Hermes Agent v0.16.0 (v2026.6.5)

Release Date: June 5, 2026 Since v0.15.2: 874 commits · 542 merged PRs · 1,962 files changed · 205,216 insertions · 46,217 deletions · 399 issues closed (2 P0, 62 P1, 16 security-tagged) · 170 community contributors (including co-authors)

The Surface Release. Hermes meets you wherever you work. A brand-new native desktop app — built across 100 PRs and 159 commits in a single week — gives you Hermes as a real macOS/Linux/Windows application: one-click install, in-app self-update, drag-and-drop files into chat, an inline model picker in the status bar, concurrent multi-profile sessions, a full Simplified Chinese translation, and the ability to connect to a remote Hermes gateway over OAuth or username/password. Alongside it, the web dashboard grew a full browser-based administration panel (MCP catalog, messaging channels, credentials, webhooks, memory, pluggable OIDC / username-password login), and first-time setup got a "Quick Setup via Nous Portal" path that gets you from install to first message in seconds. The default skill set was trimmed to what you actually need, NVIDIA/skills joined the trusted Skills Hub taps, the model picker is now fuzzy-searchable everywhere (desktop, web, TUI, CLI), and /undo finally lets you take back the last N turns. 2 P0 and 62 P1 closures ride along, plus a security round (CVE-2026-48710 Starlette pin, SSRF off-loop hardening, subprocess credential stripping).

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✨ Highlights

• Hermes Desktop — a real native app, not a terminal wrapper — This is the headline. There's now a apps/desktop/ Electron application that installs like any other desktop app on macOS, Linux, and Windows, updates itself in place from inside the app, and gives you a polished GUI for everything Hermes does. You get a proper chat window with streaming, a session list you can archive and search, drag-and-drop files anywhere in the chat area, clipboard image paste, a Cmd+K command palette, and a model picker right in the status bar. If you've been telling friends "it's a CLI agent" and watching their eyes glaze over — now you can just send them an installer. None of this existed a week ago. (#20059, #35607, #37099, #37379, #38631 — @OutThisLife, @jquesnelle, @ethernet8023, @austinpickett, @benbarclay)

• Run the desktop app against a remote Hermes — sign in with OAuth or username/password — The desktop app doesn't have to run Hermes locally. Point it at a remote Hermes gateway (your homelab, a hosted box, a teammate's server) and it connects over a secure WebSocket, authenticating with OAuth or a username/password login — no fiddling with --insecure flags or hand-copied session tokens. Each profile can target its own remote host, and you can run concurrent sessions across multiple profiles in one window with cross-profile @session links. The practical version: your laptop runs a thin GUI, the heavy agent runs wherever your API keys and compute live. (#37888, #38851, #39330, #39778 — @benbarclay, @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

• The web dashboard is now a full admin panel — configure everything from the browser — The dashboard grew from "view your sessions" into a complete administration surface. There's a Channels page that sets up every gateway messaging platform (Telegram, Discord, Slack, etc.) from the browser, an admin panel for the MCP catalog with enable/disable toggles, credential management, webhook and hook creation, memory configuration, gateway controls, and a System page with check-before-update and one-click Debug Share. You no longer have to SSH in and edit config.yaml to wire up a new messaging channel or MCP server — it's all point-and-click now. (#36704, #36736, #37211, #38205, #38600 — @teknium1)

• Hermes Desktop speaks Simplified Chinese — full 简体中文 in the chat GUI — The desktop app now ships a complete Simplified Chinese (简体中文) translation across every UI surface — the chat window itself, sidebar, settings, command center, cron, messaging, profiles, skills, agents, the lot. English stays the default; switch language in Appearance settings and the choice persists to your config (display.language). It's built on a proper typed i18n layer, so adding more languages from here is straightforward. (#38241 — @JimLiu)

• Leaner default skill set — Hermes ships only what you actually need — The bundled skill set got a deliberate trim. Skills that were redundant or dead are gone (spotify — superseded by the native Spotify plugin's 7 tools; linear — superseded by hermes mcp install linear; kanban-codex-lane, debugging-hermes-tui-commands, a stale domain orphan, and several empty category markers). Heavier or niche skills moved from bundled to optional (the Baoyu creative set, dspy, subagent-driven-development, minecraft-modpack-server, pokemon-player, hermes-s6-container-supervision) — still one hermes skills install away, just not loaded by default. And a new environments: relevance gate keeps context-specific skills (kanban, docker/s6) out of the skills index for users who'll never use them, while still loading them on explicit request. The result: a smaller, sharper default skill list, less noise in the picker, and a lighter prompt. The curator can now prune unused built-in skills too (not just agent-created ones), with usage tracked for every skill. (#39028, #36701, #36228 — @teknium1)

• NVIDIA/skills is now a built-in trusted skills tap — NVIDIA/skills joins OpenAI, Anthropic, and HuggingFace as a default trusted tap in the Skills Hub — discoverable, browsable, searchable, and auto-updating through the same pipeline. NVIDIA's verified skills for CUDA-X, AIQ, cuOpt and the rest of their product stack are one install away, with real category labels from the repo's skills.sh.json sidecar. (#34333 — @teknium1)

• Quick Setup via Nous Portal — from install to first message in seconds — First-time setup was thinned down to two clear paths: Quick Setup (sign in with Nous Portal, get a model picker, start chatting immediately) or Full Setup (the detailed wizard for power users). hermes portal is now the human-readable alias that runs the full quick-setup Nous flow. The first-run menu explains the difference inline so newcomers aren't guessing. The goal: a brand-new user shouldn't need to read docs to send their first message. (#35723, #36227, #38449, #38465 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

• Fuzzy model picker, everywhere — type a few letters, find your model — The model picker now does fuzzy search across the desktop app, web dashboard, TUI, and CLI. Type "v4fl" and deepseek-v4-flash surfaces; multi-endpoint providers are grouped under one row instead of cluttering the list with duplicates, and each row carries a description so you know what you're picking. The catalog refreshes hourly instead of daily, so new models show up the same day they launch. New this window: deepseek-v4-flash, MiniMax-M3 with 1M context, qwen3.7-plus. (#36928, #35227, #35756, #35659, #36214 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)

• /undo [N] — take back the last N turns — Said the wrong thing, or sent the agent down a bad path? /undo backs up N user turns, prefills your last message so you can edit and resend, and soft-deletes the turns in between. It works in the CLI, the TUI, and across messaging platforms (Telegram, Discord, etc.) with full parity. Closes a long-standing request (#21910). (#36229, #36699 — @teknium1)

• Choose your default interface — cli or tui — You can now set whether hermes chat drops you into the classic CLI or the Ink TUI by default, with a --cli flag to override per-invocation. The TUI also got a single unified /model command and a Sessions overlay for switching between live sessions. Use the interface you actually like. (#37782, #37112 — @OutThisLife)

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🖥️ Hermes Desktop App (NEW)

Install & lifecycle

• macOS desktop install + in-app self-update; rebuild-and-relaunch cleanly on macOS (#35607, #36198, #38296 — @OutThisLife)
• macOS installer renamed to "Hermes" and turned into a launcher (#37516 — @OutThisLife)
• CIBuild desktop in its own desktop stage on macOS/Linux instead of silently skipping; content-hash build stamp, --build-only / --force-build flags (#36134 — @OutThisLife, #37597 — @ethernet8023)
• Boot-failure recovery + live API-key validation; cancellable install; recover from corrupt cached Electron download (#35864, #37379, #39032 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
• Windows: recover from corrupt Electron cache in bootstrap install; stop racing our own backend during in-app update (#39465, #39828 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
• Linux: configure Electron sandbox helper; detect linux arm64 binary; disable GPU acceleration on remote displays to stop flicker (#37691, #38594, #37932 — @ethernet8023, @OutThisLife)
• Require Node ≥20.19/22.12 for the desktop build; zero eslint/typecheck debt + prettier pass (#38255, #39100 — @OutThisLife)

Remote-gateway & multi-profile

• Connect to OAuth-gated remote gateways; username/password login for remote gateways; per-profile remote gateway hosts (#37888, #38851, #39778 — @benbarclay, @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
• Concurrent multi-profile sessions, cross-profile @session links; re-mint OAuth WS ticket on gateway reconnect; gate OAuth remote connect on AT-or-RT (#39330, #38886, #39464 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1, @benbarclay)
• Offer remote sign-in on a gated-gateway boot failure; validate live WebSocket in remote gateway test (#39402, #39511 — @teknium1)

Chat UX & settings

• Drop files anywhere in the chat area; clipboard image paste with dedupe; attachments on Enter, IME composition handling (#36262, #38306, #38677 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
• Background needs-input indicator, clarify redesign, Cmd+K palette & UI consistency pass; inline model picker in the status bar; YOLO toggle in the status bar (TUI parity) (#38631, #37738, #38517 — @OutThisLife)
• Session-list overhaul, session hygiene/archive, media streaming + connecting overlay; search sessions by id (SQL-bounded) (#37379, #37099, #39062 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)
• Dedicated Providers settings + polished Accounts/API-keys UX; consolidate skills + tools management into one pane; move model management into Settings (#38551 — @austinpickett, #37310, #37330 — @jquesnelle)
• Render approval/sudo/secret prompts so tools stop silently timing out; surface skill & quick-command slash commands in the palette; first-class xAI Grok OAuth provider in the launcher (#38578, #38531, #37697 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
• "Choose provider later" skip on first-run onboarding; onboarding can configure a local/custom endpoint without an API key; custom zoom shortcuts (#39483, #38572, #37894 — @teknium1, @ethernet8023)
• macOS helper microphone entitlement; scroll-jump fixes (native anchoring, at-rest jump, wheel-up snap-back); thinking block stays open mid-streaming (#37745 — @xxxigm, #37866, #38221, #38809 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1, @stremtec)
• GUI quality-of-life triage batch; salvaged AhmetArif0 desktop/dashboard fixes; rename session via session.title RPC so /title works (#37536 — @austinpickett, #39070, #39410 — @teknium1, @benbarclay)
• hermes debug share / /debug / hermes logs now include desktop.log (#38203 — @teknium1)
• Simplified Chinese (简体中文) translation across every desktop UI surface — typed i18n layer, switch in Appearance settings, persisted via display.language (English remains default) (#38241 — @JimLiu)
• Full multi-profile support over one global-remote dashboard; remote-profile sessions are first-class (resume, read, rename/archive/delete); new chats honor their profile in global-remote mode (#39921, #39894, #39993 — @OutThisLife)

📊 Web Dashboard

Administration panel (NEW)

• Full administration panel — MCP catalog with enable/disable toggles, pairing, webhooks, credentials, memory, gateway, hook creation, system settings (#36704, #36736 — @teknium1)
• Channels page — set up every gateway messaging channel from the browser (#37211 — @teknium1)
• System page: check-before-update flow + Debug Share (#38205, #38600 — @teknium1)
• nous-blue theme, bulk sessions, schedule picker; enriched profiles dashboard + de-dupe channel env vars; configurable terminal background via theme (#37383, #37872 — @austinpickett, #37156 — @teknium1)
• Always enable embedded chat; remove dashboard --tui flag (#38591 — @benbarclay)

