Changelog

A first launch that sets itself up

Open the desktop app on a computer where you have never used Hermes and it starts a short setup chat instead of a settings screen. One card at a time it asks your name, an accent color and a layout, which apps to connect, which plugins to install, then gives a quick tour and offers up to four first tasks picked for you.

Connectors: Hermes works inside your apps

The agent can now act in hosted apps such as Linear and Notion through the Nous tool gateway: ask for an app, sign in once in your browser, and the tools are usable in the same turn. You do not need a Nous account to start; the first time you use an app, Hermes creates a free connectors-only identity.

Local models in one click

Hermes can now run open models entirely on your machine with nothing leaving it: no account, no API key. It installs and maintains llama.cpp with the right engine for your hardware (CPU, CUDA, Metal, Vulkan or ROCm), rates every catalog model against your GPU and RAM, and picks the highest-quality build that fits.

Stable release channels

Hermes now ships tested SemVer releases. Every release passes source CI, Docker, Nix, signed desktop builds and install/upgrade runs on every OS before it is published, and source installs now move from release to release by default instead of tracking every commit on main.

Signed desktop packages, the Microsoft Store, and one package manager

The desktop app is now a sealed, signed package that carries its own Python and Node and updates itself, so first launch builds nothing. Windows gets a signed MSIX (x64 and ARM64) through App Installer or the Microsoft Store; macOS gets a signed, notarized build for Apple Silicon.

The Plugin Catalog: 600 reviewed plugins

The plugin catalog launched this cycle and grew to 600 entries, each pinned to a reviewed commit and installable from Hermes Desktop or the CLI. Browse by category and star ranking with a page per plugin and per author; catalog rules keep listed plugins from patching Hermes internals or shipping unscannable binaries.

The Claude 5.5 and GPT-6 model wave

Claude Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5, GPT-6 Astra, Sol and Luna plus GPT-6.1 Sol, and Gemini 4 Argon are pickable on Nous Portal, OpenRouter and native routes where offered.

Sign in to websites with your password manager

The browser agent can log into sites with logins from 1Password, Bitwarden or Hermes's own encrypted vault, and the model never sees the password. If nothing is saved, you get a masked prompt in the CLI, TUI or Desktop to save it, one-time codes are filled without entering the conversation, and card and address fills at checkout need…

Bot Mode — your agents become a society, built in

Bot Mode is now a bundled, default-on part of the desktop app: every agent profile gets a name, a deterministic avatar face (with randomize/lock controls), and a place in a shared roster. Create Discord-style group chats where multiple bots and you talk in one room, @-mention any bot from the composer, and give rooms names and pictures.

hermes peer — bot-to-bot DMs between your agents

Any Hermes agent can now message any other by handle, across profiles and gateways, from the CLI or from inside a conversation. Ask your research bot to hand findings to your coding bot and get the reply back where you can read it.

Cron jobs that remember

Scheduled jobs stopped being goldfish. Cron agents now load and update persistent memory like every other agent, continuity=true carries each run's output into the next (so a monitor can dedupe against what it already reported), every job gets a durable notepad scratchpad, monitor-mode jobs skip the LLM entirely when nothing changed, and…

Steer your subagents while they run

delegate_task gained live orchestration: list running children, steer one mid-flight with a course correction, or stop it early and keep the partial result. Add optional JSON-schema validation on child outputs, per-delegation cost surfaced in results, and raised defaults (250 iterations, 10 concurrent children) — delegation went from…

The MCP command center

MCP servers and the catalog merged into one coherent desktop page with drag-in "paste anything" import, background health checks that nudge you to re-auth before a tool call fails, a fleet cost/usage overlay showing schema token estimates and 30-day usage per server, and hermes:// deep links that install an MCP server with explicit…

A CLI power wave

Ctrl+P opens a fuzzy command palette, the /model picker filters as you type, /status shows reasoning mode, pending approvals, and context usage, and the status bar can display live cache-hit %, latency, and tokens/sec with per-field toggles.

The agent drives the desktop's browser

The in-app browser stopped being a window the agent could only look at: Hermes now navigates, clicks, and reads it directly, and pages can be popped out to your system browser with full link context menus. Ask it to walk a docs site or debug a web app and watch it happen inside your own app.

Six new providers and a model catalog wave

Meta Model API (Muse Spark) arrives as a built-in provider, alongside CommandCode, Tencent TokenPlan, Nebius Token Factory, Ramp Router, and Actual Computer. The catalogs picked up GLM-5.3-Flash, qwen3.8-max/flash, Gemini 3.7 Flash, MiniMax M3 free, and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning — and model_overrides lets you patch any model's context…

Talk to Hermes — streaming, conversational voice with barge-in

Voice mode used to mean: speak, wait for the whole reply to generate, then listen to one long audio file. Now Hermes speaks clause-by-clause as the response streams, you can interrupt it mid-sentence by just talking (it stops, listens, and the model is told you cut in), and busy-aware silence detection means it doesn't talk over you.

