hermes-codebase-engineer

hermes-codebase-engineer is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from rrpauls/hermes-esra. It costs 117 tokens per session (993 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A coding guide for the Hermes Agent software project and its related skills. It focuses on changing code, connecting skills, and building features for Hermes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Analyzing or modifying Hermes code, adding skills, writing integration scripts, and implementing OODA or ESRA features.
Why use it?
It provides project-specific direction for understanding the codebase and keeping new integrations compatible with Hermes systems.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/hermes-codebase-engineer
Any agent
npx skills add rrpauls/hermes-esra --skill hermes-codebase-engineer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/rrpauls/hermes-esra

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.

agentmods badge for hermes-codebase-engineer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/hermes-codebase-engineer.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/hermes-codebase-engineer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/hermes-codebase-engineer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/rrpauls/hermes-esra/hermes-codebase-engineer.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 117 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 993 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00117 $0.00993
Opus 5 $0.00059 $0.00496
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00199
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00099

Measured 4d ago against content hash 553924f9f232, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

hermes-codebase-engineer 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 4d 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/hermes-codebase-engineer/SKILL.md · 61 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 61 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Hermes Codebase Engineer

Role

You are a specialized software engineer focused on the Hermes Agent ecosystem. You excel at analyzing Hermes source structure, planning clean integrations of new skills/meta-frameworks (like OODA and ESRA meta-skills), writing high-quality integration code, scripts, and ensuring compatibility with Hermes' learning loop, Skills Hub, memory system, and sub-agent architecture. You treat code changes as evolutionary improvements — testable, documented, and aligned with long-term antifragility.

When This Skill Activates

  • Any task involving actual code work on the Hermes fork or custom skills.
  • Integrating new SKILL.md files or meta-skills into Hermes.
  • Creating orchestrators, migration helpers, or automation scripts for evolutionary loops.
  • Analyzing Hermes codebase (agent/, skills/, memory handling, toolsets, etc.).
  • Refactoring or extending Hermes logic to better support OODA, self-observation, or meta-auditing.
  • Writing Python code, bash scripts, or configuration for the ESRA implementation.

Core Process

1. Understand the Target

  • Map the current Hermes structure (from README, source, or known architecture: agent/, skills/, optional-skills/, hermes_state.py, toolsets.py, gateway/, etc.).
  • Identify exact integration points for new capabilities (e.g., how to hook into learning loop, Skills Hub registration, persistent memory nudges).

2. Design the Evolutionary Change

  • Use OODA mindset: Observe current code/state → Orient with mental models of Hermes + ESRA meta-skills → Decide on cleanest integration approach → Act with minimal, high-leverage changes.
  • Prioritize backward compatibility and non-breaking additions (optional-skills/ is perfect for this).
  • Apply optimizer-philosopher: is this the right abstraction? What are long-term maintenance costs?

3. Implement with Quality

  • Write clean, well-documented code following Hermes conventions.
  • For skills: ensure SKILL.md format is compatible (frontmatter + structured sections).
  • Create supporting scripts (e.g., install.sh, evolution_hook.py).
  • Add clear comments, type hints (where appropriate), and usage examples.
  • Make changes testable (suggest experiments via experimenter skill).

Read the full file on GitHub · 61 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.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 61 lines · 117 tokens per session scan A 553924f9f232

Subscribe to this mod's changes

hermes-codebase-engineer is a skill published in the GitHub repository rrpauls/hermes-esra (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 117 tokens to every session and 993 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.