single-provider shortcut when it's the only available web
provider, matching every other backend's behavior).
Reuses the existing xAI HTTP credential plumbing (`tools/xai_http.py`)
so it works with both `hermes auth login xai-oauth` (SuperGrok OAuth)
and `XAI_API_KEY` — no new credential paths, no new env vars, no new
setup-wizard prompts. The existing `xai_grok` post_setup hook handles
credential collection.
Reference: https://docs.x.ai/developers/tools/web-search
Provider behavior
-----------------
- Sends a structured prompt to Grok with `tools=[{"type": "web_search"}]`
enabled and `include=["no_inline_citations"]`, then parses results
from a `{"results": [...]}` JSON block (primary), falling back to
`url_citation` annotations (secondary) and the top-level `citations`
list (last-ditch). Annotation fallback falls through to citations
when no rows are extractable, so future annotation types xAI may
add don't silently mask real data.
- HTTP 200 + `{"error": {...}}` envelopes (model-overload, refusal)
are surfaced as failures rather than masked as success-with-empty-
results.
- HTTP 401 on the OAuth path triggers a single `force_refresh=True`
retry — closes two gaps the resolver's proactive JWT-exp shortcut
doesn't cover: opaque (non-JWT) access tokens and mid-window
revocation. Env-var (`XAI_API_KEY`) credentials never retry; they
can't be refreshed and an immediate retry would just burn quota.
- `is_available()` is a cheap probe (env var OR auth.json read), never
invokes the OAuth resolver — required by the ABC contract because
it runs on every `hermes tools` repaint and at tool-registration time.
- Class docstring documents the LLM-in-a-trench-coat trust model so
callers piping untrusted input into `web_search` know returned URLs
are model-generated and should be validated before fetching.
Config (`config.yaml`):
web:
backend: xai
xai:
model: grok-4.3 # optional, defaults to grok-4.3
allowed_domains: # optional, max 5 — mutex with excluded_domains
- arxiv.org
excluded_domains: # optional, max 5
- example-spam.com
timeout: 90 # optional, seconds
Files
-----
- plugins/web/xai/plugin.yaml (new) plugin manifest
- plugins/web/xai/__init__.py (new) register(ctx) hook
- plugins/web/xai/provider.py (new) XAIWebSearchProvider impl
- tools/xai_http.py (+47) has_xai_credentials()
cheap-probe helper +
keyword-only force_refresh
arg on resolve_xai_http_
credentials() (backwards
compatible; all 9 other
call sites unaffected)
- tools/web_tools.py (+11) "xai" added to configured-
backend set + branch in
_is_backend_available()
- tests/tools/test_web_providers_xai.py (new, 39 tests) covers
identity, cheap-probe semantics,
JSON / annotation / citations
parse paths, request payload
shape, error envelopes, OAuth
force-refresh-on-401 retry,
env-var-no-retry guard, 500-not-
retried guard, refresh-returns-
same-token guard, OAuth runtime
resolution, and backend wiring.
Tests
-----
- 39 xai-suite passes
- 79 sibling web-provider tests (brave-free, ddgs, searxng, base) pass
- 119 cross-suite tests for other xai_http callers (transcription,
x_search, tts) pass — verifies the new keyword-only arg is BC
- scripts/check-windows-footguns.py: clean on all 5 modified files
No edits to run_agent.py, cli.py, gateway/, toolsets, config schema,
plugin core, or auth core.
Per @mark-xai's review on PR #26457 and the xAI model retirement on
2026-05-15: grok-code-fast-1 is being retired today and aliases redirect
to grok-4.3 (already pinned to the top of the xAI model list by this
PR). Update the two xAI Responses-API test fixtures Mark flagged plus
the picker fallback default in hermes_cli/main.py that uses the same
literal.
The previous "Logging Out" section showed `hermes auth remove xai-oauth`
with no positional target — argparse rejects that and the command does
not clear the singleton OAuth state anyway. The correct command for the
"clear everything" intent is `hermes auth logout xai-oauth`. Also point
users at `hermes auth remove xai-oauth <target>` for single-pool-row
deletion.
The xAI prompt_cache_key block carried two long comment paragraphs
that either restated setdefault semantics, narrated the SDK
type-validation mechanism, or recapped the historical motivation for
the extra_body indirection — all already covered by the test
docstring at test_xai_responses_sends_cache_key_via_extra_body
(which links to the xAI docs). Also restored the truncated link in
the body-injection comment.
No behavior change.
The new resolve_xai_http_credentials() resolver was using os.getenv()
for the XAI_API_KEY/XAI_BASE_URL fallback path, which dropped the
~/.hermes/.env contract guarded by PR #17140 / #17163. Users with
XAI_API_KEY in dotenv only would see "No xAI credentials found" even
though the key was configured.
Separately, _transcribe_xai started consulting creds["base_url"] (which
always returns at least the default https://api.x.ai/v1) ahead of the
public XAI_STT_BASE_URL env override, so the per-tool override stopped
working.