Auth

• Pluggable username/password login (Option B); generic self-hosted OIDC provider + multi-provider verify fix; hermes dashboard register for self-hosted OAuth client (#38819 — @benbarclay, #38917, #38802 — @teknium1)
• Rotate dashboard sessions via refresh token; share /api/* public allowlist between legacy and OAuth gates; drop /api/* paths from OAuth next= round trip (#37247, #34254, #36244 — @benbarclay)
• Chat tab works in gated (OAuth) mode; trust non-web WS origins on OAuth-gated binds after ticket auth; authenticate server-spawned PTY child WS; sanction plugin WS/upload auth via SDK helpers (#34793, #37870, #37972, #38549 — @teknium1, @benbarclay, @kshitijk4poor)
• Allow desktop websocket origins on remote binds (#37747 — @teknium1)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Provider & model support

• New models: deepseek-v4-flash (+ trimmed variants, maker-grouped curated lists), MiniMax-M3 with 1M context on native minimax providers, qwen3.7-plus (Nous + OpenRouter), gemini-3.5-flash to Gemini OAuth + API-key pickers (#35659, #36214, #39409, #37046 — @teknium1)
• Model picker: fuzzy search across WebUI/TUI/CLI; group multi-endpoint providers under one row; refresh provider descriptions + describe grouped rows; refresh catalog hourly; stop routing OpenAI selection to OpenRouter (#36928 — @kshitijk4poor, #35227, #35773, #35756, #37175)
• Always show Nous Tool Gateway backends, login on select; surface the Nous free tool pool (entitlement + setup prompt); route FAL video gen through managed Nous gateway (#35792 — @teknium1, #36153, #33259 — @alt-glitch)
• Persist mid-session model switch to database; recover model on post-interrupt recovery turn (#35256, #35381 — @teknium1)
• Credential pool: STATUS_DEAD for terminal OAuth failures; isolate custom provider picker credentials (#34412, #34810 — @teknium1)
• Disable Nous Portal legacy session-key inference fallback — JWT-only (#34508 — @kshitijk4poor)

Agent loop, prompt & tools

• /undo [N] — backs up N user turns with prefill + soft-delete (CLI/TUI + messaging-platform parity) (#36229, #36699 — @teknium1)
• Progressive tool disclosure for MCP and plugin tools (scoped); embedder environment-hint hook for the system prompt; universal task-completion guidance + local Python toolchain probe (#34493, #34574, #34340 — @teknium1)
• Uncap delegation max_spawn_depth (floor 1, no ceiling); broaden Hermes self-knowledge pointer to docs + skill; hermes prompt-size diagnostic (#39772, #38538, #35276 — @teknium1)
• perf(read_file): compact line-number gutter — ~14% fewer tokens per read (now the only format) (#35368, #35532 — @teknium1)
• Resolve agent cwd from TERMINAL_CWD via one reader; align prefill messages key handling; resume relaunches in the session's original working directory (#35028 — @banditburai, #38760 — @helix4u, #38562 — @teknium1)
• Prevent session-id fork from concurrent compressions; observer telemetry hooks + NeMo-Relay plugin (gated tool emit) (#34351, #38232 — @teknium1)

Sessions, state & memory

• perf(state): merge FTS5 segments on VACUUM + hermes sessions optimize; keep /branch sessions visible after parent reopen; survive missing FTS5 runtimes (#34596, #39214 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, #35452 — @helix4u)
• Honcho: make startup fail open; harden self-hosted setup paths (#24847 — @stephenschoettler, #35170 — @kshitijk4poor)
• Supermemory: session-level ingest + kebab aliases (#38756 — @alt-glitch)

🧩 Multi-Agent (Kanban) & Skills

Kanban

• goal_mode cards run workers in a /goal loop; file attachments on tasks; attach images referenced in task bodies to worker vision (#35710, #35395, #34210 — @teknium1)
• default_assignee fallback + per-profile concurrency cap; POST /runs/{run_id}/terminate endpoint; gate notifier watcher on dispatch_in_gateway (#34244, #34449, #37174 — @teknium1)
• CLI dispatch config passthrough + humanizer skill swap (#34337 — @teknium1)

Skills

• Leaner default skill set (#39028 — @teknium1):
  • Removed (redundant / dead): spotify (→ Spotify plugin's 7 native tools), linear (→ hermes mcp install linear), kanban-codex-lane, debugging-hermes-tui-commands, stale domain orphan, empty category markers (diagramming, gifs, inference-sh, mlops/training, mlops/vector-databases)
  • Bundled → optional: baoyu-article-illustrator, baoyu-comic, creative-ideation, pixel-art, dspy, subagent-driven-development, minecraft-modpack-server, pokemon-player, hermes-s6-container-supervision
  • Consolidated: webhook-subscriptions + native-mcp folded into the hermes-agent skill as on-demand references; writing-plans merged into plan (v2.0.0)
  • New environments: frontmatter relevance gate (kanban / docker / s6) — context-specific skills stop appearing in the index for users who won't use them, still load on explicit request
• Curator can now prune unused built-in skills (not just agent-created), with usage tracked for every skill (#36701 — @teknium1)
• Blank-slate skills — install --no-skills + opt-out/opt-in for the default profile (#36228 — @teknium1)
• NVIDIA/skills trusted tap — NVIDIA/skills is now a default trusted Skills Hub tap alongside OpenAI/Anthropic/HuggingFace; skills.sh.json sidecar gives taps real category labels (#34333 — @teknium1)
• Skills Hub: fix browse cap, add source links + copy buttons + category cleanup (#37143 — @teknium1)
• New optional skills: grok (xAI Grok Build CLI), antigravity-cli operator (under autonomous-ai-agents) (#34582, #34583, #34604 — @teknium1)

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

• Structured stream-event protocol + Telegram draft formatting parity; per-platform streaming defaults (Telegram on, Discord off) + dashboard toggles; surface gateway streaming block in DEFAULT_CONFIG (#37250, #37303, #37285 — @teknium1)
• Discord voice-channel mixer — ambient idle bed + verbal acks that overlap TTS; explain /voice usage when toggled bare (#39659, #39766 — @teknium1)
• Handle Feishu meeting invitations; bluebubbles group mention gating; matrix bang-command aliases; matrix fail-closed approval reaction auth (#39040, #37091, #38175 — @teknium1, @alt-glitch, #34567)
• Clean service restart flow; close ResponseStore + dispose unowned adapter on reconnect failure; weixin asyncio.wait_for timeouts (#36188 — @helix4u, #37679 — @Fearvox, #35117 — @banditburai)

🖥️ CLI, TUI & Setup

• Configurable default interface (cli vs tui) + --cli flag; TUI single /model command + unified Sessions overlay; nudge toward /agents dashboard when delegation starts (#37782, #37112 — @OutThisLife, #34704 — @kshitijk4poor)
• Thin out setup — Quick Setup via Nous Portal + Full Setup defaults; explain Quick vs Full inline; hermes portal human-readable Portal onboarding alias + full quick-setup Nous flow (#35723, #36227, #38449, #38465 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
• Set process title to hermes in ps/top/htop; warn on unsupported pip installs + fix stale update-check cache (#35143, #34846 — @teknium1)
• TUI perf: stop slow/dead MCP servers from freezing startup; stop eager MCP discovery from blocking agent-capable startup; stop persisting full tool output in trail lines (silent OOM) (#35273, #35397, #38224 — @teknium1)
• TUI fixes: auto-recover session on unexpected gateway death; reassemble split SGR mouse sequences; preserve UTF-8 in PowerShell clipboard; reset terminal input modes on exit; /save snapshots under Hermes home (#35893, #38564 — @OutThisLife, #35222 — @teknium1, #36864 — @maxmilian, #38251 — @austinpickett)
• Setup model/provider pickers migrated off simple_term_menu to curses (ESC + ghost-row fixes); default browser/TTS picker to free local backend, not paid Nous (#35806, #37800 — @teknium1)

🔧 Tool System & Installer

• single managed-uv path, delete fts5 installer escalation; installer commit pinning opt-in (default branch-follow); shallow clones (#37660 — @ethernet8023, #37123 — @jquesnelle, #39423 — @ethernet8023)
• ensure_uv() survives the update boundary (no first-run crash); harden venv rebuild + verify core deps after install; require managed marker before destructive clean; stash/restore by default for non-interactive updates (#39780 — @OutThisLife, #38887, #39568, #39645 — @teknium1, @helix4u)
• MCP: stop reporting false OAuth success when no token was obtained; vision honors model.supports_vision in vision_analyze + browser_vision; MiniMax t2a_v2 TTS raise_for_status (#34807, #34562, #39057 — @teknium1)
• yuanbao: cache resolved media resources by resourceId (#34474 — @teknium1)

🐳 Docker & Deployment

• Container reuse + bounded-sync cleanup + orphan reaper; auto-join Docker socket group for docker-in-docker backend; boot non-root containers (skip s6-setuidgid drop when already unprivileged) (#33645, #34407 — @benbarclay, #34837 — @IAvecilla)
• Skip unnecessary boot chown when volume ownership matches remapped UID; seed gateway_state.json from HERMES_GATEWAY_BOOTSTRAP_STATE on first boot; tag containers with hermes-agent labels for identification (#35027 — @Foldblade, #37896 — @benbarclay)
• Point TUI launcher at prebuilt bundle via HERMES_TUI_DIR; consolidate node/nix workspace lockfile + update all consumers (#37923, #36171 — @benbarclay, @ethernet8023)

🔒 Security & Reliability

• CVE-2026-48710 (Starlette BadHost) — pin patched Starlette ≥1.0.1 (#35118 — @teknium1)
• Run URL SSRF checks off the event loop in async paths; strip Bedrock inference bearer token from subprocess env; add bws_cache.json to file-safety read guard; neutralize file paths in mutation-verifier footer (#39046, #34498, #34421, #35684 — @teknium1)
• Restore approval/sudo context in execute_code + guard entry points; add docker restart/stop/kill to DANGEROUS_PATTERNS; sanitize invisible unicode in vetted skill content; deepcopy tools before in-place xAI mutation (#34497, #33438 — @teknium1, @Sarbai, #37245, #34416)
• Sandbox-mirror soft guard for writes to per-task .hermes mirrors; honcho fail-open on startup (#32213 — @briandevans, #24847 — @stephenschoettler)

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

• 399 issues closed this window (2 P0, 62 P1, 16 security-tagged, 262 bug-labeled).
• Desktop: keep in-flight new chats from vanishing on refresh; Stop button actually interrupts when a turn is queued; stop background session messages bleeding into the active transcript; slash/@ completion menu navigable & Esc-dismissable; IME Enter no longer splits messages (#37908 — @OutThisLife, #37948, #37975, #37937 — @kshitijk4poor, #38333 — @stremtec)
• Update: stop stash/restore from clobbering desktop source on managed clones; don't fail desktop rebuild/skills sync on mid-rebuild venv; export launcher virtualenv to uv (#38542, #38885, #35224 — @teknium1)
• Voice: honor PIPEWIRE_REMOTE in PortAudio fallback; allow /voice over SSH when a sound server is reachable; restore mistralai (2.4.8 clean, ban lifted) (#33473 — @Dusk1e, #35719, #34841 — @teknium1)

📚 Documentation

• New Desktop App guide + remote-backend sections (session token, --tui requirement, username/password connect, dashboard/gateway prerequisites) (#37457, #38144, #38180, #38534, #39128 — @teknium1)
• Dashboard auth-provider suitability + registration across dashboard/Docker/Desktop; network egress isolation guide for Docker (#39633 — @benbarclay, #26385 — @Manzela)

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👥 Contributors

A huge thank-you to the 170 community contributors (including co-authors) who shipped work in this release.

