/hermes-agent

name: hermes-agent
description: "Use, configure, theme, extend, and orchestrate Hermes Agent."
version: 3.3.0
author: Hermes Agent + Teknium
license: MIT
platforms: [linux, macos, windows]
metadata:
  hermes:
    tags: [hermes, setup, configuration, multi-agent, spawning, cli, gateway, bots, bot-mode, features, themes, skins, desktop-plugins, tui-widgets, petdex, development]
    homepage: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
    related_skills: [claude-code, codex, opencode]

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

# Install (shell installer — bootstraps PM, Python, dependencies, 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/configur