v2.9.0 — Search type, Serper extraction, configurable locale

What's Changed

✨ Added

• Golden snapshot recorder — scripts/golden_eval.py with expanded query coverage across providers for regression testing. (#77)
• Search type parameter — web_search_plus now supports search_type (search or news). Serper serves news natively; other providers report search_type.applied=false. (#80)
• Serper extraction — web_extract_plus(provider="serper") scrapes pages via Serper's webpage scraper, last in auto-fallback chain. (#80)
• Configurable locale — new defaults.locale (country/language/auto) for Serper, Brave, You.com, SerpBase, Querit, Firecrawl, SearXNG. (#81)
• Language detection — stopword/character heuristic (de/es/fr/it/pt/nl/en), no LLM/dependency/IP. (#81)
• Location hints — curated city/country table so "mejores restaurantes Madrid" → es. (#81)

🔧 Improved

• Registry-driven dispatch — provider execution separated from routing into provider_dispatch.py. (#79)

🐛 Fixed

• Plugin discovery no longer depends on cwd when Hermes loads the plugin from outside the plugin directory. (#75)
• serper.type = "news" no longer returns empty results — parses the news field correctly. (#80)

Credits

• #75 @robbyczgw-cla — cwd-independent plugin import
• #77 @robbyczgw-cla — golden snapshot recorder
• #79 @robbyczgw-cla — registry-driven provider dispatch
• #80 @robbyczgw-cla — Serper news & extraction
• #81 @robbyczgw-cla — configurable locale