hermes-agent

Files (22)

• SKILL.md
• background-systems.md · references/
• cli-reference.md · references/
• configuration.md · references/
• contributor-guide.md · references/
• delegate-task-concurrency-diagnosis.md · references/
• desktop-plugins.md · references/
• native-mcp.md · references/
• petdex.md · references/
• portal-auth-for-third-party-apps.md · references/
• project-context-files.md · references/
• providers-and-models.md · references/
• security-privacy.md · references/
• slash-commands.md · references/
• themes.md · references/
• troubleshooting.md · references/
• tui-widgets.md · references/
• webhooks.md · references/
• windows-quirks.md · references/
• clock.mjs · templates/
• plugin.js · templates/
• skin.yaml · templates/

SKILL.md (first lines)

# Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent framework by Nous Research that runs in your terminal, a native desktop app, messaging platforms, and IDEs. It's in the same category as Claude Code (Anthropic), Codex (OpenAI), and OpenClaw — autonomous coding and task-execution agents that use tool calling to interact with your system. Hermes works with any LLM provider (OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, xAI, local models, and 20+ others) and runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, and WSL.

What makes Hermes different:

- **Self-improving through skills** — Hermes learns from experience by saving reusable procedures as skills that load into future sessions.
- **Persistent memory across sessions** — remembers who you are, your preferences, environment details, and lessons learned. Pluggable memory backends.
- **Multi-platform gateway** — the same agent runs on Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, Matrix, Teams, Email, and a dozen more platforms with full tool access, not just chat.
- **Many surfaces** — the same agent core drives the CLI, the Ink TUI, a native Electron desktop app, a web dashboard, and an ACP server for IDEs (VS Code / Zed / JetBrains).
- **Provider-agnostic** — swap models and providers mid-workflow; credential pools rotate across multiple API keys automatically.
- **Profiles** — run multiple independent Hermes instances with isolated configs, sessions, skills, and memory.
- **Extensible & themeable** — plugins, MCP servers, custom tools, webhook triggers, cron scheduling, skins that theme every surface, desktop UI plugins, TUI widgets, and pet mascots.

**This skill is a hub.** The body covers identity, quick start, spawning/orchestration, and hard invariants. Everything else lives in reference files — **load the matching reference (below) before answering**; do not answer detail questions from the body alone.

**Docs:** https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/

## Scope & Verification

This skill is a concise operating guide, not the complete source of truth for every Hermes feature. If a Hermes feature, command, or setting is not mentioned here or in a reference, do not treat that absence as evidence that it does not exist. Check the live repository and official docs before giving a negative answer.

Good verification targets, cheapest first:

- **Every shipped feature, one line each: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/llms.txt.** Start here for any "can Hermes do X?" or "how do I do X?" — it indexes the entire documentation set with a link to the page that answers. It is generated from the docs tree on every build, so it is never behind the product. Fetch it with `web_extract`, or `curl -s https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/llms.txt` when web tools are off. The whole documentation set in one file is at `/docs/llms-full.txt`.
- CLI commands: `hermes --help`, `hermes <command> --help`, and `hermes_cli/main.py`
- Source tree: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

Never answer "Hermes can't do that" from memory. Hermes ships far more than this skill body describes, and the index exists so a negative answer is always checkable.

## Quick Start

```bash
# Install (shell installer — sets up uv, Python, the venv, and the launcher)
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

# Interactive chat (default surface; set display.interface: tui to launch the Ink TUI instead)
hermes

# Single query
hermes chat -q "What is the capital of France?"

# Setup wizard  /  pick model+provider  /  health check
hermes setup
hermes model
hermes doctor

# Other surfaces
hermes desktop                 # launch the native desktop app (alias: hermes gui)
hermes dashboard               # web admin panel + embedded chat
hermes proxy                   # OpenAI-compatible local proxy backed by your OAuth provider
```