Wake words and hands-free control

Say your own open-vocabulary wake phrase ("hey Hermes", or anything you pick) and Hermes starts listening — detection runs on-device, so no audio leaves your machine while it waits.

Voice on every platform

Send a voice note to Hermes on WhatsApp, Feishu, DingTalk, LINE, QQ, Photon, or Weixin and it's transcribed and answered; auto-TTS replies are delivered platform-aware (opus where platforms want opus, captions attached correctly).

Research you can trust — grounded citations with fact-checking

The new grounded-citations skill makes Hermes produce research where every claim is backed by a verifiable source: quotes are matched against the actual page text (not hallucinated), citations link to the exact evidence, and a fact-checking mode turns the same machinery on any document or claim you hand it — it tells you what checks out,…

Outbound webhooks — Hermes pushes events to your systems

Until now, integrating with Hermes meant polling or listening on a platform. Now Hermes pushes signed lifecycle events (session activity, turn completions, tool events) to any HTTP endpoint you register — with HMAC signatures so your receiver can verify authenticity.

The desktop app becomes a platform — artifacts, plugin SDK, quick entry

Hermes desktop now renders artifacts: versioned cards with sandboxed live preview in a right-rail viewer, so generated HTML/apps run safely next to the chat. A real plugin SDK landed with Kanban as its founding plugin, ctx.download for handing users files, floating pane placement, and multiple GUI windows.

Hermes speaks Agent-to-Agent — A2A v1.0

A new bundled plugin implements the Agent-to-Agent protocol, so Hermes can discover, talk to, and be driven by other A2A-compatible agents. This closes issue #514 — one of the oldest open feature requests in the repo.

CLI power-user wave

!command runs a shell command instantly without spending a model turn. /init scans your project and generates (or updates) an AGENTS.md. /diff shows staged/all/session changes from any surface, /context breaks down exactly what's filling your context window, /focus gives you a reduced-output view with hidden-line recovery, and Ctrl+S…

Hermes got dramatically faster — first token in a fraction of the time

Cold-start "Initializing agent..." used to eat ~4.3 seconds before your first turn even reached the model; it's now ~0.9s, an ~80% cut that applies to the CLI, gateway, TUI, desktop, and cron alike.

The desktop app speed wave — 20+ targeted perf PRs

Long replies used to cost 14× more CPU in the markdown splitter than they do now; giant diffs froze the review pane until we virtualized it; switching sessions thrashes layout no more.

Manage your Nous plan from the terminal — /subscription and /topup

Changing your subscription used to mean a trip to the billing website. Now /subscription opens a full flow right in the TUI or classic CLI: see your plan and remaining allowance, preview exactly what an upgrade costs ("Pay $46.30 & upgrade now") or when a downgrade takes effect, and apply it — with scheduled-change banners and undo.

Smart approvals are now the default

When Hermes wants to run a flagged command, an LLM reviewer now assesses it independently instead of asking you to approve every single one — and each verdict covers only that exact command, so a later command matching the same pattern gets its own review.

Plug your password manager into Hermes — Bitwarden & 1Password secret sources

API keys no longer have to live in a plaintext .env. A new pluggable SecretSource interface lets Hermes fetch secrets from Bitwarden and 1Password (op:// references) at load time, with multiple vaults enabled simultaneously, deterministic precedence, conflict warnings, and per-variable provenance.

Watch your subagents work — live transcripts + durable background delegation

delegate_task dispatches now return live transcript files you can tail -f the moment the subagents launch: every tool call, result, and streamed reply, one human-readable log per child.

A finished answer can no longer be lost — the delivery-obligation ledger

If the gateway died between generating your response and confirming the platform actually delivered it, that answer used to be silently gone (and you'd paid for the turn). Final responses are now recorded in a durable ledger in state.db around the platform send and redelivered on the next boot — closing a P1 silent-loss window for…

One gateway, many profiles — profile-based message routing

A single multiplexed gateway sharing one bot token can now route specific guilds, channels, or threads to different profiles — each with fully isolated config, skills, memory, and secrets. Point your work Discord server at the work profile and your hobby server at personal, from one bot.

Mixture-of-Agents is now a first-class model you can pick

MoA used to be a mode you toggled; now every named MoA preset shows up as a selectable model under a moa provider, right alongside Claude, GPT, and Grok in every model picker (CLI, TUI, desktop, gateway). Pick "my-council" the same way you'd pick any model, and Hermes routes your prompt through that ensemble automatically.

See every model's reasoning, then watch the answer stream in

When a MoA ensemble runs, each reference model's full output now renders as its own labelled block — you can read what GPT-5 thought, what Claude thought, and what Grok thought, before the aggregator synthesizes them into one answer. And that final answer now streams to you live instead of appearing all at once after a long silence.

