How it works
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•Deployment – Self‑hosted onLinux/macOS/WSL (cheap $5 VPS orserverless like Modal/Daytona). Always‑on,hibernates when idle, reachable via CLI,Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, or IDEback‑ends.
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•Core loop –
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1User submits a natural‑language taskor scheduled cron job.
2Hermes routes the request to any LLMprovider (Anthropic/Claude,OpenAI‑compatible, Vercel AIGateway, Nous Portal, OpenRouter,custom endpoints) through a unifiedcall_llm API.
3The agent plans, then calls tools inparallel (via ThreadPoolExecutor).
4Tools run in sandboxed back‑ends(local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal)with namespace isolation andhardening.
5Output streams token‑by‑token to allinterfaces (CLI gateways).
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•Persistent shell – Keeps current directory,environment variables, and aliases aliveacross tool calls.
•Self‑improving loop – After completingcomplex tasks the agent automaticallycreates or refines reusable skills (Pythonmodules stored in the Skills Hub, shareablevia the open
agentskills.io standard).Skills improve with use; the agent nudgesitself to persist knowledge.
•Memory system – Multi‑level memory(Honcho async writes, dialectic usermodeling, session titles, multi‑user isolation)plus full‑text search and LLM summarizationbuilds a deepening model of the user andprojects across sessions.
•Sub‑agents – Can spawn isolatedsub‑agents for delegation and parallelism.
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Plugins & extensibility (v0.3.0)
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•Drop plain Python files into~/.hermes/plugins/ → instant customtools, commands, hooks (no fork needed).
•40 built‑in tools (terminal, filesystem, codeexec, web search, vision, image generation,TTS, cron, memory, task planning, sub‑agentdelegation).
•Community‑contributed skills from ClawHub,LobeHub, GitHub are installable.
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Key v0.3.0 additions
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•Real‑time unified streaming across allplatforms.
•First‑class plugin architecture.
•/browser connect via Chrome DevToolsProtocol (attach to an existing Chromeinstance).
•Native Anthropic provider & Vercel AIGateway with auto‑credential discovery(OAuth PKCE, no middleman).
•VS Code / Zed / JetBrains integration viaACP Server (full slash‑command support).
•Voice mode (push‑to‑talk CLI, voice notes inmessaging apps, Discord voice channels,local faster‑whisper transcription).
•Smart approvals (learned safe commands,Codex‑style; /stop kills runs instantly).
•PII redaction (privacy.redact_pii scrubsbefore sending to LLMs).
•Concurrent tool execution, persistent shell,Honcho memory, 9 new skills, 50 bug fixes.
•Agentic On‑Policy Distillation (new RLenvironment for distilling policies into bettermodels via Atropos).
Installation – One‑line curl … | bash then hermes setup; update with hermes update. All components are local‑first but can delegate to cloud models.