Core

• @teknium1

Top community contributors (by merged-PR count)

• @OutThisLife (52) — built the desktop app end to end: install, self-update, remote-gateway connect, multi-profile sessions, chat UX, status-bar model picker
• @benbarclay (44) — Docker hardening, dashboard auth (OIDC, username/password, refresh-token rotation), desktop OAuth remote connect
• @kshitijk4poor (29) — fuzzy model picker, setup/portal onboarding, desktop completion-menu & Stop-button fixes, honcho hardening
• @ethernet8023 (18) — desktop build pipeline (content-hash stamp, build flags), Linux/arm64 desktop support, managed-uv consolidation
• @austinpickett (8) — dashboard nous-blue theme + bulk sessions, desktop Providers settings, GUI QoL triage
• @alt-glitch (7) — Nous tool-pool entitlement surfacing, FAL video-gen managed gateway, supermemory session ingest, matrix aliases
• @helix4u (6) — gateway service-restart flow, update destructive-clean guard, config prefill alignment
• @jquesnelle (4) — installer commit-pinning opt-in, desktop skills/tools + model-management consolidation
• @JimLiu — full Simplified Chinese (简体中文) desktop translation + typed i18n layer

All Contributors

@0xharryriddle, @a1245582339, @adybag14-cyber, @AhmetArif0, @alaamohanad169-ship-it, @alelpoan, @alt-glitch, @Aman113114-IITD, @amathxbt, @aminvakil, @annguyenNous, @aqilaziz, @Archerouyang, @ashishpatel26, @asimons81, @austinpickett, @banditburai, @baofuen, @Bartok9, @bbednarski9, @beardthelion, @bedirhancode, @benbarclay, @benfrank241, @blackpilledsoftware-prog, @bluefishs, @brian-doherty, @briancl2, @briandevans, @BROCCOLO1D, @caojiguang, @CharZhou, @counterposition, @coygeek, @CryptoByz, @davetist, @davidgut1982, @dchenk, @dirtyren, @donovan-yohan, @dparikh79, @dskwe, @Dusk1e, @dvir-pashut, @EloquentBrush0x, @emozilla, @ErnestHysa, @Erosika, @ethernet8023, @f3rs3n, @faisfamilytravel, @Fearvox, @ferminquant, @fesalfayed, @firefly, @flooryyyy, @Foldblade, @Frowtek, @gbarany, @Glucksberg, @GodsBoy, @haran2001, @harjothkhara, @HashClawAI, @hayka-pacha, @helix4u, @HeLLGURD, @Hinotoi-agent, @hllqkb, @IAvecilla, @inchargeautomation-lab, @Interstellar-code, @isair, @ITheEqualizer, @jeffrobodie-glitch, @JezzaHehn, @JimLiu, @Julientalbot, @julio-cloudvisor, @karmeleon, @Kenmege, @Kewe63, @Kolektori, @konsisumer, @kshitijk4poor, @kurobaryo, @kweiner, @kyssta-exe, @Kyzcreig, @LengR, @leonardsellem, @LeonSGP43, @libre-7, @liuboacean, @liuhao1024, @loongzhao, @luyao618, @MaheshtheDev, @Manzela, @mathijsvandenhurk, @MattMaximo, @maxcz79, @maxmilian, @Moikapy, @MustafaKara7, @nateGeorge, @nepenth, @nielskaspers, @ninjmnky, @octavioturra, @OCWC22, @ohMyJason, @ousiaresearch, @outsourc-e, @OutThisLife, @Pluviobyte, @polnikale, @pxdsgnco, @Que0x, @r266-tech, @redpiggy-cyber, @rewbs, @rexdotsh, @rob-maron, @SaguaroDev, @sahibzada-allahyar, @Sarbai, @sarvesh1327, @scubamount, @SeaXen, @seppegadeyne, @shannonsands, @SHL0MS, @SimoKiihamaki, @SiTaggart, @solaitken, @sprmn24, @stephenschoettler, @steveonjava, @stremtec, @Subway2023, @sweetcornna, @Sylw3ster, @ThyFriendlyFox, @tillfalko, @tmchow, @TonyPepeBear, @Tranquil-Flow, @truenorth-lj, @tuancookiez-hub, @Twanislas, @tymrtn, @uzunkuyruk, @ViewWay, @VinciZhu, @vinoth12940, @vladkvlchk, @vynxevainglory-ai, @WadydX, @wenchengxucool, @whyhkzk, @worlldz, @Wysie, @x1am1, @xxxigm, @ygd58, @youngstar-eth, @zapabob, @zhaoleibd, @Zyrixtrex

---

Full Changelog: v2026.5.29.2...v2026.6.5

Hermes Agent v0.15.1 (v2026.5.29)

Release Date: May 29, 2026 Since v0.15.0: 28 commits · 21 merged PRs · hotfix release · 9 contributors

The Patch Release. A same-day hotfix for v0.15.0. Headline fix: the dashboard infinite-reload loop that hit anyone running v0.15.0 in loopback mode (Docker, hosted Hermes, fresh installs). A handful of other v0.15.0 follow-ups go along for the ride — kanban worker SIGTERM, /model picker unification, /yolo session bypass, the full 19,932-entry skills.sh catalog, .md media delivery restoration, gateway probe-stepdown safety, web-URL redaction passthrough, kanban worker vision on referenced images, hindsight observation-default. Docker users get an explicit --insecure opt-in env var (no more bind-host inference), MCP server bare-command PATH resolution, and arm64 PR-build cache fixes.

---

✨ Highlights

• Dashboard 401 reload loop fixed — In loopback mode the dashboard's identity probe (/api/auth/me) returns 401 by design, but v0.15.0's stale-token reload guard treated every 401 as a rotated session token and full-page-reloaded to pick up a fresh one. Every successful sibling call cleared the one-shot reload guard, so the page reload-looped forever (Firefox: "Navigated to /sessions" storm; Chrome: React re-render storm). Fix adds an allowUnauthorized opt-out to fetchJSON that skips only the loopback stale-token reload — 401 still throws so AuthWidget swallows it, gated-mode login_url redirects are unaffected. Closes #34206, #34202. (#30698 — @austinpickett)

• Docker dashboard --insecure is now an explicit env opt-in, never derived from bind host — Previously the Docker entrypoint inferred --insecure when the dashboard bound to a non-loopback host. That conflated "I want LAN access" with "I want to disable the same-origin guard." The fix splits them: bind host is bind host, and disabling the dashboard's loopback auth requires an explicit HERMES_DASHBOARD_INSECURE=1. Existing setups that genuinely wanted insecure binding must now set the env var. (#34188, #34204 — @benbarclay)

• MCP bare command resolution under Docker — MCP servers configured with bare commands (npx, npm, node) now resolve against /usr/local/bin so they actually launch inside the Docker image where those binaries live. v0.15.0 left these failing silently in containers when the agent's effective PATH didn't include the Node toolchain location. (#34186 — @benbarclay)

• Skills page sidebar / source pills restored — A stale useMemo dependency in the new dashboard skills page collapsed the source pills and category sidebar to "All" only. Fixed; both surfaces now reflect the live catalog state. (#34194)

• Kanban worker can be killed again — SIGTERM on a kanban worker was being absorbed by an intermediate process and the worker stayed running. Closes #28181. (#34045)

• Full skills.sh catalog (858 → 19,932 entries) — The skills hub page was pulling a partial paginated catalog. The fetch now walks the sitemap, so all 19,932 skills.sh entries surface in the picker instead of just the first 858. (#34025)

---

🐛 Bug Fixes

Dashboard / Web

• /api/auth/me 401 no longer triggers reload loop in loopback mode — (#30698 — @austinpickett)
• Skills page source pills + category sidebar restored — stale useMemo dep (#34194)

Docker

• --insecure is now explicit opt-in via env var, not derived from bind host (#34188 — @benbarclay)
• Dashboard test suite repaired to match the insecure-opt-in fix (#34204 — @benbarclay)
• arm64 PR builds skip the GHA cache to avoid cache-thrash on cross-arch builders (#33704 — @BROCCOLO1D)

MCP

• Bare npx/npm/node resolve against /usr/local/bin for Docker compatibility (#34186 — @benbarclay)

Kanban

• Worker SIGTERM actually terminates the process (#34045)
• Workers receive images referenced in task bodies for vision-capable models (#34210)

Gateway

• .md files deliver again — media-delivery validation defaults to denylist-only instead of an overly-narrow allowlist (#34022)
• Probe stepdown safety — on a context-overflow without an explicit provider context limit, the agent no longer steps down to a smaller model based on an unknown ceiling (salvage of #33673) (#33826)

CLI

• /yolo mid-session enables the per-session bypass instead of just toggling the env var (which the running agent had already snapshotted) (#33931 — @kshitijk4poor)
• /model and hermes model show the same list, plus disk cache for picker startup (#33867)

Skills

• Full skills.sh catalog via sitemap — 858 → 19,932 entries (#34025)

Redaction

• Web URLs pass through unchanged — the redactor was eating query parameters that looked credential-shaped (#34029)

---

✨ Small Features

• Hindsight default narrowed to observation-only for recall_types — tool path is also narrowed (#34079 — @nicoloboschi, follow-up #34091 — @kshitijk4poor)
• Memory providers receive completed-turn message context — salvage of #28065 (#34097 — @kshitijk4poor, credit to @devwdave)

---

📚 Documentation

• --no-supervise / HERMES_GATEWAY_NO_SUPERVISE documented in the reference docs (follow-up to #33583) (#33751 — @r266-tech)

---

🛠️ Infrastructure

• Vercel deploy workflow accepts workflow_dispatch so docs deploys can be manually triggered (#34081)
• @nous-research/ui bumped to 0.18.2 (Nix npmDepsHash also updated to match) (#34193 follow-ups — @austinpickett)

---

👥 Contributors

Core

• @teknium1

Community

• @austinpickett — dashboard 401 reload-loop fix (the headline), @nous-research/ui bump, Nix npmDepsHash updates
• @benbarclay — Docker --insecure opt-in, MCP bare-command resolution, dashboard test repair
• @kshitijk4poor — /yolo session bypass, completed-turn memory context salvage, hindsight follow-up docs
• @nicoloboschi — hindsight recall_types observation default
• @BROCCOLO1D — arm64 PR build cache fix
• @r266-tech — --no-supervise reference docs
• @yangguangjin — probe stepdown safety (salvage of @yanghd's #33673)
• @devwdave — completed-turn memory context (credited via salvage)
• @andrewhosf — co-author

Issue Reporters (the 401 loop)

• @routesmith (#34206)
• @beeaton (#34202)

---

Full Changelog: v2026.5.28...v2026.5.29

Hermes Agent v0.15.0 (v2026.5.28)

Release Date: May 28, 2026 Since v0.14.0: 1,302 commits · 747 merged PRs · 1,746 files changed · 282,712 insertions · 36,699 deletions · 560+ issues closed (15 P0, 65 P1, 19 security-tagged) · 321 community contributors (including co-authors)

The Velocity Release. Hermes gets dramatically faster — to start, to run, to ship work, and to grow. The 16,083-line run_agent.py collapses to 3,821 (-76%) across 14 cohesive agent/* modules. Kanban grew into a real multi-agent platform across 104 PRs — orchestrator auto-decomposition, swarm topology, scheduled tasks, worktree-per-task, per-task model overrides. The cold-start perf wave keeps going: another second shaved off launch, 47% fewer per-conversation function calls, hermes --version flipping the head-to-head benchmark against Codex CLI. session_search is 4,500× faster and free now. Promptware defense lands against Brainworm-class attacks. Bitwarden Secrets Manager replaces N per-provider API keys with one bootstrap token. Skill bundles let one slash command load a whole workflow. The Ink TUI gets a multi-session orchestrator. Two new image_gen providers (Krea 2 Medium + Large, FAL ported to plugin), the Nous-approved MCP catalog with an interactive picker, an OpenHands orchestration skill, ntfy as the 23rd messaging platform, and a deep xAI integration round (Web Search plugin, xai-oauth hermes proxy upstream, retired-May-15 model detection + hermes migrate xai, natural TTS speech-tag pauses, base_url leak guard, OpenAI-style execution guidance for Grok). 15 P0 + 65 P1 closures alongside.

