Failed to perform one time cleanup of mcp-hermit

[Antsiscool]

Goose fails to start installed MCP servers. e.g. Playwright.

I get the following logs:

• Performing one-time cleanup of old mcp-hermit directory to fix locking issues.
• touch: cannot touch '~/.config/goose/.mcp-hermit-cleanup-v1': No such file or directory

This is happening on a freshly installed Ubuntu 24.04.03 virtual machine.

Manually creating the referenced file using touch does not resolve the issue and the same error message occurs.

This is using the GUI version of Goose.

This is related to: #5742

[jdemaeyer]

Same thing here when using UI on Arch.

Failed to add extension: process quit before initialization: stderr = 2025-12-02 15:48:55 - Starting node setup (common).
2025-12-02 15:48:55 - Performing one-time cleanup of old mcp-hermit directory to fix locking issues.
touch: cannot touch '~/.config/goose/.mcp-hermit-cleanup-v1': No such file or directory
2025-12-02 15:48:55 - An error occurred. Exiting with status 1.

jakob@Dobby ~ % ls -la .config/goose
total 44
drwxr-xr-x  3 jakob jakob 4096 Dec  2 15:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 86 jakob jakob 4096 Dec  1 15:16 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob    0 Dec  2 15:48 .mcp-hermit-cleanup-v1
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob 2232 Dec  2 15:48 config.yaml
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob 2232 Dec  2 15:48 config.yaml.bak
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob 2232 Dec  2 15:47 config.yaml.bak.1
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob 2232 Dec  2 15:47 config.yaml.bak.2
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob 2232 Dec  2 15:46 config.yaml.bak.3
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob 2231 Dec  2 15:46 config.yaml.bak.4
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob 2230 Dec  2 15:42 config.yaml.bak.5
-rw-r--r--  1 jakob jakob  699 Dec  2 15:39 permission.yaml
drwxr-xr-x  2 jakob jakob 4096 Nov 19 14:20 recipes

The extension works fine when using the CLI (e.g. goose run -s --with-builtin developer --with-extension "npx -y chrome-devtools-mcp@latest")

[taniacryptid]

Thank you for sharing your feedback on this. @sheikhlimon is working on a draft PR for this in #5953, thank you for that! I know there is a past PR referenced there.

[The-Best-Codes]

@Antsiscool what version of goose are you using? This should be resolved in the latest version.
See also: #5868

[Antsiscool]

@The-Best-Codes This is when running the latest version (1.15.0)

[The-Best-Codes]

@Antsiscool Hmm that's strange... the latest version should run touch /home/(your_username)/.config/goose/.mcp-hermit-cleanup-v1 and not touch ~/.config/goose/.mcp-hermit-cleanup-v1.

[Antsiscool]

@The-Best-Codes Has #5868 been released? I can't see it in the release notes for 1.15.0

[The-Best-Codes]

@Antsiscool I thought it was, but I guess not!
It looks like it'll be merged in 1.16.0:
#5985

[Antsiscool]

I have been unable to test if this is fixed in 1.16.0 due to #6034

[The-Best-Codes]

@Antsiscool 1.16.1 is out! Do you still have the issue on the latest version?

[Antsiscool]

@The-Best-Codes I am no longer seeing this error, but I am now seeing other errors.

I got an error about CURL not been installed. It was not preinstalled on Ubuntu. Can it be added as a requirement to the .deb file? Or at least list it as a prerequisite on the installation page.

After installing CURL I then received another error:

Explain the following error: Failed to add extension: process quit before initialization: stderr = 2025-12-13 16:31:20 - Starting node setup (common).
2025-12-13 16:31:20 - Creating directory /home/antony/.config/goose/mcp-hermit/bin if it does not exist.
2025-12-13 16:31:20 - Changing to directory /home/antony/.config/goose/mcp-hermit.
2025-12-13 16:31:20 - Hermit binary already exists. Skipping download.
2025-12-13 16:31:20 - setting hermit cache to be local for MCP servers
2025-12-13 16:31:20 - Updated PATH to include /home/antony/.config/goose/mcp-hermit/bin.
2025-12-13 16:31:20 - Checking for hermit in PATH.
2025-12-13 16:31:20 - An error occurred. Exiting with status 1.
. This happened while trying to install an extension. Look out for issues where the extension attempted to execute something incorrectly, didn't exist, or there was trouble with the network configuration - VPNs like WARP often cause issues.

[The-Best-Codes]

@Antsiscool Did you try removing the mcp-hermit directory and restarting goose?
Also, sorry if you already told me, but what OS are you using?