The agent verifies its own work — "done" means proven, not claimed

Hermes now records verification evidence for coding work and can decide it's finished by actually running your project's checks, not by asserting success. /goal gained completion contracts: you state what "done" looks like, and the standing-goal loop judges completion against that evidence instead of stopping when the model feels like…

/learn — turn anything into a reusable skill by describing it

Run /learn <anything> and Hermes distills a reusable skill out of whatever you point it at — a directory, a URL, or just the workflow you walked it through five minutes ago. It writes the skill to the standards in your CONTRIBUTING.md automatically. The next time you need that workflow, it's already there.

/journey — a playable timeline of everything Hermes has learned about you

The CLI and TUI gained /journey, a learning timeline that shows the memories and skills Hermes has accumulated over time — and you can edit or delete any of them right from the view.

Delegate a pile of work and keep going — background fan-out

delegate_task can now fan out multiple subagents that all run in the background: your chat is never blocked, and when every subagent finishes, their results come back as a single consolidated turn.

First-class coding Projects in the desktop app

The desktop app gained real, per-profile Projects — a sidebar of your codebases, a coding rail, a review pane, git worktree management, and agent-facing project tools, all backed by a proper project → repo → lane model. Instead of scattered chat sessions, your coding work is organized into projects the agent understands and can act on.

Run Hermes at scale — scale-to-zero and drain coordination

The gateway can now go dormant when idle and quiesce cleanly before a restart, migration, or auto-update — without dropping in-flight conversations. A hosted or relay-only Hermes can scale to zero when nobody's talking to it and wake back up on demand, and disruptive lifecycle actions coordinate an external drain so nobody gets cut off…

Hermes reaches iMessage — Photon Spectrum, no Mac relay required

There's now an iMessage platform plugin built on Photon's managed line pool. Run hermes photon login, authenticate with a device code, and Hermes can send and receive iMessage — no Mac sitting in a closet running a relay, no BlueBubbles bridge to babysit.

Raft — Hermes joins the Raft agent network as a gateway channel

A new bundled Raft platform adapter lets Hermes connect to Raft as an external agent through a wake-channel bridge. Set RAFT_PROFILE, run the bridge, and Raft can wake Hermes to handle messages — with a privacy-by-contract design where wake payloads carry only metadata (event IDs, timestamps), never message bodies.

A substantially more capable desktop app

v0.16.0 shipped the desktop app; v0.17.0 deepened it across dozens of PRs. Rebindable keyboard shortcuts, native OS notifications with per-type toggles, live subagent watch-windows that stream a delegated agent's activity into its own pane, a composer model selector with per-model presets, automatic RTL/bidi text direction, a resizable…

Background / async subagents — delegate work and keep going

delegate_task(background=true) now dispatches a subagent that runs in the background and returns a handle immediately. You and the model keep working while it churns, and the full result re-enters the conversation as a new turn the moment it finishes.

Edit images, not just generate them — image-to-image in image_generate

image_generate can now edit and transform a source image, not only create one from scratch. Pass an existing image and a prompt and it routes to the backend's edit endpoint (same tool, same pattern as video_generate), across every supported image provider.

Automation Blueprints — schedule things without learning cron

Pick an automation by name and Hermes asks you for what it needs — no cron syntax, no slot=value typing. One blueprint definition renders natively on every surface: a form in the dashboard, a slash command in the CLI/TUI/messenger, a conversation with the agent, an entry in the docs catalog.

Cursor's Composer model, through your xAI Grok subscription

grok-composer-2.5-fast is now in the xAI OAuth model picker, with its context window reconciled to the full 200k. Composer is the fast coding model behind Cursor — and if you have an xAI Grok subscription, you can now point Hermes at it directly over OAuth, no separate API key. Your Grok plan, Hermes's agent loop, Composer's coding speed.

Full profile builder in the dashboard

Build a complete Hermes profile from the browser — pick its model, choose its skills, attach its MCP servers — without hand-editing config.yaml. The dashboard also unified multi-profile management into one machine-wide view with a global profile switcher, so you manage every profile from a single place.

Hermes Desktop — a real native app, not a terminal wrapper

This is the headline. There's now a apps/desktop/ Electron application that installs like any other desktop app on macOS, Linux, and Windows, updates itself in place from inside the app, and gives you a polished GUI for everything Hermes does.

Run the desktop app against a remote Hermes — sign in with OAuth or username/password

The desktop app doesn't have to run Hermes locally. Point it at a remote Hermes gateway (your homelab, a hosted box, a teammate's server) and it connects over a secure WebSocket, authenticating with OAuth or a username/password login — no fiddling with --insecure flags or hand-copied session tokens.

The web dashboard is now a full admin panel — configure everything from the browser

The dashboard grew from "view your sessions" into a complete administration surface. There's a Channels page that sets up every gateway messaging platform (Telegram, Discord, Slack, etc.) from the browser, an admin panel for the MCP catalog with enable/disable toggles, credential management, webhook and hook creation, memory…

Hermes Desktop speaks Simplified Chinese — full 简体中文 in the chat GUI

The desktop app now ships a complete Simplified Chinese (简体中文) translation across every UI surface — the chat window itself, sidebar, settings, command center, cron, messaging, profiles, skills, agents, the lot. English stays the default; switch language in Appearance settings and the choice persists to your config (display.language).