---

✨ Highlights

• The Big Refactor — run_agent.py is no longer 16,000 lines — The file at the heart of Hermes — the agent conversation loop — has been reduced from 16,083 lines to 3,821 (-76%), with the extracted code redistributed across 14 cohesive modules under agent/. Behavior is unchanged: every extraction keeps a thin forwarder on AIAgent, every test patch path still works, every external caller is compatible. The reason you care: future Hermes development moves faster, plugin authors can finally grep the codebase, and the file that took 90 seconds to load in your editor opens in a blink. (#27248)

• Kanban grew into a real multi-agent platform — 104 PRs end to end — Triage auto-decomposes one task into a tree of sub-tasks. hermes kanban swarm creates a full Swarm v1 graph in one command — root, parallel workers, gated verifier, gated synthesizer, shared blackboard. Tasks support per-task model overrides (cheap models for boilerplate, expensive ones for hard sub-tasks), board-level default workdirs, per-task worktree paths and branches, scheduled start times, configurable claim TTL, retry fingerprinting, stale-task detection, respawn guards, and a drag-to-delete trash zone. Workers report through /workers/active, /runs/{id}, and /inspect endpoints. (#27572, #28443, #28364, #28394, #28462, #28384, #28467, #28455, #28452, #28432, #28468, #28420)

• Cold-start perf wave keeps going — another second saved, 47% fewer per-turn function calls — Three new optimization rounds: defer openai._base_client import (-240ms / -17MB on every CLI invocation), hot-path optimizations cut 47% of per-conversation function calls (399k → 213k for 31-turn chat), defer compression-feasibility check (-170 to -290ms on every agent construction), adaptive subprocess polling (-195ms per tool call, 1+ second per turn). Termux cold start drops from 2.9s to 0.8s. hermes --version cold drops 63% (701ms → 258ms), flipping the head-to-head benchmark against Codex CLI from 5/11 wins to 6/11. (#28864, #28866, #28957, #29006, #29419, #30121, #30609, #31968)

• session_search rebuilt — no LLM, no cost, 4,500× faster — The old session_search was an aux-LLM-powered tool that cost ~$0.30/call and took ~30 seconds to summarize three sessions, sometimes confabulating when the right session wasn't even in the FTS5 hit list. The new shape is one tool with three modes (discovery, scroll, browse) inferred from which args are set — no mode parameter, no aux-LLM, no config knob, no companion skill. Discovery is ~20ms instead of ~90s; scroll is ~1ms. Searching your past sessions for context is now free and instant. (#27590)

• Promptware defense — Brainworm-class attacks blocked at three chokepoints — Inspired by recent Brainworm / Promptware Kill Chain research (Origin HQ, arxiv 2601.09625), Hermes now defends the context window against prompt-injection attacks that try to hijack the agent via tool output, recalled memory, or stored skills. Single source of truth (tools/threat_patterns.py) with ~15 new Brainworm/C2 patterns; recalled memory is scanned at load time; tool results get delimiter markers so a malicious file or remote service can't impersonate Hermes' own system content. Paired with a new security-guidance plugin that pattern-matches dangerous code writes. (#32269, #33131, #9151)

• Bitwarden Secrets Manager — one bootstrap token replaces every per-provider API key — Stop keeping plaintext API keys in ~/.hermes/.env. Install Bitwarden Secrets Manager (bws auto-installs lazily on first use), point Hermes at it with one bootstrap token (BWS_ACCESS_TOKEN), and every credential you need comes from Bitwarden at startup. Rotate a key in the Bitwarden web app and the rotation actually takes effect — Bitwarden defaults to source-of-truth so its values overwrite matching env vars on startup. Flip secrets.bitwarden.override_existing: false to invert. EU Cloud and self-hosted Bitwarden server URLs supported. Detected credentials are now labeled with their source so you can see at a glance which keys came from Bitwarden vs. the local env. (#30035, #31378, #30364)

• ntfy as the 23rd messaging platform — push notifications without an account — ntfy is the self-hostable push-notification service with no signup, no API key, just a topic URL. Hermes now adapts to it as a platform plugin (zero edits to core), so your agent can send you push notifications from any cron job, kanban task completion, or chat send_message — to your phone, your watch, your desktop, your homelab. (salvages #30625 → originally #4043) (#30867)

• Skill bundles — /<name> loads multiple skills at once — A skill bundle is a named group of skills that loads them all together with one slash command. Set up your "writing day" bundle (humanizer + ideation + obsidian + youtube-content) and /writing-day activates all four for the session. Skills Hub now has health checks, a freshness badge, and a watchdog cron. Three new optional skills land: code-wiki (Karpathy's LLM-Wiki, persistent indexed dev wiki), openhands (delegate to OpenHands for parallel coding agents), and web-pentest (OWASP-style web pentest recipes). (#28373, #32345, #32240, #32261, #32265)

• TUI session orchestrator — multiple live sessions in one TUI window — The Ink TUI gained an active-session switcher overlay. List, switch between, refresh, and close multiple live process-local sessions without leaving the TUI; dispatch a new session with a session-scoped model picker. Plus a wave of TUI polish — mouse-tracking DEC mode presets, scrollback preservation across branches and termux, slash-dropdown fixes, x.com link rendering, and CJK / IME input rendering improvements. (salvages #27642) (#32980, #30084)

• Two new image_gen providers — Krea 2 Medium + Large, FAL ported to plugin — Krea joins the image_gen lineup as a built-in plugin: Krea 2 Medium ($0.03) and Krea 2 Large ($0.06), auto-discovered, selectable via hermes tools → Image Generation → Krea. Available through both the native Krea plugin and the FAL.ai catalog. The FAL.ai backend got pulled out of the monolithic image-generation tool into plugins/image_gen/fal/, completing the four-way architectural parity already established by web, browser, and video_gen — new image providers are now one file, not a fork. (#33236, #30380, #33506)

• Nous-approved MCP catalog with interactive picker — A curated catalog of Nous-vetted MCP servers, mirroring the optional-skills shape. Run hermes mcp and you get an interactive picker; install with one keystroke, credentials prompted at install time and written to ~/.hermes/.env. Ships with the n8n manifest first. Closes the discovery gap that left users hunting GitHub for trusted MCP servers. (#30870)

• OpenHands orchestration skill — A new optional skill under optional-skills/autonomous-ai-agents/openhands/ lets the agent delegate coding tasks to the OpenHands CLI alongside claude-code, codex, and opencode. OpenHands is the model-agnostic member of that family — any LiteLLM-supported provider works (OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, your own), so you can route a sub-task to the cheapest model that can finish it. Drop-in worker for kanban swarms and /delegate flows. (closes #477) (#32261)

• Deep xAI integration round — Web Search plugin, OAuth proxy upstream, May 15 retirement detection, natural TTS, security hardening — Six interlocking xAI improvements:

  • xAI Web Search lands as a plugins/web/xai/ provider, slots alongside Brave / Tavily / Exa / SearXNG / DDGS / Firecrawl — reuses your existing Grok OAuth or XAI_API_KEY credentials, no new env vars. (#29042)
  • hermes proxy gains an xAI upstream — your local OpenAI-compatible endpoint can now be backed by SuperGrok OAuth, no PKCE-refresh code to write in your client. (#28356)
  • May 15 model retirement detection — grok-4, grok-4-fast{,-reasoning,-non-reasoning}, grok-3, grok-code-fast-1, grok-imagine-image-pro etc. are detected in doctor and chat startup, with hermes migrate xai to one-shot config migration to the supported model. No more silent 404s after the retirement date. (#29277)
  • Opt-in auto_speech_tags for xAI TTS — inserts light [pause] tags between paragraphs and sentences for more natural-sounding voice replies. Default OFF. (#29376)
  • xai-oauth base_url pinned to x.ai origin — closes a silent credential-leak vector where XAI_BASE_URL could repoint OAuth-authenticated inference to an attacker-controlled host. (#28952)
  • OpenAI-style execution guidance applied to Grok models — Grok and xai-oauth now get the same family-specific execution discipline block GPT/Codex have, so the model stops claiming completion without tool calls and stops suggesting workarounds instead of using existing tools. (#27797)
  • Plus x_search degraded-results surfacing, tier-gated 403 with API-key fallback, PKCE code_challenge round-trip fix, dead-token quarantine on terminal refresh failure, MiniMax-style short-token refresh on per-request, and WKE=unauthenticated honor at both classifier sites. (#29484, #28351, #27560, #28116, #30619, #30872)

---

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

The Big Refactor — run_agent.py 16k → 3.8k

• run_agent.py from 16,083 → 3,821 lines (-76%), extracted into 14 cohesive agent/* modules. run_conversation alone was 3,877 lines before the refactor. Every extraction keeps a thin forwarder on AIAgent, every test-patch path is preserved, every external caller stays compatible. (#27248)

Agent loop & conversation

• Auxiliary task layered fallback (primary → chain → main agent → graceful fail) on capacity errors (402/429/connection). (salvages #26811 + #26998) (#27625)
• Buffer retry/fallback status; surface only on terminal failure (no more noisy "retrying..." spam in mid-run output). (#33816)
• Host contract for external context engines — condenses 5 prior PRs into one extension surface. (#33750)
• Fallback immediately on provider content-policy blocks. (#33883)
• Re-pad reasoning_content on cross-provider fallback to require-side providers. (salvage #33784) (#33795)
• Per-turn tool-outcome verifier — patch tool gets indent preservation, CRLF preservation, per-file failure escalation. (#32273)
• Single-knob native vision for custom-provider models. (#29679)
• Background review fork isolated from external memory plugins. (#27190)
• Background review inherits parent toolset config for tools[] cache parity. (#29704)
• Recover from providers returning list-type tool content. (#30259)
• Treat partial-stream stub responses as length truncation rather than clean stop. (#30998)
• OpenAI execution guidance applied to xAI Grok / xai-oauth. (#27797)
• ContextVars propagate to concurrent tool worker threads.
• Preload jiter native parser. (#33692)
• Expose context engine tools with saved toolsets. (salvage of #31194) (#33719)

