HERMES AGENT MANUAL

Skills Reference

How Hermes skills work: on-demand instruction documents, the SKILL.md format, and the real install/verify commands.

What is a Hermes Skill?

A skill is a SKILL.md instruction document — a name, a description, and a step-by-step procedure — that teaches Hermes how to do a specific task (deploy to Kubernetes, open a GitHub PR, search GIFs). Skills live in ~/.hermes/skills/, the primary directory and source of truth.

[NOTE]

Skills are loaded on demand: Hermes reads every skill's short description for free and only loads the full content when a task actually calls for it. Bundled skills ship with every install; hub skills are added from online registries; and you can write your own.

Installing Skills

Browse, search, and install from the Skills Hub with the hermes skills command group:

terminal

$ hermes skills browse                      # list available skills
$ hermes skills search kubernetes           # find skills by keyword
$ hermes skills install openai/skills/k8s   # install one (runs a security scan first)

The install argument is a source/path slug from the hub — openai/skills/k8s means the k8s skill from OpenAI's catalog — or a direct HTTP(S) URL to a SKILL.md file. List what is installed with hermes skills list.

Writing a Custom Skill

Write a SKILL.md with standard frontmatter into ~/.hermes/skills/<name>/SKILL.md; it becomes available to the agent immediately (no indexing step). The example below is an illustrative manifest showing the real frontmatter fields — not a skill shipped with Hermes:

SKILL.md (illustrative example)

---
name: my-custom-skill
description: Automates project build & deployment verification
version: 1.0.0
author: You
platforms: [linux, macos, windows]
---

## When to Use
Trigger when the user asks to verify a build and deploy.

## Procedure
1. Run the local test suite with `npm test`
2. Verify the production build output
3. Notify the configured channel on success

## Verification
Confirm the build artifact exists and the tests passed.

[PRO TIP]

Installed skills become slash commands automatically — /k8s deploy the staging manifest runs the skill with a request, and /k8s loads it and lets Hermes ask what you need. This works in the CLI and on connected messaging platforms. You don't have to install everything up front — Hermes picks the right bundled skill on its own during normal conversation when a task matches one.