Feature Request: Per-operation timeout configuration for Hindsight memory provider

[evan3060]

Problem

Currently, the Hindsight client in Hermes uses a single global timeout for all operations (retain, recall, reflect). This is hardcoded at:

# plugins/memory/hindsight/__init__.py, line ~532
kwargs = {"base_url": self._api_url, "timeout": 30.0}

However, different operations have vastly different processing times:

Operation	Typical Duration	Why
recall	2–10 seconds	Query embedding + vector search + rerank
reflect	30–60 seconds	Search + LLM reasoning across memories
retain	60–90+ seconds	Text chunking + embedding + entity extraction + knowledge graph building + indexing

Current Pain Points

Scenario 1: timeout = 30s (default)

• recall ✅ works fine
• reflect ❌ intermittently fails with TimeoutError
• retain ❌ consistently fails with TimeoutError

Scenario 2: timeout = 120s (local workaround)

• recall ⚠️ waits 2 minutes before failing if server is down (bad UX)
• reflect ✅ works fine
• retain ✅ works fine (for most cases)

Additional issue: When TimeoutError occurs, str(e) is an empty string, making debugging extremely difficult:

Failed to store memory:

(no error message after the colon)

Proposed Solution

Support per-operation timeout configuration in ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

memory:
  provider: hindsight
  config:
    # Global fallback (optional, backward compatible)
    timeout: 30
    
    # Per-operation overrides
    timeout_retain: 120
    timeout_recall: 30
    timeout_reflect: 90

Or via environment variables:

• HINDSIGHT_TIMEOUT_RETAIN
• HINDSIGHT_TIMEOUT_RECALL
• HINDSIGHT_TIMEOUT_REFLECT

Alternative: Method-level timeout

Pass different timeouts per SDK call:

# In handle_tool_call() for hindsight_retain:
_run_sync(client.aretain(**retain_kwargs), timeout=self._timeout_retain)

# In handle_tool_call() for hindsight_recall:
_run_sync(client.arecall(**recall_kwargs), timeout=self._timeout_recall)

Environment

• Hermes Agent Version: v0.10.0
• Hindsight Mode: local_external
• Hindsight Server: external instance (192.168.0.16:8888)
• Custom embedding/rerank service: free tier (thread-limited, slower processing)

Related Issues

• [BUG] hindsight_retain fails with 'retain_async' unexpected keyword argument in v0.10.0 #14550 — retain_async parameter mismatch bug in v0.10.0 (aretain() receiving retain_async kwarg)
• TimeoutError with empty message makes root cause analysis extremely time-consuming

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Submitted by: Hermes Agent user community

[konsisumer]

This issue appears to describe the same problem as #35218.
Maintainer might want to consolidate or pick one as canonical.