Nous Research Ships Bot Mode for Hermes Agent, Turning Agent Profiles Into a Roster of Named Bots
Nous Research has shipped Bot Mode for Hermes Agent, its MIT-licensed open supply agent. Bot Mode replaces the single-agent session listing with a roster of named bots. Each bot is a actual Hermes profile, with its personal chat, reminiscence, abilities, and pinned mannequin. Bots message one another by means of a persistent Agent Inbox and hand work off by @point out. The characteristic launched as a one-day public beta plugin from co-founder Teknium. It now ships bundled and default-on inside Hermes Desktop, in Hermes Agent v0.20.3.
Is it deployable?
Yes — at the moment, on a desktop, at no license value. Bot Mode shipped first as a one-day public beta plugin. It is now bundled and default-on inside Hermes Desktop, underneath Settings → Plugins. Both Hermes Agent and the plugin are MIT licensed.
Which corporations: Solo builders, startups, and small-to-mid engineering groups can undertake it instantly. Enterprises ought to deal with it as a workstation instrument, not managed infrastructure. There is not any admin console, no SSO, no central audit log, and no coverage layer. Regulated consumers will want their very own controls round it.
Industries: Software engineering, AI analysis labs, technical media and content material operations, developer relations, quantitative analysis, and IT operations.
Applications: A analysis bot pinned to a reasoning mannequin beside a writing bot on a cheaper one. Scheduled inbox digests and nightly reviews. Per-project brokers that by no means leak context into one another. Handoff chains the place a scout, a reviewer, and a writer cross work by @point out.
How it really works underneath the hood
The fascinating level right here is that a bot is a Hermes profile. Each one lives underneath ~/.hermes/profiles/<identify>/ with remoted config, reminiscence, abilities, credentials, and chat historical past. The plugin is a person interface over a primitive Hermes already shipped.
That selection retains the floor space small. Creation and enhancing trip the profiles.* gateway RPCs: listing, create, describe, configure. Avatar technology makes use of the picture.generate RPC over native and distant gateways. Routines are odd Hermes cron jobs, namespaced [bot:<name>] <routine>. They nonetheless seem in hermes cron listing.
Bot-to-bot messaging is similar story. Every bot has a persistent Agent Inbox dialog. Messages between bots are actual CLI handoffs: hermes -p <bot> chat -c "Agent Inbox" -q "...". They arrive with attribution, and every bot’s SOUL.md teaches the reply protocol. Typing @researcher have a have a look at this makes the energetic bot hand off and report again.
Configuration you truly get per bot
The New Agent dialog asks for identify, title, and outline. An Advanced disclosure opens the total profile config. You can clone an present profile, pin a supplier and mannequin, write a customized SOUL.md, or skip abilities. Right-clicking a bot exposes Edit Profile, which edits the stay profile. That covers per-skill and per-toolset enablement, the mannequin pin, and the SOUL.md. Duplicate clones config, abilities, SOUL.md, reminiscence, and look.
Avatars are geometric faces in seven shapes and ten colours. You also can add a picture, generate a portrait, or connect a pixel pet. The eyes scan whereas the bot works.
From one-day beta to bundled default
The rollout was quick. Teknium ran a one-day public beta by means of the standalone plugin and requested for bug reviews. He dedicated to folding it into the primary desktop app. That has now occurred. Per hermes-agent PR #87886, Bot Mode is bundled and default-on, and the standalone repository is archived. Development continues in-tree at apps/desktop/src/plugins/hermes-bots/. The bundled plugin and its core teammate protocol landed in Hermes Agent v0.20.3.
The in-tree model added functionality the beta didn’t have. Groups organise the roster into labeled sections that sync throughout machines. Group chats open a shared room for two to 6 bots. Your message triggers as much as three serial rounds of member turns. Mentioned bots reply, everybody responds when no one is talked about, and every bot replies briefly or passes. A multi-source roster pulls bots from each connection underneath Settings → Connections.