Sessions & memory

• session_search rebuilt — single-shape (discovery + scroll + browse), no aux-LLM, ~20ms vs. ~90s. (#27590)
• Salvage #29182 — opt-in JSON snapshot writer for sessions. (#29278)
• Persist platform_message_id for recall across gateway restarts. (#29449)
• Inline memory-context mentions stay visible in conversation. (#28132)
• Recalled memory labeled informational, not authoritative. (#28583)
• Memory + context-engine tool injection gated on enabled_toolsets. (#30177)
• Guard against external drift in MEMORY.md / USER.md. (#30877)
• Honcho runtime peer mapping — correctness follow-ups + setup wizard + docs. (#30077)
• Periodic memory logging for leak detection. (salvage of #17667) (#27102)

Codex / Responses-API maturation

• TTFB watchdog for stalled Codex Responses streams. (#32042)
• Actionable hint when stale-call detector fires on known silent-reject pattern. (#32016, #33133)
• Drop SDK responses.stream() helper; consume events directly. (#33042)
• Gracefully recover from invalid_encrypted_content. (salvage of #10144) (#33035)
• Recover Codex Responses streams with null output. (#32963, #33390)
• Drop foreign-issuer reasoning and transient rs_tmp reasoning replay state. (#33156, #33146)
• Codex 429 quota classified as rate-limit, not missing credentials. (#33168)
• Codex chat path falls back to credential_pool when singleton is empty. (#33189)
• Codex re-auth syncs credential_pool. (#33164)
• Omit tools key when no tools registered. (#33409)
• Parse Codex image-generation SSE directly. (#32933)

---

🎛️ Kanban — Multi-Agent Maturation Wave

Orchestration & dispatch

• Orchestrator-driven auto-decomposition on triage. (#27572)
• Kanban swarm topology helper — hermes kanban swarm creates a Swarm v1 graph (root + parallel workers + gated verifier + gated synthesizer + shared blackboard). (salvages #26791 by @Niraven) (#28443)
• Dispatcher wires review agents from the review column. (#28449)
• Stale-detection for running tasks in dispatcher. (#28452)
• Respawn guard blocks repeat worker storms. (#28455)
• Respawn guard defers blocker_auth instead of auto-blocking. (#28683)
• Cross-profile cron jobs surface in dashboard. (#28457)
• Worker visibility endpoints: /workers/active, /runs/{id}, /inspect. (salvages #23761 by @Interstellar-code) (#28432)

Task configuration & scheduling

• Per-task model override. (#28364)
• Board-level default workdir. (#28394)
• Configurable worktree paths and branches. (#28462)
• Scheduled task start times. (#28384)
• Scheduled status for delayed follow-ups. (#28467)
• Trimmed task comments. (#28399)
• Initial-status for human-ops cards. (#28414)
• max_in_progress config to cap concurrent running tasks. (#28420)
• Filter tasks by workflow fields. (#28454)
• --sort for hermes kanban list. (#28427)
• Optional board parameter on all MCP tools. (#28444)
• Stamp originating ACP session_id on tasks. (#28447)
• auto_promote_children config toggle. (#28344)
• archive --rm to hard-delete archived tasks. (#28355)
• Promote dependents when parent is archived. (#28372)
• Promote blocked tasks when parent dependencies complete. (#28377)
• Demote ready children when parent is reopened. (#28382)
• promote verb for manual todo→ready recovery + bulk --ids. (salvage #29464) (#31334)

Dashboard

• Drag-to-delete trash zone + bulk delete. (#28468)
• Surface per-task model_override in show + tool output. (#28442)
• Cross-profile notification delivery via kanban.notification_sources. (#28395)
• Scratch-workspace deletion warning for users. (#30949)
• Mobile dashboard UX polish. (#28127)

Reliability

• Worker log retention configurable. (#27867)
• Configurable claim TTL. (#28392)
• Fingerprint crash errors to prevent fleet-wide retry exhaustion. (#28380)
• Reset failure counters on unblock_task. (#28379)
• Detect cycles in decompose_triage_task sibling-link pre-validation. (#28088)
• Surface unusable triage auxiliary model (auto-decompose aware). (#27871)
• Align failure diagnostics with retry limit. (#27868)
• Align worker terminal timeout with task runtime. (#27864)
• Auto-install bundled skills (kanban-worker) on init. (#28368)
• Make legacy task migration idempotent. (#28397)
• Serialize DB initialization. (#28383)
• Persist worker session metadata on completion. (#28387)
• Pass accept-hooks to worker chat subprocess. (#28393)
• Preserve worker tools with restricted toolsets. (#28396)
• Avoid unsafe Windows worker Hermes shim resolution. (#28398)
• Sync slash subcommands with live parser. (#28376)
• Show scheduled kanban tasks in dashboard. (#28400)
• Assign single-task kanban decompositions. (#28401)
• Configurable max_tokens for kanban specify. (#28374)
• Per-job profile support for cron. (#28124)
• Codex app-server: include every Kanban-pinned path in writable_roots. (#28435)
• Cache kanban worker guidance at session init for prompt-cache reuse. (#28425)

---

⚡ Performance

• openai._base_client import deferred — 240ms / 17MB off every CLI cold start. (#28864)
• Agent-loop hot-path optimizations — 47% fewer per-conversation function calls (399k → 213k for 31-turn chat). (#28866)
• Compression-feasibility check deferred — 170-290ms off every agent construction. (#28957)
• Adaptive subprocess poll — ~195ms off every tool call, 1+ second per turn. (#29006)
• Termux TUI cold start speedup. (#29419)
• Termux non-TUI cold start speedup. (salvage #29438) (#30121)
• Termux fast-path version + deferred bare-prompt agent startup. (#30609)
• Cut hermes --version wall time 63% — flips head-to-head vs Codex CLI. (#31968)
• Date-only timestamp + loud gateway-DB roundtrip logging — improves prompt-cache hit rate. (#27675)
• Cache kanban worker guidance at session init for prompt-cache reuse. (#28425)

---

🔧 Tool System

Tool surface

• patch: indent preservation, CRLF preservation, per-file failure escalation. (#32273)
• terminal: warn at call time when background=true runs silently. (#31289)
• terminal: nudge homebrewed CI pollers at the tool surface. (#33142)
• x_search: surface degraded results + validate dates. (#29484)
• x_search: auto-enable toolset when xAI credentials are configured. (#27376)
• computer_use: route SOM/vision captures via auxiliary.vision. (#30126)
• transcription: reject symlinked audio inputs. (#10082)
• TTS: prevent double [pause] in xAI auto speech tags. (#32237)
• TTS: preserve native audio outside Telegram voice delivery. (#28512)
• TTS: opt-in xAI auto_speech_tags speech-tag pauses for natural voice replies. (#29376)
• Voice: chunk oversized CLI recordings. (#30044)
• Voice: honor PULSE_SERVER / PIPEWIRE_REMOTE inside Docker. (#22534)

Browser

• All cloud browser providers (Browserbase, Anchor, Camofox, Hyperbrowser, etc.) migrated to image_gen-style plugins. (salvages #25580) (#27403)
• Auto-launch Chromium-family browser for CDP. (#29106)
• CIDocker: discover agent-browser Chromium binary at boot. (#33184)

Image generation

• Krea provider plugin (Krea 2 Medium + Large). (#33236)
• FAL backend ported to plugins/image_gen/fal. (salvage #27966) (#30380)
• Cache xAI ephemeral URL responses to disk. (#31759)

Web search

• xAI Web Search as a provider plugin. (#29042)

MCP

• Nous-approved MCP catalog with interactive picker. (#30870)
• TLS client certificate (mTLS) support for HTTP and SSE MCP servers. (#33721)
• Stdin paste-back fallback for headless OAuth flow. (#32053)
• skip at paste prompt bypasses auth without disabling server. (#32069)
• Registry-aware mcp_ prefix on both ends of round-trip. (#31700)

---

🧩 Skills Ecosystem

Skills system

• Skill bundles — /<name> loads multiple skills. (#28373)
• Skills Hub: health checks, freshness badge, and a watchdog cron. (#32345)
• Opt-in AST deep diagnostics on skill writes. (salvage of #30918) (#31198)
• Bundled/pinned skill protection in background-review prompts. (#28338)
• Show user-modified skill names in bundled skill sync summary. (#28671)
• Load symlinked skill slash commands. (#27759)
• Deduplicate Skills Hub search results by identifier, not name. (#29490)

New skills

• openhands — delegate-to-OpenHands orchestration skill (closes #477) (#32261)
• code-wiki — persistent indexed dev wiki (closes #486) (#32240)
• web-pentest — OWASP recipes (closes #400) (#32265)
• baoyu-article-illustrator (#28287)

---

☁️ Providers

xAI deep integration

• xAI Web Search as a plugins/web/xai/ provider plugin. (#29042)
• hermes proxy xAI upstream — OpenAI-compatible local proxy backed by xai-oauth. (#28356)
• May 15 model retirement detection + hermes migrate xai for grok-4 / grok-3 / grok-code-fast-1 / grok-imagine-image-pro. (#29277)
• Opt-in auto_speech_tags for natural xAI TTS voice replies. (#29376)
• xai-oauth base_url pinned to x.ai origin — closes silent credential-leak vector. (#28952)
• OpenAI-style execution guidance applied to Grok / xai-oauth models. (#27797)
• xAI: detect retired May 15 models in doctor/chat startup. (#29277)
• xAI: resolve Grok Build context for OAuth. (#30579)
• xAI OAuth: tier-gated 403 with API-key fallback. (#28351)
• xAI OAuth: PKCE code_challenge echo. (#27560)
• xAI OAuth: quarantine dead tokens on terminal refresh failure. (#28116)
• xAI OAuth: honor WKE=unauthenticated disambiguator at both classifier sites. (#30872)
• xAI OAuth: accept bare-code manual paste (state=None). (closes #26923) (#33880)
• xAI OAuth: fall back to manual paste on loopback timeout. (#33231)
• xAI proxy: handle 429 rate-limit responses in proxy retry path. (#33743)

Other providers

• OpenAI API as a first-class provider (distinct from Codex runtime). (#31898)
• Microsoft Entra ID auth for Azure Foundry (with 1M Anthropic-Messages beta preserved on Bearer). (salvages #27509, #27022) (#28101, #28084)
• OpenRouter sticky routing — session_id passed via extra_body so a long-running session keeps landing on the same upstream provider. (@Cybourgeoisie) (#33939)
• Nous: JWT token for inference; stop replaying invalid Nous refresh tokens. (@rewbs) (#27663)
• Nous Portal: one-shot setup, status CLI, and Nous-included markers. (#30860)
• Anthropic adapter: extract 7 helpers from convert_messages_to_anthropic. (salvage #27784) (#30386)
• Catalog: add qwen3.7-max to Alibaba + Alibaba-Coding-Plan model lists. (#33129)
• opencode-go: route qwen3.7-max via anthropic_messages. (@beardthelion) (#32780)
• opencode-go: expose Kimi K2 + DeepSeek reasoning controls. (#30845)
• Remove Vercel AI Gateway and Vercel Sandbox.
• MiniMax OAuth: refresh short-lived access tokens per request. (#30619)
• Codex OAuth: quarantine terminal refresh errors. (#28118)
• Codex: drop dead model slugs that HTTP 400 on ChatGPT Pro. (#33424)
• Codex: sync manual:device_code pool entries on re-auth. (#33744)
• MiniMax OAuth: quarantine terminal refresh errors. (#28119)