Leaner default skill set — Hermes ships only what you actually need

The bundled skill set got a deliberate trim. Skills that were redundant or dead are gone (spotify — superseded by the native Spotify plugin's 7 tools; linear — superseded by hermes mcp install linear; kanban-codex-lane, debugging-hermes-tui-commands, a stale domain orphan, and several empty category markers).

NVIDIA/skills is now a built-in trusted skills tap

NVIDIA/skills joins OpenAI, Anthropic, and HuggingFace as a default trusted tap in the Skills Hub — discoverable, browsable, searchable, and auto-updating through the same pipeline.

Quick Setup via Nous Portal — from install to first message in seconds

First-time setup was thinned down to two clear paths: Quick Setup (sign in with Nous Portal, get a model picker, start chatting immediately) or Full Setup (the detailed wizard for power users). hermes portal is now the human-readable alias that runs the full quick-setup Nous flow.

Fuzzy model picker, everywhere — type a few letters, find your model

The model picker now does fuzzy search across the desktop app, web dashboard, TUI, and CLI. Type "v4fl" and deepseek-v4-flash surfaces; multi-endpoint providers are grouped under one row instead of cluttering the list with duplicates, and each row carries a description so you know what you're picking.

The Big Refactor — run_agent.py is no longer 16,000 lines

The file at the heart of Hermes — the agent conversation loop — has been reduced from 16,083 lines to 3,821 (-76%), with the extracted code redistributed across 14 cohesive modules under agent/.

Kanban grew into a real multi-agent platform — 104 PRs end to end

Triage auto-decomposes one task into a tree of sub-tasks. hermes kanban swarm creates a full Swarm v1 graph in one command — root, parallel workers, gated verifier, gated synthesizer, shared blackboard.

Cold-start perf wave keeps going — another second saved, 47% fewer per-turn function calls

Three new optimization rounds: defer openai._base_client import (-240ms / -17MB on every CLI invocation), hot-path optimizations cut 47% of per-conversation function calls (399k → 213k for 31-turn chat), defer compression-feasibility check (-170 to -290ms on every agent construction), adaptive subprocess polling (-195ms per tool call, 1+…

session_search rebuilt — no LLM, no cost, 4,500× faster

The old session_search was an aux-LLM-powered tool that cost ~$0.30/call and took ~30 seconds to summarize three sessions, sometimes confabulating when the right session wasn't even in the FTS5 hit list.

Promptware defense — Brainworm-class attacks blocked at three chokepoints

Inspired by recent Brainworm / Promptware Kill Chain research (Origin HQ, arxiv 2601.09625), Hermes now defends the context window against prompt-injection attacks that try to hijack the agent via tool output, recalled memory, or stored skills. Single source of truth (tools/threat_patterns.py) with ~15 new Brainworm/C2 patterns;

Bitwarden Secrets Manager — one bootstrap token replaces every per-provider API key

Stop keeping plaintext API keys in ~/.hermes/.env. Install Bitwarden Secrets Manager (bws auto-installs lazily on first use), point Hermes at it with one bootstrap token (BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN), and every credential you need comes from Bitwarden at startup.

ntfy as the 23rd messaging platform — push notifications without an account

ntfy is the self-hostable push-notification service with no signup, no API key, just a topic URL. Hermes now adapts to it as a platform plugin (zero edits to core), so your agent can send you push notifications from any cron job, kanban task completion, or chat send_message — to your phone, your watch, your desktop, your homelab.

Skill bundles — /<name> loads multiple skills at once

A skill bundle is a named group of skills that loads them all together with one slash command. Set up your "writing day" bundle (humanizer + ideation + obsidian + youtube-content) and /writing-day activates all four for the session. Skills Hub now has health checks, a freshness badge, and a watchdog cron.

xAI Grok via SuperGrok OAuth — and grok-4.3 jumps to a 1M context window

If you pay for SuperGrok, you can now use Grok inside Hermes by signing in with your xAI account — no API key, no separate billing. The wire-through also bumps grok-4.3 to a 1M token context window, so you can drop whole codebases or research corpora into a single prompt.

OpenAI-compatible local proxy for OAuth providers

Run hermes proxy and you get a http://localhost:port endpoint that speaks the OpenAI API but is backed by whichever OAuth provider you're signed into — Claude Pro, ChatGPT Pro, SuperGrok.

x_search — first-class X (Twitter) search tool

The agent can now search X directly without installing a skill or wiring up a custom integration. Search the timeline, find threads, surface specific posts — straight from the chat. Auth with either your X OAuth login or an API key, whichever you have.

