What is openclaw-hermes-arch?

A reference explaining how OpenClaw Gateway and Hermes Agent relate when both run on the same iMac. They are separate systems, even though they share a computer and some configuration.

Use it to understand their processes, configuration, service management, network setup, and possible Telegram token conflicts.

It prevents confusing the two services and helps avoid setup mistakes such as treating local access as remote access or reusing Telegram credentials.

openclaw-hermes-arch — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by ChrisLamDev

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add ChrisLamDev/hermes-core-skills --skill openclaw-hermes-arch

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ChrisLamDev/hermes-core-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/openclaw-hermes-arch/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/openclaw-hermes-arch)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/openclaw-hermes-arch"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/openclaw-hermes-arch/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/openclaw-hermes-arch"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chrislamdev/hermes-core-skills/openclaw-hermes-arch.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 944 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

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	$0.00022	$0.00944
Opus 5	$0.00011	$0.00472
Sonnet 5	$0.00004	$0.00189
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00094

Measured 10d ago against content hash 0ed3bbac8412, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

openclaw-hermes-arch 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 10d 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.

skills/openclaw-hermes-arch/SKILL.md · 82 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 82 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OpenClaw & Hermes — Independent Systems (Both on Same iMac)

Critical Architecture Finding (2026-04-29)

Hermes Agent runs locally on the user's iMac, NOT on a cloud VM. This was discovered mid-session when tailscale status showed only one node (chrisimac), hostname returned ChrisdeiMac.local, and tailscale ip -1 returned 100.94.45.30 — the same Tailscale IP as the iMac.

Implication: All prior SSH setup (key generation, from= IP restriction, Tailscale tunnel) was unnecessary — Hermes was SSH-ing into its own machine. The SSH key setup hermes_to_chris served no real purpose since Hermes already has local terminal access.

Critical finding: OpenClaw Gateway and Hermes Agent are two separate systems on the same machine (iMac M1). They are not the same thing.

Key Facts

	OpenClaw Gateway	Hermes Agent
Process manager	PM2	macOS launchd
Config	Shared .env	Shared .env
Telegram Token	Must NOT share	Must NOT share
Service file	PM2 list	~/Library/LaunchAgents/hermes*.plist
Heartbeat	~60 mins (token drain)	None by default

Token Conflict

Both using same Telegram Bot Token = packet loss / no response. Telegram delivers to whichever grabs it first. OpenClaw heartbeat drains rate limit.

Fix: Use a separate dedicated Telegram Bot for Hermes. Create via @BotFather, give new token to Hermes only.

Current state: Hermes runs with the original OpenClaw bot token. Architecture is independent but bot identity is inherited. To truly separate, create a new bot via @BotFather and update TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN in .env (line 28).

Dead .env Variables (Leftover from OpenClaw)

Hermes Agent does NOT natively read these environment variables — they are OpenClaw-era artifacts:

LOGIC_MODEL=deepseek-chat — inert. Hermes uses model.default in config.yaml.
CODING_MODEL=deepseek-coder — inert. Hermes has no internal code to read this.
CODING_PROVIDER — inert.
DEFAULT_MODEL / LLM_MODEL — also inert if config.yaml sets model.default.

Read the full file on GitHub · 82 lines

Changes

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.

10d ago First seen · 82 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 0ed3bbac8412

Subscribe to this mod's changes

openclaw-hermes-arch is a skill published in the GitHub repository ChrisLamDev/hermes-core-skills (9 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 944 once invoked, about $0.0001 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.

Building agents Claude Code agent-skills ai-agent ai-tools automation claude

unicli-repair

Evidence-driven repair workflow for a broken Uni-CLI adapter. Trigger on a failed unicli envelope, a quarantined adapter, or an explicit adapter-repair request. Classifies non-source failures, edits only the reported adapter path, and uses the original command as a bounded oracle.

olo-dot-io/Uni-CLI · 68 tokens

autonomous-run

Prepare, start, inspect, resume, or stop a finite local overnight coding run after a human has accepted a Wayfinder terminal spec; coordinates a declared Claude/Codex maker and independent checker without pushing, merging, or writing to external systems.

PromptPartner/agentsmith · 53 tokens

openclaw-hermes-arch