---

🔑 Secrets

• Bitwarden Secrets Manager integration with lazy bws install. (#30035)
• Bitwarden: EU Cloud + self-hosted server URL support. (#31378)
• Label detected credentials with their source (Bitwarden). (#30364)

---

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

Gateway core

• Deliverable mode — agents ship artifacts as native uploads from any platform (Slack/Discord/Telegram/Teams/Email). (#27813)
• hermes send — pipe any script's output to any messaging platform. (salvage of #19631) (#27188)
• Debounce queued text follow-ups during active sessions. (salvage of #31235) (#31341)
• Plugin-transformed final_response delivered through streaming gate. (#31433)
• Refresh cached agent tools on /reload-mcp. (#32815)
• Harden kanban + provider cleanup races on long-running workloads. (#29479)

New / reorganized adapters

• ntfy — 23rd platform, push notifications, plugin shape, zero core edits. (salvages #30625 → #4043) (#30867)
• Discord adapter migrated to bundled plugin. (salvage of #24356) (#30591)
• Mattermost adapter migrated to bundled plugin. (salvage of #30916) (#31748)

Telegram

• Edit status messages in place instead of appending. (based on #30141 by @qike-ms) (#30864)
• Skip-STT audio path + 2GB cap via local Bot API server. (#28541)
• Route image documents (.png/.jpg/.webp/.gif) through vision pipeline. (#28519)
• Route audio file attachments away from STT pipeline. (#28478)
• disable_topic_auto_rename gateway flag. (#28523)
• ignore_root_dm config to drop messages without thread_id. (#28536)
• Chat-scoped auth without sender user_id. (#28525)
• Fail-closed auth fallback when TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS is empty. (#28494)
• Roll over tool progress bubbles + scope audio_file_paths. (#28482)
• Avoid duplicate text after auto-TTS voice replies. (#28509)
• Mark final voice reply notify-worthy so Telegram delivers it audibly. (#28504)

Discord

• Recover Windows voice opus decoding. (#33182)
• allow_any_attachment config to accept arbitrary file types. (#27245)
• Transcribe native voice notes. (#28993)
• Define UI view classes after lazy install. (#28817)

Signal / Matrix / Feishu / Slack / WeCom

• Signal: require_mention filter for group chats. (#28574)
• Matrix: warn on clock-skew silent message drops. (#27330)
• Matrix E2EE installs full dep set; plugins respect is_connected. (#31688)
• Feishu: require webhook auth secret + honor config extras. (#30746)
• Feishu: enforce auth and chat binding for approval buttons. (#30744)
• Slack: socket recovery + Windows restart dedupe. (#28873)
• WeCom: safe-parse untrusted XML. (#32442)

DingTalk / Webhooks / Microsoft Graph

• DingTalk: transcribe native voice notes. (#28993)
• Webhook: enforce INSECURE_NO_AUTH safety rail on dynamic route reloads. (#30863)
• Webhook: restrict default toolset capabilities. (#30745)
• Microsoft Graph: harden webhook auth requirements. (#30169)

---

🖥️ CLI & TUI

CLI

• /update slash command in CLI and TUI. (#23854)
• Update auto-rollback when post-pull syntax check fails. (#28669)
• --branch flag for hermes update. (@jquesnelle) (#29591)
• /exit --delete flag to remove session on quit. (salvage of #17665) (#27101)
• ▶ N indicator in status bar for running /background tasks. (#27175)
• Live background terminal-process count in status bar. (#32061)
• Append session recap to /status output. (salvage of #18587) (#27176)
• Configurable paste-collapse thresholds (TUI + CLI). (salvage #29723) (#32087)
• /resume accepts position numbers. (#31709)
• Bring tool-call display back — verbose mode, specific failure reasons, todo progress. (#31293)
• Validate runtime token refresh in Qwen auth status. (#31196)

TUI

• TUI session orchestrator — multiple live sessions in one TUI window. (salvages #27642) (#32980)
• mouse_tracking DEC mode presets. (salvage of #26681 by @OutThisLife) (#30084)
• Termux scrollback preservation + touch-friendly defaults. (#28910)
• Full assistant text in scrollback (no history truncation). (#28829)
• Preserve scrollback when branching sessions. (#30162)
• Preserve Python dunder identifiers in markdown. (#28582)
• Active profile shown in TUI prompt. (#28581)
• Improve Charizard completion menu contrast. (#28346)
• Stop slash dropdown chopping last char of /goal. (#31311)
• Clipboard copy on linux/wayland. (#29342)
• Anchor splitReasoning unclosed-tag regex; stop eating last paragraph. (#29426)
• Surface verbose tool details. (#30225)
• Load Linux skills on Termux + salvage @adybag14-cyber's Termux gates. (#30166)
• Handle images with codex app-server. (#31220)
• Refresh virtual transcript on viewport resize. (#31077)
• Ignore late thinking deltas after completion. (#31055)
• Commit composer input bursts immediately. (#31053)
• Log parent gateway lifecycle exits. (#31051)
• Clear TTS env var on voice off + TTS indicator in status bar. (#30987)
• Pass --expose-gc as node argv instead of NODE_OPTIONS. (#29998)
• Align composer cursorLayout with wrap-ansi to kill multiline cursor drift. (#27489)
• Harden Terminal.app rendering and color paths. (#27251)
• Keep /goal verdict out of compact status row. (#27971)
• Clamp curses color 8 for 8-color terminals (Docker). (#30260)

---

🔒 Security & Reliability

Promptware & memory hardening

• Promptware defense — shared threat patterns + memory load-time scan + tool-result delimiters. (#32269)
• Expand memory content scanning patterns to parity with skills guard. (#9151)
• Harden Skills Guard multi-word prompt patterns. (@YLChen-007) (#26852)
• Split cron scanner so skill prose stops false-positiving exfil patterns. (#32339)

File safety

• Protect Hermes control-plane files from prompt injection (auth.json, config.yaml, webhook_subscriptions.json, mcp-tokens/). (salvages @PratikRai0101's #14157) (#30397)
• Write-deny <root>/.env when running under a profile. (#29687)
• Defense-in-depth read-deny on credential stores. (salvages #17659 + #8055) (#30721)
• TTS output_path traversal + update ZIP symlink reject. (salvage #6693 + #15881) (#32056)
• Reject symlinked audio inputs. (#10082)

Credential safety

• Avoid persisting borrowed credential secrets — runtime env-sourced keys no longer leak into auth.json. (#31416)
• Validate Nous Portal inference_base_url against host allowlist. (salvages #27612) (#30611)
• Harden API server key placeholder handling. (#30738)
• Harden Google Chat OAuth credential persistence. (@Zyrixtrex) (#24788)
• xAI OAuth: pin inference base_url to x.ai origin. (#28952)
• Quarantine dead OAuth tokens on terminal refresh failure (xAI, Codex, MiniMax). (#28116, #28118, #28119)

Supply-chain

• On-demand supply-chain audit via OSV.dev — hermes audit. (#31460)
• hermes update syntax-validates critical files post-pull, auto-rollback on failure. (#28669)
• Quarantine hermes.exe vs concurrent Windows instance. (#26677)

Other hardening

• Restrict default webhook toolset capabilities. (#30745)
• Harden Microsoft Graph webhook auth requirements. (#30169)
• Require source CIDR allowlisting for public msgraph webhook binds. (#33722)
• Require API_SERVER_KEY before dispatching API server work. (#33232)
• env_passthrough: apply GHSA-rhgp-j443-p4rf filter to config.yaml path. (@roadhero) (#27794)
• Dashboard + WeCom: restrict markdown link schemes; safe-parse untrusted XML. (#32442)
• Salvage project-plugin RCE bypass fix from PR #29311 (GHSA-5qr3-c538-wm9j). (#30837)
• Cross-profile soft guard on file-write tools + system-prompt hint. (#31290)
• Reject unsafe tar members in Android psutil compatibility installer. (#33742)
• Reject non-regular tar members during tirith auto-install. (#33786)

---

🪟 Native Windows (Beta Continued)

• Complete Windows bootstrap — dep_ensure + install.ps1 + detection. (@alt-glitch) (#27845)
• install.ps1: strip BOM, -Commit/-Tag pin params, harden git ops. (@jquesnelle) (#28169)
• Consolidate ACP browser bootstrap into install.{sh,ps1}. (@alt-glitch) (#27851)
• hermes update quarantines live hermes.exe. (#26677)
• Discord voice opus decoding on Windows. (#33182)
• Windows Docker Desktop compatible compose file. (@Sunil123135) (#31031)

---

🖥️ Web Dashboard

• Hardened Slack socket recovery + Windows restart dedupe. (#28873)
• Web dashboard: migrate checkboxes to @nous-research/ui + design-system polish. (@austinpickett) (#28814)
• Web dashboard: collapsible sidebar. (@austinpickett) (#33421)
• Dashboard typography & contrast pass. (salvage of #28832) (#30714)
• Skills page: lazy-fetch catalog instead of bundling 34MB into JS. (#33809)

---

🐳 Docker

• s6-overlay container supervision — abstract ServiceManager protocol (systemd/launchd/Windows/s6 backends), per-profile gateway supervision in-container, container-restart reconciliation, hadolint/shellcheck CI. (salvage of #30136, @benbarclay) (#31760)
• Auto-redirect gateway run to supervised mode inside the s6 image. (@benbarclay) (#33583)
• Tee supervised gateway stdout to docker logs. (@benbarclay) (#33621)
• Drop docker exec to hermes uid before invoking the CLI. (@benbarclay) (#33628)
• Align HOME for dashboard and s6 gateway services. (@Dusk1e) (#33481)
• Bake build-time git SHA into image so hermes dump reports it. (@benbarclay) (#33655)
• hermes update prints docker pull guidance instead of bogus git error. (@benbarclay) (#33659)
• Upgrade Node to 22 LTS via multi-stage from node:22-bookworm-slim. (@benbarclay) (#33060)
• Drop build-essential from apt install. (@benbarclay) (#33028)
• Propagate env through s6 to cont-init and main CMD. (#32412)
• Targeted chown to preserve host file ownership in HERMES_HOME. (#33033)
• mkdir HERMES_HOME as root in stage2 before chown / privilege drop. (#33078)
• chown ui-tui and node_modules on UID remap so TUI esbuild works. (#33045)
• Include anthropic, bedrock, azure-identity extras in image. (#30504)
• Stop pushing per-commit SHA tags to Docker Hub. (#29387)
• Simplify Docker tagging — push both :main and :latest on main push. (#33225)
• TESTTest slicing across GH actions jobs. (@ethernet8023) (#30575)
• Discover agent-browser Chromium binary at boot. (#33184)

---

🌐 API Server

• Session control API — /api/sessions/* (list/create/read/patch/delete/fork) + SSE-streaming chat. (salvages #29302 by @Codename-11 + multimodal followup by @Schwartz10) (#33134)
• GET /v1/skills and /v1/toolsets. (#33016)
• Coerce stringified booleans in stream/store/approval payloads. (salvage #26639) (#27293)
• Honor key_env in auth-failure fallback resolution. (#30840)

---

🎟️ ACP (VS Code / Zed / JetBrains)