Microsoft Teams — end-to-end

Hermes can now read messages from Teams and post back. The full Microsoft Graph stack lands together: auth + client foundation, a webhook listener that receives Teams events, a pipeline plugin runtime, and outbound delivery. Wire up the bot once, then chat to your agent from any Teams channel, DM, or group.

Debloating wave — lighter installs, less you don't use

A clean pip install hermes-agent used to pull down everything: every messaging adapter SDK, every image-gen SDK, every voice/TTS provider, whether you used them or not. Now those heavy backends (Slack / Matrix / Feishu / DingTalk adapters, hindsight client, codex app-server, Pixverse / Camofox / image-gen SDKs, voice/TTS providers)…

pip install hermes-agent && hermes

Hermes Agent is now a real PyPI package. No more cloning the repo or running shell installers — one pip command and you're running. The wheel ships with the Ink TUI bundle and the shell launcher, so the full experience comes out of the box. (salvage of #26350) )

Cross-session 1h Claude prompt cache

When you use Claude through Anthropic, OpenRouter, or Nous Portal, the prompt prefix (system prompt, skills, memory) now caches for an hour across sessions. Start a /new session and the first response comes back faster and cheaper because the cache is still warm from your last session.

180x faster browser_console evaluations

When the agent uses the browser tool to inspect a page or run JavaScript, those calls now share one persistent connection to Chrome instead of spinning up a new DevTools session every time. The difference is huge: things that used to take a couple of seconds per call return in milliseconds. Real-world page interactions feel instant.

Multi-agent Kanban — delegate to an AI team that actually finishes

Spin up a durable board, drop tasks on it, and let multiple Hermes workers pick them up, hand off, and close them out. Heartbeats, reclaim, zombie detection, retry budgets, and a hallucination gate keep the team honest. One install, many kanbans. , #20232, #20332, #21330, #21183, #21214)

/goal — the agent doesn't forget what you asked it to do

Lock the agent onto a target and it stays on task across turns. The Ralph loop as a first-class primitive. , #21287)

Show it a video

new video_analyze tool for native video understanding on Gemini and compatible multimodal models. (@alt-glitch)

Clone a voice

xAI Custom Voices lands as a TTS provider with voice cloning support. (@alt-glitch)

Hermes speaks your language

static gateway + CLI messages translate to 7 locales: Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Ukrainian, and Turkish. Docs site gains a Chinese (zh-Hans) locale. , #20467, #20474, #20430, #20431)

Google Chat — the 20th messaging platform

plus a generic platform-plugin hooks surface so third-party adapters drop in without touching core (IRC and Teams migrated). )

Sessions survive restarts

gateway bounces mid-agent, /update restarts, source-file reloads — conversations auto-resume when the gateway comes back.

Security wave — 8 P0 closures

redaction ON by default, Discord role-allowlists guild-scoped (CVSS 8.1 cross-guild DM bypass closed), WhatsApp rejects strangers by default, TOCTOU windows closed across auth.json and MCP OAuth, browser enforces cloud-metadata SSRF floor, cron prompt-injection scans assembled skill content, hermes debug share redacts at upload.

Autonomous Curator

hermes curator runs as a background agent on the gateway's cron ticker (7-day cycle default). It grades your skill library, consolidates related skills, prunes dead ones, and writes per-run reports to logs/curator/run.json + REPORT.md. Archived skills are classified consolidated-vs-pruned via model + heuristic.

Self-improvement loop — substantially upgraded

The background review fork (the core of Hermes' self-improvement: after each turn it decides what memories/skills to save or update) is now class-first (rubric-based rather than free-form), active-update biased (prefers the skill the agent just loaded), handles references//templates/ sub-files, and properly inherits the parent's live…

Skill integrations — major expansion

ComfyUI v5 with official CLI + REST + hardware-gated local install, moved from optional to built-in by default , #17734). TouchDesigner-MCP bundled by default, expanded with GLSL, post-FX, audio, geometry, and 9 new reference docs , #16768 — @kshitijk4poor + @SHL0MS). Humanizer skill ports a text-cleaner that strips AI-isms .

LM Studio — first-class provider

upgraded from a custom-endpoint alias to a full-blown native provider: dedicated auth, hermes doctor checks, reasoning transport, live /models listing. (Salvage of @kshitijk4poor's #17061.)

Four more new inference providers

GMI Cloud (first-class, salvage of #11955 — @isaachuangGMICLOUD), Azure AI Foundry with auto-detection, MiniMax OAuth with PKCE browser flow (salvage #15203), Tencent Tokenhub (salvage of #16860). , #17524, #16960)

Pluggable gateway platforms + Microsoft Teams

the gateway is now a plugin host. Drop-in messaging adapters live outside the core, and Microsoft Teams is the first plugin-shipped platform. (Salvage of #17664.) )

Tencent 元宝 (Yuanbao) — 18th messaging platform

native gateway adapter with text + media delivery. )

Spotify — native tools + bundled skill + wizard

7 tools (play, search, queue, playlists, devices) behind PKCE OAuth, interactive setup wizard, bundled skill, surfacing in hermes tools, cron usage documented. , #15154, #15180)

New Ink-based TUI

hermes --tui is now a full React/Ink rewrite of the interactive CLI, with a Python JSON-RPC backend (tui_gateway). Sticky composer, live streaming with OSC-52 clipboard support, stable picker keys, status bar with per-turn stopwatch and git branch, /clear confirm, light-theme preset, and a subagent spawn observability overlay.