## Key Paths

```
~/.hermes/config.yaml       Main configuration (settings — never secrets)
~/.hermes/.env              API keys and secrets ONLY (under $HERMES_HOME if set)
$HERMES_HOME/skills/        Installed skills
~/.hermes/skins/            Custom themes (see references/themes.md)
~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/  Desktop app UI plugins (see references/desktop-plugins.md)
~/.hermes/tui-widgets/      TUI widget apps (see references/tui-widgets.md)
~/.hermes/pets/             Installed pet mascots (see references/petdex.md)
~/.hermes/state.db          Canonical session store (SQLite + FTS5)
~/.hermes/sessions/         Gateway routing index, request dumps, *.jsonl transcripts
~/.hermes/logs/             Gateway and error logs
~/.hermes/auth.json         OAuth tokens and credential pools
~/.hermes/hermes-agent/     Source code (if git-installed)
```

Profiles use `~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/` with the same layout. When a profile is active, resolve the real home from `$HERMES_HOME` — never hardcode `~/.hermes`.

## Routing Table — load the reference for the task

| User wants... | Load |
|---|---|
| **Anything not listed below — "can Hermes do X?", "how do I set up X?"** | **https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/llms.txt** |
| Bots that chat, run routines, or message each other; the Bots tab | docs: `/user-guide/bot-mode` |
| CLI commands, subcommands, flags, "how do I run X" | `references/cli-reference.md` |
| In-session slash commands | `references/slash-commands.md` |
| Provider setup, API keys, OAuth | `references/providers-and-models.md` |
| config.yaml sections, toolsets, voice/STT/TTS | `references/configuration.md` |
| AGENTS.md / .hermes.md / CLAUDE.md project rules | `references/project-context-files.md` |
| Secret redaction, PII, approval modes, "reset permissions" | `references/security-privacy.md` |
| Delegation, cron, curator, kanban | `references/background-systems.md` |
| MCP servers (add, catalog, `hermes mcp`) | `references/native-mcp.md` |
| Webhook routes and event-driven runs | `references/webhooks.md` |
| A custom theme/skin ("synthwave theme", "change the gold ●") | `references/themes.md` + `templates/skin.yaml` |
| A desktop app UI element (pane, widget, ⌘K command, page) | `references/desktop-plugins.md` + `templates/plugin.js` |
| A live TUI panel or modal widget (ticker, clock, dashboard) | `references/tui-widgets.md` + `templates/clock.mjs` |
| Pet mascots — install, select, scale, diagnose | `references/petdex.md` |
| Windows-specific issues (keybinds, WinError 10106, BOM) | `references/windows-quirks.md` |
| Debugging: voice, tools missing, gateway, aux models | `references/troubleshooting.md` |
| Contributing code: adding tools, slash commands, tests | `references/contributor-guide.md` |
| delegate_task "capped at N" reports | `references/delegate-task-concurrency-diagnosis.md` |
| "Can app X use my Nous Portal subscription/OAuth?" | `references/portal-auth-for-third-party-apps.md` |
| Connecting a messaging platform (Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, …) | docs: `/user-guide/messaging` |

The reference list above is not the feature list — it is the set of topics that
need more than their docs page. For everything else Hermes ships, fetch
`llms.txt` and it maps the question to the page that answers it.

Two theming rules that hold even without loading the reference: **you apply skins yourself** (`hermes config set display.skin <name>` — every surface repaints live within ~a second; don't tell the user to run `/skin`), and **to tweak one color, edit the ACTIVE skin** (`hermes skin set <key> <hex>`) — never fork `default`, which drops the palette and resets the background.

## Spawning Additional Hermes Instances

Run additional Hermes processes as fully independent subprocesses — separate sessions, tools, and environments.

### When to Use This vs delegate_task

| | `delegate_task` | Spawning `hermes` process |
|-|-----------------|--------------------------|
| Isolation | Separate conversation, shared process | Fully independent process |
| Duration | Minutes (bounded by parent loop) | Hours/days |
| Tool access | Subset of parent's tools | Full tool access |
| Interactive | No | Yes (PTY mode) |
| Use case | Quick parallel subtasks | Long autonomous missions |

### One-Shot Mode

From merllinsbeard/merlin-CTO, MIT.

More from merllinsbeard/merlin-CTO