During April 2026, Tianliang Jay worked on the NousResearch/hermes-agent repository, focusing on backend stability and user experience. He addressed a bug in the user pairing flow by introducing an internal flag to the MessageEvent structure, allowing the system to distinguish between system-generated and user-initiated events. This technical approach, implemented in Python and leveraging skills in API development and testing, enabled the gateway to bypass unnecessary authorization checks for internal events. As a result, the solution prevented false pairing requests triggered by background processes, reduced authentication load, and contributed to a smoother, more reliable user pairing experience overall.