Transport ABC + Native AWS Bedrock

Format conversion and HTTP transport were extracted from run_agent.py into a pluggable agent/transports/ layer. AnthropicTransport, ChatCompletionsTransport, ResponsesApiTransport, and BedrockTransport each own their own format conversion and API shape. Native AWS Bedrock support via the Converse API ships on top of the new abstraction.

Five new inference paths

Native NVIDIA NIM , Arcee AI , Step Plan , Google Gemini CLI OAuth , and Vercel ai-gateway with pricing + dynamic discovery . Plus Gemini routed through the native AI Studio API for better performance .

GPT-5.5 over Codex OAuth

OpenAI's new GPT-5.5 reasoning model is now available through your ChatGPT Codex OAuth, with live model discovery wired into the model picker so new OpenAI releases show up without catalog updates.

QQBot — 17th supported platform

Native QQBot adapter via QQ Official API v2, with QR scan-to-configure setup wizard, streaming cursor, emoji reactions, and DM/group policy gating that matches WeCom/Weixin parity. )

Plugin surface expanded

Plugins can now register slash commands (register_command), dispatch tools directly (dispatch_tool), block tool execution from hooks (pre_tool_call can veto), rewrite tool results (transform_tool_result), transform terminal output (transform_terminal_output), ship image_gen backends, and add custom dashboard tabs.

/steer — mid-run agent nudges

/steer <prompt> injects a note that the running agent sees after its next tool call, without interrupting the turn or breaking prompt cache. For when you want to course-correct an agent in-flight.

Shell hooks

Wire any shell script as a Hermes lifecycle hook (pre_tool_call, post_tool_call, on_session_start, etc.) without writing a Python plugin.

Nous Tool Gateway

Paid Nous Portal subscribers now get automatic access to web search (Firecrawl), image generation (FAL / FLUX 2 Pro), text-to-speech (OpenAI TTS), and browser automation (Browser Use) through their existing subscription. No separate API keys needed — just run hermes model, select Nous Portal, and pick which tools to enable.

Local Web Dashboard

A new browser-based dashboard for managing your Hermes Agent locally. Configure settings, monitor sessions, browse skills, and manage your gateway — all from a clean web interface without touching config files or the terminal. The easiest way to get started with Hermes.

Fast Mode (/fast)

Priority processing for OpenAI and Anthropic models. Toggle /fast to route through priority queues for significantly lower latency on supported models (GPT-5.4, Codex, Claude). Expands across all OpenAI Priority Processing models and Anthropic's fast tier. , #7037)

iMessage via BlueBubbles

Full iMessage integration through BlueBubbles, bringing Hermes to Apple's messaging ecosystem. Auto-webhook registration, setup wizard integration, and crash resilience. , #6494)

WeChat (Weixin) & WeCom Callback Mode

Native WeChat support via iLink Bot API and a new WeCom callback-mode adapter for self-built enterprise apps. Streaming cursor, media uploads, markdown link handling, and atomic state persistence. Hermes now covers the Chinese messaging ecosystem end-to-end. )

Termux / Android Support

Run Hermes natively on Android via Termux. Adapted install paths, TUI optimizations for mobile screens, voice backend support, and the /image command work on-device.

Background Process Monitoring (watch_patterns)

Set patterns to watch for in background process output and get notified in real-time when they match. Monitor for errors, wait for specific events ("listening on port"), or watch build logs — all without polling.

Native xAI & Xiaomi MiMo Providers

First-class provider support for xAI (Grok) and Xiaomi MiMo, with direct API access, model catalogs, and setup wizard integration. Plus Qwen OAuth with portal request support. )

Pluggable Context Engine

Context management is now a pluggable slot via hermes plugins. Swap in custom context engines that control what the agent sees each turn — filtering, summarization, or domain-specific context injection.

Background Process Auto-Notifications (notify_on_complete)

Background tasks can now automatically notify the agent when they finish. Start a long-running process (AI model training, test suites, deployments, builds) and the agent gets notified on completion — no polling needed. The agent can keep working on other things and pick up results when they land.

