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.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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 | $0.01574 | $0.01574 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00787 | $0.00787 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00315 | $0.00315 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00157 | $0.00157 |
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 6d 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 — 190 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 self-development systematic, value-aligned, observable, and compounding by connecting its native learning loop with 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 any complex task, skill creation, or significant improvement — always run hermes-evolution-orchestrator
(or explicitly say: orchestrate evolution / run full ESRA cycle).
This turns ad-hoc improvements into a deliberate, auditable, and self-improving evolutionary process.
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
└── 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 |
Override roots with $HERMES_HOME and/or $ESRA_HOME if set.
Always run tools by installed absolute path (do not depend on a git clone or cwd):
python ~/.hermes/esra/tools/evolution_hook.py
python ~/.hermes/esra/tools/evolution_hook.py --force-cycle
python ~/.hermes/esra/tools/skill_validator.py --verbose --skills-dir ~/.hermes/skills/esra
python ~/.hermes/esra/tools/evolution_dashboard.py
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.
- 6d 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 (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 1,574 tokens to every session, about $0.0079 per session on Opus 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
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.
codex AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for openai/codex, covering rust/codex-rs, the codex-core crate, code review rules, crate api surface and model visible context.
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).
vscode oss-third-party-notices.instructions.md
Instructions for microsoft/vscode, covering vs code oss third-party-notices pipeline, architecture, pipeline flow in ci, applying the notice (cutover) and fallback chain (never fail the build).
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.
spec-kit AGENTS.md
AGENTS.md instructions for github/spec-kit, covering agents.md, about spec kit and specify, quickstart — add a new integration in 5 steps, integration architecture and integrationmanifest — file tracking.