API Key Error in Title Generation

API Key Error in Title Generation | Generated by AI

Home 2026.06

Question: Why does “Auxiliary title generation failed: HTTP 401: Invalid API Key” occur?

Answer:

I traced the full code path. Here’s what’s happening:

The Flow

After the first user/assistant exchange, maybe_auto_title() fires a background thread (agent/title_generator.py)
It calls call_llm(task="title_generation", main_runtime=main_runtime) in agent/auxiliary_client.py
_resolve_task_provider_model() reads config auxiliary.title_generation — yours is set to provider: auto with empty model/base_url/api_key
_resolve_auto() picks up your main provider (xiaomi) + model (mimo-v2.5-pro) + base_url (https://token-plan-cn.xiaomimimo.com/v1)
It creates an OpenAI client hitting XIAOMI_API_KEY from your .hermes/.env
If that key is invalid/expired → HTTP 401 from the Xiaomi API

Why Main Chat Works But Title Gen Fails (or vice versa)

The key resolution paths differ slightly:

Main chat: Creates an OpenAI client at agent init time with the API key from the credential pool/env
Title gen: Creates a separate cached client via resolve_provider_client() in a background thread, resolving the API key fresh from XIAOMI_API_KEY env var or the credential pool

If the key was recently rotated, expired, or the credential pool had a stale entry, one path might use a cached valid client while the other resolves a fresh (now-invalid) key.

Evidence From Your Logs

From errors.log, on 2026-05-29 both paths were failing:

13:25 API call failed ... provider=xiaomi ... summary=HTTP 401: Invalid API Key
13:55 API call failed ... provider=xiaomi ... summary=HTTP 401: Invalid API Key
14:13 API call failed ... provider=xiaomi ... summary=HTTP 401: Invalid API Key

These were main conversation loop calls, not just title gen. Your XIAOMI_API_KEY was invalid at that time. After you updated the key, everything recovered — the recent logs (June 14-21) show successful title_generation calls.

If It’s Happening Right Now

The 401 means your XIAOMI_API_KEY in ~/.hermes/.env is invalid. Verify:

# Check if the key works directly
curl -s https://token-plan-cn.xiaomimimo.com/v1/models \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer *** | head -5

If it returns 401, regenerate the key at https://platform.xiaomimimo.com and update ~/.hermes/.env.

To Suppress the Warning (if key is fine and it’s a transient blip)

You can configure title_generation to use a different provider:

auxiliary:
  title_generation:
    provider: xiaomi
    model: mimo-v2.5
    timeout: 30

Or disable auto-titling entirely by setting auxiliary.title_generation.provider: none in config.yaml.

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