Free Xiaomi MiMo v2 Pro on Nous Portal

Nous Portal now supports the free-tier Xiaomi MiMo v2 Pro model for auxiliary tasks (compression, vision, summarization), with free-tier model gating and pricing display in model selection. )

Live Model Switching (/model Command)

Switch models and providers mid-session from CLI, Telegram, Discord, Slack, or any gateway platform. Aggregator-aware resolution keeps you on OpenRouter/Nous when possible, with automatic cross-provider fallback when needed. Interactive model pickers on Telegram and Discord with inline buttons. )

Self-Optimized GPT/Codex Tool-Use Guidance

The agent diagnosed and patched 5 failure modes in GPT and Codex tool calling through automated behavioral benchmarking, dramatically improving reliability on OpenAI models. Includes execution discipline guidance and thinking-only prefill continuation for structured reasoning. , #5931)

Google AI Studio (Gemini) Native Provider

Direct access to Gemini models through Google's AI Studio API. Includes automatic models.dev registry integration for real-time context length detection across any provider.

Inactivity-Based Agent Timeouts

Gateway and cron timeouts now track actual tool activity instead of wall-clock time. Long-running tasks that are actively working will never be killed — only truly idle agents time out. )

Approval Buttons on Slack & Telegram

Dangerous command approval via native platform buttons instead of typing /approve. Slack gets thread context preservation; Telegram gets emoji reactions for approval status. )

MCP OAuth 2.1 PKCE + OSV Malware Scanning

Full standards-compliant OAuth for MCP server authentication, plus automatic malware scanning of MCP extension packages via the OSV vulnerability database. )

Pluggable Memory Provider Interface

Memory is now an extensible plugin system. Third-party memory backends (Honcho, vector stores, custom DBs) implement a simple provider ABC and register via the plugin system. Built-in memory is the default provider. Honcho integration restored to full parity as the reference plugin with profile-scoped host/peer resolution. , #4355)

Same-Provider Credential Pools

Configure multiple API keys for the same provider with automatic rotation. Thread-safe least_used strategy distributes load across keys, and 401 failures trigger automatic rotation to the next credential. Set up via the setup wizard or credential_pool config. , #4361)

Camofox Anti-Detection Browser Backend

New local browser backend using Camoufox for stealth browsing. Persistent sessions with VNC URL discovery for visual debugging, configurable SSRF bypass for local backends, auto-install via hermes tools. , #4292)

Inline Diff Previews

File write and patch operations now show inline diffs in the tool activity feed, giving you visual confirmation of what changed before the agent moves on. )

API Server Session Continuity & Tool Streaming

The API server (Open WebUI integration) now streams tool progress events in real-time and supports X-Hermes-Session-Id headers for persistent sessions across requests. Sessions persist to the shared SessionDB. , #4802)

ACP: Client-Provided MCP Servers

Editor integrations (VS Code, Zed, JetBrains) can now register their own MCP servers, which Hermes picks up as additional agent tools. Your editor's MCP ecosystem flows directly into the agent.

Gateway Hardening

Major stability pass across race conditions, photo media delivery, flood control, stuck sessions, approval routing, and compression death spirals. The gateway is substantially more reliable in production. , #4798, #4557)

Security: Secret Exfiltration Blocking

Browser URLs and LLM responses are now scanned for secret patterns, blocking exfiltration attempts via URL encoding, base64, or prompt injection. Credential directory protections expanded to .docker, .azure, .config/gh. Execute_code sandbox output is redacted. , #4305, #4327)

Profiles — Multi-Instance Hermes

Run multiple isolated Hermes instances from the same installation. Each profile gets its own config, memory, sessions, skills, and gateway service. Create with hermes profile create, switch with hermes -p <name>, export/import for sharing. Full token-lock isolation prevents two profiles from using the same bot credential.

MCP Server Mode

Expose Hermes conversations and sessions to any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, etc.) via hermes mcp serve. Browse conversations, read messages, search across sessions, and manage attachments — all through the Model Context Protocol. Supports both stdio and Streamable HTTP transports.

Docker Container

Official Dockerfile for running Hermes Agent in a container. Supports both CLI and gateway modes with volume-mounted config. )

Ordered Fallback Provider Chain

Configure multiple inference providers with automatic failover. When your primary provider returns errors or is unreachable, Hermes automatically tries the next provider in the chain. Configure via fallback_providers in config.yaml. )

Feishu/Lark Platform Support

Full gateway adapter for Feishu (飞书) and Lark with event subscriptions, message cards, group chat, image/file attachments, and interactive card callbacks. , closes #1788)

WeCom (Enterprise WeChat) Platform Support

New gateway adapter for WeCom (企业微信) with text/image/voice messages, group chats, and callback verification.

Slack Multi-Workspace OAuth

Connect a single Hermes gateway to multiple Slack workspaces via OAuth token file. Each workspace gets its own bot token, resolved dynamically per incoming event.