• Session edit auto-approval modes. (salvage of #27034) (#27862)
• Enrich Zed permission cards — command in title + reject_always. (#28148)
• Replay session history before responding to session/load. (#26957, #26943)
• Plugin-transformed final_response delivered through streaming gate. (#31433)

---

🔌 Plugin Surface

• register_tts_provider() plugin hook. (salvage of #30420) (#31745)
• register_transcription_provider() hook + stt.providers command-provider registry. (salvage of #30493) (#31907)
• register_auxiliary_task() in PluginContext API. (salvage #29817) (#31177)
• Bundled security-guidance plugin. (#33131)
• Discord and Mattermost migrated to bundled plugins. (#30591, #31748)
• ntfy as platform plugin. (#30867)
• Surface category-namespaced plugins in hermes plugins list. (#27187)
• Plugin discovery failures raised to WARNING level. (#28318)
• hermes_plugins included in gateway.log component filter. (#28313)
• Seed plugin extras before is_connected gate. (#31703)
• Dashboard: allowlist plugin assets + denylist subprocess-influencing env vars. (#32277)

---

📦 Distribution & Install

• Install-method stamping + Docker detection. (@alt-glitch) (#27843)
• Nix #messaging and #full package variants. (@alt-glitch) (#33108)
• Pre-load messaging gateway deps via --extra messaging. (salvage #26394) (#27558)
• Avoid piping installer directly into iex (Windows). (#28347)
• Ship bundled skills in wheel. (#28421)
• Ship dashboard plugin assets in wheel. (#28406)
• Make Camofox lazy-installed instead of eager. (#27055)
• Wire STT lazy-install into transcription_tools.py. (#30256)

---

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes (highlights only)

• Match bare custom provider by active base URL in hermes model. (#28908)
• Route auxiliary.vision.provider=openai to api.openai.com, skip text-only main. (#31452)
• Lint: skip per-file shell linter when LSP will handle the file. (#29054)
• Treat empty credential pool entries as unauthenticated in /model picker. (#28312)
• Reverted within window: Firecrawl integration tag, send_message @username auto-mentions, Telegram quick-command-only menus, Telegram pin-on-turn.

---

🧪 Testing

• Disarm lazy-install probe so _HAS_FASTER_WHISPER patches work. (#30334)
• Cover default board dashboard pin. (#28361)
• Cover _task_dict task_age fallback. (#28365)
• Allowlist tmp_path for kanban_notify artifact delivery tests. (#30851, #30852)
• Cover null output stream terminal events in Codex. (#33137)

---

📚 Documentation

• 30-day docs overhaul — full correctness audit, every PR in the window covered, Nous Portal weave, sidebar reorg. (#33782)
• Dedicated Nous Portal integration page and setup guide. (#31296)
• Providers: move Nous Portal first, Google Gemini OAuth last. (#31287)
• session_search rewrite for single-shape tool. (#27840)
• Kanban: document failure_limit, max_retries, inline create shortcuts, goals & kanban settings. (#28357, #28358, #28359, #28360, #28362)
• Kanban Codex lane skill. (#28430)
• xAI OAuth: note X Premium+ also unlocks Grok OAuth. (#29055)
• DOCSDocs site: Docker audio bridge notes, "Installing more tools in the container", xurl auth HOME in Docker.
• Email: clarify gateway vs Himalaya setup. (@helix4u) (#33634)
• Auth docs: replace stale hermes login references with hermes auth add. (#32859)

---

👥 Contributors

Core

• @teknium1 (lead)

Notable salvages & cherry-picks

• @benbarclay — s6-overlay container supervision (29 commits salvaged), Node 22 LTS upgrade, build-essential cleanup, gateway run auto-redirect in s6, tee supervised stdout to docker logs, hermes update Docker guidance, build-time SHA stamping
• @OutThisLife — mouse_tracking DEC mode presets
• @jquesnelle — Windows installer hardening, --branch flag for hermes update, install.ps1 BOM strip / commit-pin
• @alt-glitch — Windows dep_ensure bootstrap, Nix package variants (.#messaging, .#full), install-method stamping, ACP browser bootstrap consolidation
• @austinpickett — /update slash command, dashboard checkboxes → @nous-research/ui, mobile dashboard polish, collapsible sidebar
• @ethernet8023 — CI test slicing across GH Actions jobs, TUI clipboard copy fix
• @kshitijk4poor — doctor section banner + fail-and-issue helpers extraction, post-tag salvage cluster (curator-fallout, kanban SQLite hardening, install world-readable uv dirs, xAI bare-code paste)
• @rewbs — Nous JWT inference switch + refresh-token replay fix
• @Codename-11 + @Schwartz10 — session control API (REST + SSE + multimodal followup)
• @Niraven — kanban swarm topology helper
• @Interstellar-code — kanban worker visibility endpoints
• @adybag14-cyber — termux cold-start optimizations (multiple PRs)
• @qike-ms — Telegram in-place status edits design
• @sprmn24 — ntfy adapter
• @Jaaneek — xAI Web Search provider plugin
• @yannsunn — xAI upstream adapter for hermes proxy
• @Cybourgeoisie — OpenRouter sticky routing via session_id
• @memosr — Nous Portal base_url allowlist validation
• @Sunil123135 — Windows Docker Desktop compose file
• @Dusk1e — Docker HOME alignment for dashboard + s6 gateway services
• @beardthelion — opencode-go anthropic_messages routing
• @YLChen-007 — Skills Guard multi-word prompt patterns
• @roadhero — env_passthrough GHSA-rhgp-j443-p4rf filter
• @Zyrixtrex — Google Chat OAuth credential persistence hardening
• @briandevans, @tomqiaozc — defense-in-depth read-deny on credential stores
• @PratikRai0101 — control-plane file write protection
• @helix4u, @Bartok9, @zccyman — auxiliary fallback ladder components
• @ms-alan, @ticketclosed-wontfix, @donovan-yohan — TUI session orchestrator + follow-ups
• @daimon-nous[bot] — cron per-job profile support
• @bisko — re-pad reasoning_content on cross-provider fallback

All Contributors

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---

Full Changelog: v2026.5.16...v2026.5.28

Hermes Agent v0.13.0 (v2026.5.7)

Release Date: May 7, 2026 Since v0.12.0: 864 commits · 588 merged PRs · 829 files changed · 128,366 insertions · 282 issues closed (13 P0, 36 P1) · 295 community contributors (including co-authors)

The Tenacity Release — Hermes Agent now finishes what it starts. Kanban ships as a durable multi-agent board (heartbeat, reclaim, zombie detection, auto-block on incomplete exit, per-task retries, hallucination recovery). /goal keeps the agent locked on a target across turns (Ralph loop). Checkpoints v2 rewrites state persistence with real pruning. Gateway auto-resumes interrupted sessions after restart. Cron grows a no_agent watchdog mode. A security wave closes 8 P0s — redaction is now ON by default, Discord role-allowlists are guild-scoped, WhatsApp rejects strangers by default, and TOCTOU windows close across auth.json and MCP OAuth. Google Chat becomes the 20th platform. Providers become a pluggable surface. Seven i18n locales ship.

---

✨ Highlights

• Multi-agent Kanban — delegate to an AI team that actually finishes — Spin up a durable board, drop tasks on it, and let multiple Hermes workers pick them up, hand off, and close them out. Heartbeats, reclaim, zombie detection, retry budgets, and a hallucination gate keep the team honest. One install, many kanbans. (#17805, #19653, #20232, #20332, #21330, #21183, #21214)

• /goal — the agent doesn't forget what you asked it to do — Lock the agent onto a target and it stays on task across turns. The Ralph loop as a first-class primitive. (#18262, #18275, #21287)

• Show it a video — new video_analyze tool for native video understanding on Gemini and compatible multimodal models. (@alt-glitch) (#19301)

• Clone a voice — xAI Custom Voices lands as a TTS provider with voice cloning support. (@alt-glitch) (#18776)

• Hermes speaks your language — static gateway + CLI messages translate to 7 locales: Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Ukrainian, and Turkish. Docs site gains a Chinese (zh-Hans) locale. (#20231, #20329, #20467, #20474, #20430, #20431)

• Google Chat — the 20th messaging platform — plus a generic platform-plugin hooks surface so third-party adapters drop in without touching core (IRC and Teams migrated). (#21306, #21331)

• Sessions survive restarts — gateway bounces mid-agent, /update restarts, source-file reloads — conversations auto-resume when the gateway comes back. (#21192)

• Security wave — 8 P0 closures — redaction ON by default, Discord role-allowlists guild-scoped (CVSS 8.1 cross-guild DM bypass closed), WhatsApp rejects strangers by default, TOCTOU windows closed across auth.json and MCP OAuth, browser enforces cloud-metadata SSRF floor, cron prompt-injection scans assembled skill content, hermes debug share redacts at upload. (#21193, #21241, #21291, #21176, #21194, #21228, #21350, #19318)

• Checkpoints v2 — state persistence rewritten. Real pruning, disk guardrails, no more orphan shadow repos. (#20709)

• The agent lints its own writes — post-write delta lint on write_file + patch. Python, JSON, YAML, TOML. Syntax errors surface immediately instead of shipping downstream. (#20191)

• no_agent cron mode — script-only watchdog — cron jobs can now skip the agent entirely and just run a script. Empty stdout is silent, non-empty gets delivered verbatim. (#19709)

• Platform allowlists everywhere — allowed_channels / allowed_chats / allowed_rooms config across Slack, Telegram, Mattermost, Matrix, and DingTalk. (#21251)

• Providers are now plugins — ProviderProfile ABC + plugins/model-providers/. Drop in third-party providers without touching core. (#20324)

• API server — long-term memory per session — X-Hermes-Session-Key header gives memory providers a stable session identifier. (#20199)

• MCP levels up — SSE transport with OAuth forwarding, stale-pipe retries, image results surface as MEDIA tags instead of getting dropped, keepalive on long-lived lifecycle waits. (#21227, #21323, #21289, #21328, #20209)

• Curator grows subcommands — hermes curator archive, prune, list-archived. Manual hermes curator run is synchronous now — you see results without polling. (#20200, #21236, #21216)

• ACP — /steer and /queue — direct the in-flight agent or queue follow-ups from Zed, VS Code, or JetBrains. Plus atomic session persistence and reasoning-metadata preservation across restarts. (@HenkDz) (#18114, #20279, #20296, #20433)

• TUI glow-up — /model picker matches hermes model with inline auth (@austinpickett), collapsible startup banner sections (@kshitijk4poor), context-compression counter in the status bar. (#18117, #20625, #21218)

• Dashboard grows up — Plugins page (manage, enable/disable, auth status) (@austinpickett), Profiles management page (@vincez-hms-coder), sortable analytics tables, reverse-proxy support via X-Forwarded-Prefix, new default-large 18px theme. (#18095, #16419, #18192, #21296, #20820)

• SearXNG + split web tools — SearXNG ships as a native search-only backend; web tools now let you pick different backends per capability (search vs extract vs browse). (@kshitijk4poor) (#20823, #20061, #20841)

• OpenRouter response caching — explicit cache control for models that expose it. (@kshitijk4poor) (#19132)

• [[as_document]] — skill media-routing directive — skills can force the gateway to deliver output as a document on platforms that support it. (#21210)

