Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to rrpauls/hermes-esra. 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/rrpauls/hermes-esra/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rrpauls/hermes-esraWrote 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/rrpauls/hermes-esra/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/rrpauls/hermes-esra/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/rrpauls/hermes-esra/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/rrpauls/hermes-esra/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/rrpauls/hermes-esra/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 | $0.01764 | $0.01764 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00706 | $0.00706 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00353 | $0.00353 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00176 | $0.00176 |
Grade A, and why
hermes-esra 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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 208 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
AGENTS.md — ESRA Integration for Hermes
Goal: Make Hermes improvement work systematic, value-aligned, observable, and evidence-driven through the Evolutionary Self-Recursive Architecture (ESRA) meta-layer.
Official architecture name: ESRA — Evolutionary Self-Recursive Architecture
Specification repository: https://github.com/rrpauls/esra
This repository: Concrete Hermes implementation of ESRA
Core Rule
After a major architecture or skill change, repeated failure, or an explicit
full-cycle request, evaluate whether to run one bounded
hermes-evolution-orchestrator review. Routine successful work should not
trigger a full cycle.
A recommendation from evolution_hook.py does not execute a cycle. The
caller must explicitly activate the orchestrator.
Install layout (where things live)
After ./install.sh, Hermes home looks like:
$HERMES_HOME/ # default: ~/.hermes
├── AGENTS.md # this file
├── skills/esra/ # meta-skills (Hermes skill discovery)
│ ├── esra-runtime/ # documents tool paths for the agent
│ ├── hermes-evolution-orchestrator/
│ └── …
└── esra/ # ESRA runtime package (not a skill)
├── manifest.json # machine-readable paths and protocol version
├── conformance.json # evidence-backed capability declaration
└── tools/ # Python CLIs — use these paths
| Kind | Path | Discovered by Hermes as |
|---|---|---|
| Meta-skills | ~/.hermes/skills/esra/ |
Skills / slash commands |
| Runtime tools | ~/.hermes/esra/tools/ |
Via esra-runtime skill + this file |
| Manifest | ~/.hermes/esra/manifest.json |
Read when paths are unclear |
| Conformance | ~/.hermes/esra/conformance.json |
Check supported protocol and capability maturity |
Override roots with $HERMES_HOME and/or $ESRA_HOME if set.
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.
- 1mo ago Changed · +7 lines · +103 tokens per session b24caf16b8a0
- 1mo ago Changed · +11 lines · +87 tokens per session 87dfff04b565
- 1mo ago First seen · 190 lines · 1,574 tokens per session scan A ad50cb950d77
hermes-esra AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository rrpauls/hermes-esra (1 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 1,764 tokens to every session, about $0.0071 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 2026-08-31.
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).
vscode model-prompts.instructions.md
Model-specific prompt authoring and registry guidelines.