Telegram Webhook Mode & Group Controls

Run the Telegram adapter in webhook mode as an alternative to polling — faster response times and better for production deployments behind a reverse proxy. New group mention gating controls when the bot responds: always, only when @mentioned, or via regex triggers. )

Nous Portal now supports 400+ models

The Nous Research inference portal has expanded dramatically, giving Hermes Agent users access to over 400 models through a single provider endpoint

Hugging Face as a first-class inference provider

Full integration with HF Inference API including curated agentic model picker that maps to OpenRouter analogues, live /models endpoint probe, and setup wizard flow )

Telegram Private Chat Topics

Project-based conversations with functional skill binding per topic, enabling isolated workflows within a single Telegram chat

Native Modal SDK backend

Replaced swe-rex dependency with native Modal SDK (Sandbox.create.aio + exec.aio), eliminating tunnels and simplifying the Modal terminal backend

Plugin lifecycle hooks activated

pre_llm_call, post_llm_call, on_session_start, and on_session_end hooks now fire in the agent loop and CLI/gateway, completing the plugin hook system

Improved OpenAI Model Reliability

Added GPT_TOOL_USE_GUIDANCE to prevent GPT models from describing intended actions instead of making tool calls, plus automatic stripping of stale budget warnings from conversation history that caused models to avoid tools across turns

Nix flake

Full uv2nix build, NixOS module with persistent container mode, auto-generated config keys from Python source, and suffix PATHs for agent-friendliness , #3061) by @alt-glitch

Supply chain hardening

Removed compromised litellm dependency, pinned all dependency version ranges, regenerated uv.lock with hashes, added CI workflow scanning PRs for supply chain attack patterns, and bumped deps to fix CVEs , #2812, #2816, #3073)

OpenAI-compatible API server

Expose Hermes as an /v1/chat/completions endpoint with a new /api/jobs REST API for cron job management, hardened with input limits, field whitelists, SQLite-backed response persistence, and CORS origin protection , #2456, #2451, #2472)

6 new messaging platform adapters

Signal, DingTalk, SMS (Twilio), Mattermost, Matrix, and Webhook adapters join Telegram, Discord, and WhatsApp. Gateway auto-reconnects failed platforms with exponential backoff , #1688, #1683, #2166, #2584)

@ context references

Claude Code-style @file and @url context injection with tab completions in the CLI )

4 new inference providers

GitHub Copilot (OAuth + token validation), Alibaba Cloud / DashScope, Kilo Code, and OpenCode Zen/Go by @mchzimm, #1673, #1666, #1650)

MCP server management CLI

hermes mcp commands for installing, configuring, and authenticating MCP servers with full OAuth 2.1 PKCE flow

Gateway prompt caching

Cache AIAgent instances per session, preserving Anthropic prompt cache across turns for dramatic cost reduction on long conversations , #2361)

Context compression overhaul

Structured summaries with iterative updates, token-budget tail protection, configurable summary endpoint, and fallback model support , #2224)

Streaming enabled by default

CLI streaming on by default with proper spinner/tool progress display during streaming mode, plus extensive linebreak and concatenation fixes , #2258)

Unified Streaming Infrastructure

Real-time token-by-token delivery in CLI and all gateway platforms. Responses stream as they're generated instead of arriving as a block.

First-Class Plugin Architecture

Drop Python files into ~/.hermes/plugins/ to extend Hermes with custom tools, commands, and hooks. No forking required. )

Native Anthropic Provider

Direct Anthropic API calls with Claude Code credential auto-discovery, OAuth PKCE flows, and native prompt caching. No OpenRouter middleman needed.

Smart Approvals + /stop Command

Codex-inspired approval system that learns which commands are safe and remembers your preferences. /stop kills the current agent run immediately.

Honcho Memory Integration

Async memory writes, configurable recall modes, session title integration, and multi-user isolation in gateway mode. By @erosika.

Voice Mode

Push-to-talk in CLI, voice notes in Telegram/Discord, Discord voice channel support, and local Whisper transcription via faster-whisper. , #1429)

Concurrent Tool Execution

Multiple independent tool calls now run in parallel via ThreadPoolExecutor, significantly reducing latency for multi-tool turns.

PII Redaction

When privacy.redact_pii is enabled, personally identifiable information is automatically scrubbed before sending context to LLM providers.

Multi-Platform Messaging Gateway

Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email (IMAP/SMTP), and Home Assistant platforms with unified session management, media attachments, and per-platform tool configuration.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) Client

Native MCP support with stdio and HTTP transports, reconnection, resource/prompt discovery, and sampling (server-initiated LLM requests). , #753)

Skills Ecosystem

70+ bundled and optional skills across 15+ categories with a Skills Hub for community discovery, per-platform enable/disable, conditional activation based on tool availability, and prerequisite validation.

Centralized Provider Router

Unified call_llm/async_call_llm API replaces scattered provider logic across vision, summarization, compression, and trajectory saving. All auxiliary consumers route through a single code path with automatic credential resolution.

ACP Server

VS Code, Zed, and JetBrains editor integration via the Agent Communication Protocol standard.

CLI Skin/Theme Engine

Data-driven visual customization: banners, spinners, colors, branding. 7 built-in skins + custom YAML skins.

Git Worktree Isolation

hermes -w launches isolated agent sessions in git worktrees for safe parallel work on the same repo.

Filesystem Checkpoints & Rollback

Automatic snapshots before destructive operations with /rollback to restore.