- tools/xai_http.py: add module-level get_env_value() wrapper that
reads ~/.hermes/.env first (via hermes_cli.config.get_env_value),
then os.environ. Resolver uses it for the API-key/base-url fallback.
- tools/transcription_tools.py: restore precedence so XAI_STT_BASE_URL
wins over creds["base_url"].
- tests/tools/test_transcription_dotenv_fallback.py +
tests/tools/test_tts_dotenv_fallback.py: repoint the per-call-site
patches at the new resolution point (tools.xai_http.get_env_value).
The end-to-end regression-guard test (which patches load_env) is
unchanged and still passes.
The contributor's commit author email is the legacy GitHub noreply
form (no leading numeric "id+"), so it doesn't match the
check-attribution workflow's auto-resolve regex
(\+.*@users\.noreply\.github\.com). Register it explicitly in
AUTHOR_MAP so the PR #26457 attribution check passes.
Two bugs in the `hermes tools` reconfigure flow caused picking xAI Grok
Imagine for video_gen (or image_gen) to feel like a no-op:
1. `_is_provider_active()` had a branch for `image_gen_plugin_name` but
none for `video_gen_plugin_name`, so a row marked as the active xAI
video provider was never recognized as active. The picker fell through
to the env-var fallback in `_detect_active_provider_index()`, which
matched the FAL row (because `FAL_KEY` is set), so the picker visually
defaulted to FAL even though the user had selected xAI.
2. `_plugin_video_gen_providers()` and `_plugin_image_gen_providers()`
built picker rows from the plugin's `get_setup_schema()` but only
copied `name`, `badge`, `tag`, `env_vars`. The xAI plugins declare
`post_setup: "xai_grok"` so the picker should run the OAuth /
API-key prompt hook after selection — that key was silently dropped,
so the hook never fired from the picker rows.
Adds the missing `video_gen_plugin_name` branch (placed before the
`managed_nous_feature` block, mirroring the existing image_gen branch)
and propagates `post_setup` from the plugin schema into both picker-row
builders. Adds focused tests in `test_video_gen_picker.py` and
`test_image_gen_picker.py`.
Adds a new authentication provider that lets SuperGrok subscribers sign
in to Hermes with their xAI account via the standard OAuth 2.0 PKCE
loopback flow, instead of pasting a raw API key from console.x.ai.
Highlights
----------
* OAuth 2.0 PKCE loopback login against accounts.x.ai with discovery,
state/nonce, and a strict CORS-origin allowlist on the callback.
* Authorize URL carries `plan=generic` (required for non-allowlisted
loopback clients) and `referrer=hermes-agent` for best-effort
attribution in xAI's OAuth server logs.
* Token storage in `auth.json` with file-locked atomic writes; JWT
`exp`-based expiry detection with skew; refresh-token rotation
synced both ways between the singleton store and the credential
pool so multi-process / multi-profile setups don't tear each other's
refresh tokens.
* Reactive 401 retry: on a 401 from the xAI Responses API, the agent
refreshes the token, swaps it back into `self.api_key`, and retries
the call once. Guarded against silent account swaps when the active
key was sourced from a different (manual) pool entry.
* Auxiliary tasks (curator, vision, embeddings, etc.) route through a
dedicated xAI Responses-mode auxiliary client instead of falling back
to OpenRouter billing.
* Direct HTTP tools (`tools/xai_http.py`, transcription, TTS, image-gen
plugin) resolve credentials through a unified runtime → singleton →
env-var fallback chain so xai-oauth users get them for free.
* `hermes auth add xai-oauth` and `hermes auth remove xai-oauth N` are
wired through the standard auth-commands surface; remove cleans up
the singleton loopback_pkce entry so it doesn't silently reinstate.
* `hermes model` provider picker shows
"xAI Grok OAuth (SuperGrok Subscription)" and the model-flow falls
back to pool credentials when the singleton is missing.
Hardening
---------
* Discovery and refresh responses validate the returned
`token_endpoint` host against the same `*.x.ai` allowlist as the
authorization endpoint, blocking MITM persistence of a hostile
endpoint.
* Discovery / refresh / token-exchange `response.json()` calls are
wrapped to raise typed `AuthError` on malformed bodies (captive
portals, proxy error pages) instead of leaking JSONDecodeError
tracebacks.
* `prompt_cache_key` is routed through `extra_body` on the codex
transport (sending it as a top-level kwarg trips xAI's SDK with a
TypeError).
* Credential-pool sync-back preserves `active_provider` so refreshing
an OAuth entry doesn't silently flip the active provider out from
under the running agent.
Testing
-------
* New `tests/hermes_cli/test_auth_xai_oauth_provider.py` (~63 tests)
covers JWT expiry, OAuth URL params (plan + referrer), CORS origins,
redirect URI validation, singleton↔pool sync, concurrency races,
refresh error paths, runtime resolution, and malformed-JSON guards.
* Extended `test_credential_pool.py`, `test_codex_transport.py`, and
`test_run_agent_codex_responses.py` cover the pool sync-back,
`extra_body` routing, and 401 reactive refresh paths.
* 165 tests passing on this branch via `scripts/run_tests.sh`.
Jaaneek