hermes-webui is Network=host, so 8787 is a bare host-netns bind, and netavark
DNATs only *published* ports. From Caddy's bridge netns 192.168.0.143:8787 and
10.89.1.1:8787 are both refused, while host.containers.internal:8787
(169.254.1.2) answers 200 — measured live 2026-09-16 from inside the Caddy
container. The dashboard's published 9119 answers on that same LAN IP, which is
what made the old upstream look sound.
The vhost comment asserted "192.168.0.143:8787 is open" from that bridge; it is
not, so the claim is replaced with the measurement, and the hermes-webui quadlet
comment carries the same correction. The seam guarding this invariant accepted
any numeric upstream, so the LAN IP passed it; it now pins the measured-working
form and fails on the LAN IP (teeth verified by substitution).
I tightened HERMES_WEBUI_HOST to 127.0.0.1 on the reasoning that the compose
service had published loopback and the unit had widened it. That reasoning
missed the consumer: this unit is host-networked (it shares the CDP daemon's
loopback), so Caddy cannot reach it by container name and fronts the guarded
vhost hermes.franksdank.cloud with `reverse_proxy 192.168.0.143:8787` — recorded
in dankclaw/Caddyfile with the same explanation. With the app on loopback that
upstream is dead, so the vhost broke.
The wildcard bind is what serves BOTH consumers: Caddy on the LAN address and
the phone's SSH tunnel on the host's localhost. Controls are the auth chain in
front of the vhost plus the webui password. The unit comment now states this
instead of the incorrect 'as before' claim, and the near-miss is worth the
paragraph: the e2e gate stayed green because no spec covers that vhost.
Two things, found while checking whether the hermes trio still needed migrating.
1. **The phone-facing webui was exposed to the LAN.** Its unit runs with
Network=host, so there is no Podman port forwarder and the app's own bind is
the exposure. The compose service it replaced published
`127.0.0.1:8787:8787` (loopback); the unit bound `HERMES_WEBUI_HOST=0.0.0.0`,
and the LAN address answered 200 — password-gated, but on every interface,
which is not the documented "SSH tunnel is the sole ingress" posture. It now
binds 127.0.0.1, which serves the tunnel just as well (sshd dials
localhost:8787 from the host). The unit comment claiming "LAN-facing as
before" was wrong about "before", and is corrected.
2. **Dankclaw's compose.yaml is retired.** Auditing ownership showed every
running container on that host reports a PODMAN_SYSTEMD_UNIT label — the
hermes trio's units have owned their containers since 2026-09-12 — so the
three service blocks left in compose.yaml were dead weight that could only
create a duplicate container fighting a unit for a name. deploy_hermes was
already fully unit-based. The file is staged in .AGENTTRASH/; the planner
plans nothing for it, an unknown service on that target now errors instead of
silently no-oping through `podman-compose`, and DANKCLAW_COMPOSE_SERVICES is
empty.
The hermes-webui seam now reads the unit — it read compose, which is exactly how
the bind drifted while the test kept passing against a file nobody ran.
The unit comment always claimed the webui drives the same agent state as
the gateway, but the image bakes HERMES_HOME=/opt/data and no unit
overrode it. Podman auto-creates a fresh anonymous volume at every
image-VOLUME point on container recreation, so each restart reset the
webui's config home to the image-default template (provider: auto ->
openrouter.ai with no API key), while the gateway read the corrected
/data/config.yaml. Pin HERMES_HOME=/data so both processes share one
config/state root and config edits propagate without a recreate.
Repoint Volume=/EnvironmentFile= in the 8 affected quadlet units to the
caddy-established Containers/<svc> layout: gitea (data, postgres, env),
authentik (data, postgres), hermes (data, webui checkout). Data-root mv on the
target happens at deploy time before each group's unit restart; same-fs rename,
instantly reversible. Running containers keep their inode-bound binds until the
unit restart flips them to the new path.
Adds a digest-pinned headless-shell Chrome DevTools Protocol daemon as a
boot-persistent quadlet unit (chrome-devtools-protocol.container). The
entrypoint override drops the image's socat front so the CDP endpoint binds
loopback-only on 127.0.0.1:9222 in the host network namespace; only the two
host-network consumers (Signal gateway, webui server) can drive it.
hermes-webui flips Network=dankclaw_default -> Network=host so its agent
process shares the daemon's namespace (0.0.0.0:8787 bind is LAN-facing as
before; no exposure change). deploy_hermes installs the new unit and starts
it if inactive without restarting in-flight browser sessions.
LAN clients now connect directly to 192.168.0.143:8787 (password-gated via
HERMES_WEBUI_PASSWORD); the SSH tunnel via port 22 remains the sole
off-network ingress. Recreation also re-reads the rotated password from
dankclaw/.env via the [Container] EnvironmentFile.
The trio ran as bare compose containers and died silently at the Aug 26
reboot — nothing restarts compose containers at boot. Each now has a
boot-persistent unit (WantedBy=default.target; the v1 quadlet generator on
this host cannot enable generated units). The deploy handler retires the
compose-era containers only while the units are not yet active, then
(re)starts each unit.
Units run the image under a localhost/hermes-agent:latest alias tag (the
quadlet create path on this host cannot resolve registry-prefixed refs from
local storage); the deploy handler tags first. The gateway's :8090 publish
is dropped — nothing consumes it; the public vhost now routes to the
dashboard's login-gated UI on 9119.
Frank