Replaces PR #3493's blanket fatal abort with a "tell the model + throttle
the bypass loop" policy. Workspace-bound rejections are now ordinary
recoverable tool errors enriched with a structured "this is a hard policy
boundary" instruction; SSRF stays the only marker that aborts the turn.
Why the fatal-abort approach broke
----------------------------------
PR #3493 promoted every shell `_guard_command` and filesystem path-resolution
rejection to a turn-fatal RuntimeError. Two of those messages (`path
outside working dir` and `path traversal detected`) are heuristic substring
scans on the raw command, so legitimate commands like `rm <ws>/x.txt
2>/dev/null` or `find . -type f` killed the user's turn (#3599). On
channels with outbound dedupe (Telegram) the user just saw silence (#3605),
and the noise polluted the LLM's context until it started hallucinating
guard rejections on plain relative paths (#3597).
Why we still need *some* throttle
---------------------------------
The original #3493 pain point was real: the LLM, refused once, would
swap tools and try again -- read_file -> exec cat -> exec cp -> bash -c
-> ln -sf -> python -c open(...). Just removing the fatal escape lets
that loop run wild until max_iterations.
What this commit does
---------------------
- `nanobot/utils/runtime.py`: add `workspace_violation_signature` and
`repeated_workspace_violation_error`. The signature normalizes
filesystem `path` arguments and the first absolute path inside an
exec command, so swapping tools against the same outside target hits
the same throttle bucket. Two soft attempts are allowed; the third
attempt's tool result is replaced with a hard "stop trying to bypass"
message that quotes the target path and tells the model to ask the
user for help.
- `nanobot/agent/runner.py`: split classification into `_is_ssrf_violation`
(still fatal) and `_is_workspace_violation` (now soft). All three
failure branches in `_run_tool` (prep_error / exception / Error
result) route through a shared `_classify_violation` that bumps the
per-turn workspace_violation_counts dict and either keeps the tool's
own message or substitutes the throttle escalation. `_execute_tools`
now threads that dict alongside the existing external_lookup_counts.
- `nanobot/agent/tools/shell.py`: append a structured boundary note to
every workspace-bound guard rejection (`working_dir could not be
resolved`, `working_dir is outside`, `path outside working dir`,
`path traversal detected`). SSRF errors stay short and direct so the
model doesn't try to "phrase around" them. Existing `2>/dev/null`
allow-list and benign device passthrough from the previous commit
remain.
- `nanobot/agent/tools/filesystem.py`: append the same boundary note to
the `outside allowed directory` PermissionError so read_file / write_file
/ list_dir errors give the LLM the same explicit hint.
Tests
-----
- `tests/utils/test_workspace_violation_throttle.py` (new): signature
collapses across read_file/exec/python -c against the same path,
different paths get independent budgets, escalation only fires after
the third attempt.
- `tests/agent/test_runner.py`:
- `test_runner_does_not_abort_on_workspace_violation_anymore` -- v2
contract: filesystem PermissionError is now soft, runner moves to
the next iteration and finalizes cleanly.
- `test_is_ssrf_violation_remains_fatal` + the existing
`test_runner_aborts_on_ssrf_violation` -- SSRF still aborts on the
first attempt.
- `test_runner_lets_llm_recover_from_shell_guard_path_outside` -- end
to end recovery from `path outside working dir`.
- `test_runner_throttles_repeated_workspace_bypass_attempts` -- four
bypass attempts against the same outside target produce at least
one `workspace_violation_escalated` event and the run completes
naturally without aborting the turn.
- The two `_execute_tools` direct-call tests now pass the new
workspace_violation_counts dict.
- `tests/tools/test_tool_validation.py`: relax three `==` assertions
to `startswith` + "hard policy boundary" substring check to match
the new structured error messages.
- `tests/tools/test_exec_security.py` keeps the prior `2>/dev/null`
regression and the `> /etc/issue` negative case from the previous
commit on this branch -- they still pass under the new policy.
Coverage status: full pytest 2648 passed / 2 skipped (was 2638 / 2
on origin/main). Ruff is clean for every file touched in this commit.
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Follow-ups from review of #3194:
- ci.yml: drop unconditional --ignore=tests/channels/test_matrix_channel.py.
That test file already calls pytest.importorskip("nio") at module top, so
it self-skips on Windows (where nio isn't installed) without also hiding
62 tests from Linux CI.
- filesystem.py: hoist `import os` to the module top and drop the duplicate
inline import in ReadFileTool.execute. Document the CRLF->LF normalization
as intentional (primarily a Windows UX fix so downstream StrReplace/Grep
match consistently regardless of where the file was written).
- test_read_enhancements.py: lock down two new behaviors
* TestFileStateHashFallback: check_read warns when content changes but
mtime is unchanged (coarse-mtime filesystems on Windows).
* TestReadFileLineEndingNormalization: ReadFileTool strips CRLF and
preserves LF-only files untouched.
- test_tool_validation.py: restore list2cmdline/shlex.quote in
test_exec_head_tail_truncation. The temp_path-based form was correct,
but dropping the quoting broke on any Windows path containing spaces
(e.g. C:\Users\John Doe\...). CI runners happen not to have spaces so
this slipped through.
Tests: 1993 passed locally.
Made-with: Cursor
- Introduced a helper method `_for_each_hook_safe` to reduce code duplication in hook method implementations.
- Updated error logging to include the method name for better traceability.
- Improved the `SkillsLoader` class by adding a new method `_skill_entries_from_dir` to simplify skill listing logic.
- Enhanced skill loading and filtering logic, ensuring workspace skills take precedence over built-in ones.
- Added comprehensive tests for `SkillsLoader` to validate functionality and edge cases.
