When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. - Max Planck (1858 - 1947)

Hermes just had one of its biggest weeks yet. Not because of one release. Because in the span of a few days, Hermes added new ways for agents to run continuously, work together, manage other agents, operate across machines, use tools, and now even organize themselves into actual teams of bots. Here are the changes I think matter most from Aug 10-16: 1. Bot Mode is coming This is much bigger than another Desktop feature. Hermes profiles can become a roster of named bots, each with its own chat, avatar, personality, memory, skills, tools and routines. Bots can message each other, use @mentions, show when they are active, and even work together inside group chats. And the creation flow is getting surprisingly deep. When creating a new bot, Advanced Mode can open the actual Hermes Skills Hub and let you browse and add any skill directly to that bot. So you are not just creating another profile. You are assembling a specialized agent with its own identity and capabilities. Word is Bot Mode is expected to become official any moment. @Teknium is packaging up the finishing touches this very moment. CANT WAIT to see that land, and what else Bot Mode brings with it. 2. `/loop` gives Hermes a real recurring work cycle `/loop` Instead of giving Hermes a task once and hoping one pass is enough, you can now tell it to keep coming back. Build something. Audit it. Fix it. Check again. Monitor something. Diagnose a problem. Recover. Keep watching. Loops can run on a fixed interval or self-pace, and you can control them with completion conditions, run limits, pause, resume and stop commands. This is a major step toward agents that can stay responsible for a job instead of only responding to prompts. 3. Running subagents can now be controlled Delegation got a major upgrade. A parent agent can now inspect the subagents it has running and actively: • list them • steer them • stop them Hermes also increased the amount of work delegated agents can handle and how many can run concurrently. That changes delegation from “launch some workers and wait” into actual supervision. 4. Multiple models can now deliberate together `/council` Hermes can send the same problem to multiple models independently and then have a chair bring the results together. Instead of simply merging answers, Council Mode can surface: • where the models agree • where they disagree • assumptions they made • unique ideas from individual models • a final recommendation That makes `/council` much more interesting for decisions where one model’s answer is not enough. 5. Hermes Desktop can now control agents across multiple Hermes instances Desktop is becoming much more than a chat interface. You can register multiple Hermes connections and work with agents across local machines, remote gateways, SSH hosts and other Hermes instances. Desktop can build one combined roster across those sources and route you to the right agent on the right machine. That also gives features like Bot Mode a much bigger playground. 6. MCP setup got dramatically easier Hermes shipped a large MCP usability overhaul. Servers and the Catalog now live together. Desktop can understand common MCP setup formats you paste into it, including configs, commands and URLs. There are also `hermes://` MCP install links with confirmation, background health checks, re-auth warnings, and visibility into server usage. MCP is starting to feel much less like something you configure manually and much more like something Hermes can actually help you operate. 7. Plugins became much more powerful The plugin system took a major step forward this week. Hermes added things like plugin packs, inter-plugin events, streaming hooks, controlled MCP access, tool-call modification, platform events and richer approval support. The bigger story is what this enables. More advanced Hermes capabilities can now be built as plugins instead of every idea needing to become part of Hermes core. Bot Mode itself is a pretty good example of where this can go. 8. Hermes can watch a website once, then use its API directly Hermes added a new `har-derived-api-client` skill that can watch what happens behind the scenes while it uses a website in a real browser. It records the site’s network traffic, identifies the API calls powering the interaction, and works out the endpoint, parameters, request structure and response. Then Hermes can recreate that request directly. So instead of opening the browser and clicking through the same workflow every time: Browser once → learn the API → call it directly after that. That can turn a repetitive browser workflow into a much faster direct HTTP request without needing to operate the webpage every time. It works across Hermes’ browser paths, including local browsers and CDP-connected cloud browsers such as Browserbase, Browser Use and Firecrawl. 9. Long-running sessions got an interesting new memory strategy Hermes added an experimental opt-in lean compaction mode. Instead of keeping a huge amount of old conversation sitting directly in the active context, Hermes can preserve important anchors while pushing more history out and recovering it through `session_search` when needed. It is not the new default. But for agents expected to work for a long time, this is one of the more interesting architectural changes from the week. And those are only the headliners. Also shipped: • Browser Use becoming the preferred browser path when available • opt-in agent-managed cron scheduling • Claude Code and Codex session importing • `/save` session export to JSON, Markdown and HTML • faster CLI startup and Desktop session loading • a huge amount of updater, cron, session, routing and tool reliability work There were hundreds of changes underneath all of this. But the direction is getting hard to miss. Hermes is moving from an agent you give work to... toward a system of agents that can keep working, supervise each other, coordinate across machines, manage their own capabilities, and stay responsible for what happens next.

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