Git identity incident: Mini global config leaked into Ben's personal repo

What happened

While setting up the RyeValley/hermes-ops repo, the agent found the Mac Mini’s GLOBAL git identity (git config --global user.name/email) set to Ben (ben@foundingjourney.com) and changed it to Hermes Agent <hermes@ryevalley.co> to fix attribution on ryevalley-brain commits. This did not account for global git config applying to every repo on the shared machine, not just Rye Valley ones.

Ben committed to his own personal project, clawdy-architecture (hosted on his personal GitHub account benorn213, NOT the RyeValley org), on branch workspace-eddie-tor. That commit picked up the machine’s global identity and was authored as hermes@ryevalley.co, an email with no corresponding GitHub account access to the repo. Vercel correctly refused to deploy, and Ben got a broken-deploy notification with no clear cause.

Correction (Michael, 2026-07-30)

The Mini’s global git identity should be Michael’s own (Michael Houck <130633795+houckgpt@users.noreply.github.com>, matching his gh auth login houckgpt and his MacBook’s identity), not Ben’s, not Hermes’s, not shared. Both Michael, Ben, and Hermes should each be able to commit as themselves. Hermes will be authoring commits across ALL RyeValley repos going forward, not just two.

Fix

1. Mini global identity set to Michael Houck / houckgpt (matches MacBook).
2. Local repo-scoped identity override (Hermes Agent <hermes@ryevalley.co>) set on every RyeValley repo currently cloned on the Mini (ryevalley-brain, hermes-ops, and the nested Owner tier repo).
3. Standing rule added to hermes-ops docs/engineering-standards.md (PR #4, merged): every future clone of a RyeValley repo, whether persistent or a scratch /tmp clone for a one-off cron/bug-hunt task, gets the local Hermes Agent override set immediately after cloning, before the first commit. Global config is never relied upon for Hermes’s commits.
4. Ben’s own git identity on the Mini is unaffected by this fix (global config is Michael’s, not Ben’s or Hermes’s; Ben’s commits will carry whatever identity his own tooling/local config sets, same as before the incident, since he was never the source of the problem).

Open question: is clawdy-architecture actually Rye Valley owned?

Checked: clawdy-architecture is hosted under Ben’s personal GitHub account (benorn213), NOT the RyeValley org. Michael’s framing suggested it should be a Rye Valley project. If the work is Rye Valley’s, the repo should likely be transferred into the RyeValley org (matching every other RV repo: jolt, megaphone, lore, hard-calls, hermes-ops, brain, etc.), consistent with the company-brain-setup/ryevalley-brain skill’s standing pattern of org-homed repos with base permission controls. Flagged to Michael for a decision; not acted on unilaterally since it is Ben’s personal account and a transfer requires his consent on the source side too.

Consequences

• No repeat of a global-identity leak across unrelated projects on the shared Mini.
• Ben’s broken commit on workspace-eddie-tor is still pushed with the wrong author; rewriting that history is his call (personal repo), not done unilaterally by Hermes.
• Every future Hermes-authored commit across any RyeValley repo will carry the correct Hermes Agent <hermes@ryevalley.co> identity via local config, set reflexively on clone per the new standing rule.

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