Hermes Agent is an AI assistant that learns from its use by creating and improving skills, retaining knowledge, searching past conversations, and adapting to its users. It is for people who want to run an agent through a terminal or messaging platforms while connecting it to different AI models and scheduled tasks.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to NousResearch/hermes-agent. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agentWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/nousresearch/hermes-agent/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/nousresearch/hermes-agent/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/nousresearch/hermes-agent/agents-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/nousresearch/hermes-agent/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/nousresearch/hermes-agent/agents-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.03002 | $0.03002 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.01201 | $0.01201 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00600 | $0.00600 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00300 | $0.00300 |
Grade A, and why
hermes-agent AGENTS.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 16d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
Copies of this mod
2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:
- portable-hermes-agent AGENTS.md — 100% identical, 1,559 lines differ
- hermes-agent-mt AGENTS.md — 89% identical, 1,526 lines differ
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 170 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Hermes Agent - Development Guide
For AI coding assistants and developers working on hermes-agent. This root file is a hub: what
applies everywhere, then a routing table. Each area's AGENTS.md loads automatically when you work
in that directory; read it before editing there. python scripts/check caps this file at 12k chars
and every root-to-area chain at 30k, so it loads whole on 128k+ models: long form goes in the guide.
Never give up on the right solution.
What Hermes Is
Hermes is a personal AI agent that runs the same agent core across a CLI, a messaging gateway (Telegram, Discord, Slack, ~20 platforms), a TUI, and an Electron desktop app. It learns across sessions (memory + skills), delegates to subagents, runs scheduled jobs, and drives a real terminal and browser. It is extended primarily through plugins and skills, not by growing the core.
Two invariants shape almost every design decision and are the lens for reviewing any change:
- Per-conversation prompt caching is sacred. Mutating past context, swapping toolsets,
reloading memories or rebuilding the system prompt mid-conversation breaks the cached prefix and
multiplies the user's cost; the ONE exception is context compression. Slash commands that change
system-prompt state defer to the next session, with an opt-in
--now(/skills install --now). - The core is a narrow waist; capability lives at the edges. Every model tool is sent on every API call, so the bar for a new core tool is high. New capability should arrive as a CLI command + skill, a service-gated tool, or a plugin — not as core surface.
Contribution rubric
The project's intent layer, for contributors and for the triage sweeper (which may only close on
implemented_on_main, cannot_reproduce or incoherent; taste-based closes are a maintainer's
call, and when in doubt a PR stays open). Long form with examples:
website/docs/developer-guide/contributing.md § Contribution rubric.
Wanted: real bug fixes (repro on main, the exact line, the whole class incl. sibling paths);
reach at the edges (adapters, providers, models, UI features) wired into the existing setup UX;
god-file → module refactors; extending before duplicating (3+ PRs in one category → an ABC +
orchestrator); behaviour-contract tests; E2E with real imports against a temp HERMES_HOME for
resolution, config, security and I/O changes; salvage by cherry-pick so authorship survives.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 16d ago Changed · -378 lines · -6,481 tokens per session scan C → A a8948f7bf162
- 19d ago Changed · +23 lines · +430 tokens per session fa7afef44219
- 23d ago Changed · -4 lines · -109 tokens per session 1c63f4672603
- 27d ago Changed · +63 lines · +838 tokens per session 4bb2b53aa8f1
- 28d ago Changed · +8 lines · +146 tokens per session 8fa1f4108f10
- 29d ago Changed · +10 lines · +227 tokens per session 7eab8e9c5218
- 1mo ago Changed · +1 lines · +25 tokens per session f8b59b81bbb6
- 1mo ago Changed · +14 lines · +354 tokens per session scan A → C d8071ef87bce
- 1mo ago Changed · +5 lines · +135 tokens per session 752c0d1f165f
- 1mo ago First seen · 428 lines · 7,437 tokens per session scan A afe0c679b365
hermes-agent AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository NousResearch/hermes-agent (255,903 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 3,002 tokens to every session, about $0.0120 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.
Other instructions, from other repositories
vscode buildNext.instructions.md
Working notes and architecture documentation for the new esbuild-based build system in build/next. Use when making changes to the new build pipeline (transpile/bundle commands, NLS plugin, source-map handling, resource copying, or self-hosting watch tasks).
next.js AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for vercel/next.js, covering next.js development guide, codebase structure, monorepo overview, core package: packages/next and other important packages.
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code oss third-party-notices pipeline, architecture, pipeline flow in ci, cache eligibility and rollout and applying the notice (cutover).
langchain AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for langchain-ai/langchain, covering global development guidelines for the langchain monorepo, corridor security analysis, project architecture and context, monorepo structure and development tools & commands.
vscode copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code copilot instructions, project overview, root folders, core architecture (src/ folder) and built-in extensions (extensions/ folder).
deno copilot-instructions.md
Copilot instructions for denoland/deno, covering deno development guide for github copilot, network access, high level overview, key directories and key files to understand first.