Decision: Kilroy promoted to production (2026-07-28)

Decided by: Dustin, 2026-07-28.

What: The Hermes-based Telegram agent Kilroy exits trial mode and is the production field ops agent. Two concrete changes:

  1. Standing outbound grant — Kilroy may message Dustin and Darius (Telegram + direct Telnyx SMS) without per-instance permission. This formalizes what Kilroy was already doing during the Rob outage (direct Telnyx sends to Darius), which had sat outside the per-instance-permission rule for outbound comms. The grant covers those two people only; anything to JES/Groundworks/clients still needs Dustin’s per-instance OK. Quiet-hours rules unchanged. Recorded in ~/.hermes/SOUL.md identity block.
  2. Trial framing removed — SOUL <!-- TRIAL IDENTITY --> block replaced with production identity; all 13 cron jobs renamed (“(trial)” suffix dropped). SOUL also now tells Kilroy not to manually duplicate sends the automated unlikely-api chain (WhatsApp hook → Kilroy Telegram webhook → Telnyx SMS, live same day) already delivers.

Propagation: SOUL changes reach sessions via the daily 4 AM session reset. Darius’s live on-site DM sessions were deliberately not reset — the old in-session snapshot already had production identity and Darius messaging allowed, so nothing in it misbehaves; killing an active field session to push a wording change wasn’t worth it.

Trial exit criteria status at promotion: cost prelim strongly favorable (~90 same 5-day window); field loop live since 7/26; custom-commit audit done (one local Hermes commit to re-apply on upgrades — HEIC fix 6d6e2e3). Formal 7/30 cost checkpoint and EXIF A/B were rendered optional by this decision.

Related: whatsapp-telnyx-fallback, Rob (shut down 2026-07-27, resurrectable).