• transform_llm_output plugin hook — new lifecycle hook that lets plugins reshape or filter LLM output before it hits the conversation. Useful for context-window reducers and content filters. (#21235)

• Nous OAuth persists across profiles — shared token store: sign in once, every profile inherits the session. (#19712)

• QQBot — native approval keyboards — feature parity with Telegram / Discord approval UX. Chunked upload, quoted attachments. (#21342, #21353)

• 6 new optional skills — Shopify (Admin + Storefront GraphQL), here.now, shop-app personal shopping assistant, Anthropic financial-services bundle, kanban-video-orchestrator (@SHL0MS), searxng-search (@kshitijk4poor). (#18116, #18170, #20702, #21180, #19281, #20841)

• New models — deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro, x-ai/grok-4.3, openrouter/owl-alpha (free), tencent/hy3-preview (@Contentment003111), Arcee Trinity Large Thinking temperature + compression overrides. (#20495, #20497, #18071, #21077, #20473)

• 100 fresh CLI startup tips — the random tip banner gets 100 new entries covering cron, kanban, curator, plugins, and lesser-known flags. (#20168)

---

🧩 Multi-Agent Kanban (Durable)

New — durable multi-profile collaboration board

• feat(kanban): durable multi-profile collaboration board — post-revert reimplementation, multi-profile by design (#17805)
• Multi-project boards — one install, many kanbans (#19653, #19679)
• Share board, workspaces, and worker logs across profiles (#19378)
• Hallucination gate + recovery UX for worker-created-card claims (closes #20017) (#20232)
• Generic diagnostics engine for task distress signals (#20332)
• Per-task max_retries override (supersedes #20972) (#21330)
• Multiline textarea for inline-create title (salvage of #20970) (#21243)

Kanban Dashboard

• Workspace kind + path inputs in inline create form (#19679)
• Per-platform home-channel notification toggles (#19864)
• Sharper home-channel toggle contrast + drop → running action (#19916)
• FIXFix: reject direct status transition to 'running' via dashboard API (salvage of #19554) (#19705)
• FIXFix: dashboard board pin authoritative over server current file (#20879) (#21230)
• FIXFix: treat dashboard event-stream cancellation as normal shutdown (#20790) (#21222)
• FIXFix: filter dashboard board by selected tenant (#19817) (#21349)
• FIXFix: code/pre styling theme-immune across all themes (#21086) (#21247)
• FIXFix: reset <code> background inside dashboard board (#20687)
• FIXFix: preserve dashboard completion summaries + add kanban edit (salvages #20016) (#20195)
• FIXFix: avoid fragile failure-column renames (salvage #20848) (@kshitijk4poor) (#20855)

Worker lifecycle + reliability

• Heartbeat + reclaim + zombie + retry-cap fixes (#21147, #21141, #21169, #20881) (#21183)
• Auto-block workers that exit without completing + shutdown race (#20894) (#21214)
• Detect darwin zombie workers (salvages #20023) (#20188)
• Unify failure counter across spawn/timeout/crash outcomes (#20410)
• Enforce worker task-ownership on destructive tool calls (#19713)
• Drop worker identity claim from KANBAN_GUIDANCE (#19427)
• FIXFix: skip dispatch for tasks assigned to non-profile lanes (salvages #20105, #20134) (#20165)
• FIXFix: include default profile in on-disk assignee enumeration (salvages #20123) (#20170)
• FIXFix: ignore stale current board pointers (salvages #20063) (#20183)
• FIXFix: profile discovery ignores HERMES_HOME in custom-root deployments (@jackey8616) (#19020)
• FIXFix: allow orchestrator profiles to see kanban tools via toolsets config (#19606)

Batch salvages

• Tier-1 batch — metadata test, max_spawn config, run-id lifecycle guard (salvages #19522 #19556 #19829) (#20440)
• Tier-2 batch — doctor, started_at, parent-guard, latest_summary, selects, linked-children (#20448)

Documentation

• Backfill multi-board refs in reference docs (#19704)
• Document /kanban slash command (#19584)
• Document recommended handoff evidence metadata (salvage #19512) (#20415)
• FIXFix orchestrator + worker skill setup instructions (@helix4u) (#20958, #20960)

---

🎯 Persistent Goals, Checkpoints & Session Durability

/goal — persistent cross-turn goals (Ralph loop)

• feat: /goal — persistent cross-turn goals (#18262)
• Docs page — Persistent Goals (/goal) (#18275)
• FIXFix: honor configured goal turn budget (salvage #19423) (#21287)

Checkpoints v2

• Single-store rewrite with real pruning + disk guardrails (#20709)

Session durability

• Auto-resume interrupted sessions after gateway restart (salvage #20888) (#21192)
• Preserve pending update prompts across restarts (#20160)
• Preserve home-channel thread targets across restart notifications (salvage #18440) (#19271)
• Preserve thread routing from cached live session sources (#21206)
• Preserve assistant metadata when branching sessions (#18222)
• Preserve thread routing for /update progress and prompts (#18193)
• Preserve document type when merging queued events (#18215)

---

🛡️ Security & Reliability

Security hardening (8 P0 closures)

• Enable secret redaction by default (#17691, #20785) (#21193)
• Discord — scope DISCORD_ALLOWED_ROLES to originating guild (#12136, CVSS 8.1) (#21241)
• WhatsApp — reject strangers by default, never respond in self-chat (#8389) (#21291)
• MCP OAuth — close TOCTOU window when saving credentials (#21176)
• hermes_cli/auth.py — close TOCTOU window in credential writers (#21194)
• Browser — enforce cloud-metadata SSRF floor in hybrid routing (#16234) (#21228)
• hermes debug share — redact log content at upload time (@GodsBoy) (#19318)
• Cron — scan assembled prompt including skill content for prompt injection (#3968) (#21350)
• Restore .env/auth.json/state.db with 0600 perms (#19699)
• SRI integrity for dashboard plugin scripts (salvage #19389) (#21277)
• Bind Meet node server to localhost, restrict token file to owner read (#19597)
• Extend sensitive-write target to cover shell RC and credential files (#19282)
• Harden YOLO mode env parsing against quoted-bool strings (#18214)
• OSV-Scanner CI + Dependabot for github-actions only (#20037)

Reliability — critical bug closures

• CLI crash on startup — Invalid key 'c-S-c' (P0, prompt_toolkit doesn't support Shift modifier) (#19895, #19919)
• CLOSE_WAIT fd leak audit — httpx keepalive + WhatsApp aiohttp leak + Feishu hygiene (#18451) (#18766)
• Gateway creates AIAgent with empty OpenRouter API key when OPENROUTER_API_KEY is missing (#20982) — fallback providers correctly honored
• Background review + curator protected from overwriting bundled/hub skills (#20273) (#20194)
• TUI compression continuation — ghost sessions with incomplete metadata (#20001)
• hermes mcp add silently launches chat instead of registering MCP server (#19785) (#21204)
• Background review agent runtime propagation — provider/model/credentials now actually inherit from parent
• Inbound document host paths translated to container paths for Docker backend (salvage #19048) (#21184)
• Matrix gateway race between auto-redaction and message delivery with high-speed models (#19075)
• /new during active agent session never sends response on Telegram (#18912)

---

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

New platform

• Google Chat — 20th platform + generic env_enablement_fn / cron_deliver_env_var platform-plugin hooks (IRC + Teams migrated) (#21306, #21331)

Cross-platform

• allowed_{channels,chats,rooms} whitelist — Slack (salvage #7401), Telegram, Mattermost, Matrix, DingTalk (#21251)
• Per-platform gateway_restart_notification flag (#20892)
• busy_ack_enabled config — suppress ack messages (#18194)
• Auto-delete slash-command system notices after TTL (#18266)
• Opt-in cleanup of temporary progress bubbles (#21186)
• [[as_document]] directive — skill media routing (salvage #19069) (#21210)
• hermes gateway list — cross-profile status (salvage #19129) (#21225)
• Auto-resume interrupted sessions after restart (salvage #20888) (#21192)
• Atomic restart markers + Windows runtime-lock offset (#17842) (#18179)
• FIXFix: config.yaml wins over .env for agent/display/timezone settings (#18764)
• FIXFix: auto-restart when source files change out from under us (#17648) (#18409)
• FIXFix: use git HEAD SHA for stale-code check, not file mtimes (#19740)
• FIXFix: shutdown + restart hygiene — drain timeout, false-fatal, success log (#18761)
• FIXFix: preserve max_turns after env reload (salvage #19183) (#21240)
• FIXFix: exclude ancestor PIDs from gateway process scan (#19586)
• FIXFix: move quick-command alias dispatch before built-ins (#19588)
• FIXFix: show other profiles in 'gateway status' to prevent confusion (#19582)
• FIXFix: include external_dirs skills in Telegram/Discord slash commands (salvage #8790) (#18741)
• FIXFix: match disabled/optional skills by frontmatter slug, not dir name (#18753)
• FIXFix: read /status token totals from SessionDB (#17158) (#18206)
• FIXFix: snapshot callback generation after agent binds it, not before (#18219)
• FIXFix: re-inject topic-bound skill after /new or /reset (#18205)
• FIXFix: isolate pending native image paths by session (#18202)
• FIXFix: clear queued reload skills notes on new/resume/branch (#19431)
• FIXFix: hide required-arg commands from Telegram menu (#19400)
• FIXFix: bridge top-level require_mention to Telegram config (#19429)
• FIXFix: suppress duplicate voice transcripts (#19428)
• FIXFix: show friendly error when service is not installed (#19707)
• FIXFix: read context_length from custom_providers in session info header (#19708)
• FIXFix: preserve WSL interop PATH in systemd units (#19867)
• FIXFix: handle planned service stops (salvage #19876) (#19936)
• FIXFix: keep DoH-confirmed Telegram IPs that match system DNS (salvage #17043) (#20175)
• FIXFix: load reply_to_mode from config.yaml for Discord + Telegram (salvage #17117) (#20171)
• FIXFix: tolerate malformed HERMES_HUMAN_DELAY_* env vars (salvage #16933) (#20217)
• FIXFix: deterministic thread eviction preserves newest entries (salvage #13639) (#20285)
• FIXFix: don't dead-end setup wizard when only system-scope unit is installed (#20905)
• FIXFix: wait for systemd restart readiness + harden Discord slash-command sync (#20949)
• FIXFix: avoid duplicated Responses history (salvage #18995) (#21185)
• FIXFix: surface bootstrap failures to stderr (salvage #21157) (#21278)
• FIXFix: log agent task failures instead of silently losing usage data (salvage #21159) (#21274)
• FIXFix: log runtime-status write failures with rate-limiting (salvage #21158) (#21285)
• FIXFix: reset-failed before every fallback restart so the gateway can't get stranded (#21371)
• FIXFix: Telegram — preserve thread_id=1 for forum General typing indicator (#21390)
• FIXFix: batch critical fixes — session resume, /new race, HA WebSocket scheme (@kshitijk4poor) (#19182)

Telegram

• DM user-managed multi-session topics (salvage of #19185) (#19206)

Discord

• Message deletion action (salvage #19052) (#21197)
• FIXFix: allow free_response_channels to override DISCORD_IGNORE_NO_MENTION (#19629)

Slack

• FIXFix: ephemeral slash-command ack, private notice delivery, format_message fixes (@kshitijk4poor) (#18198)

WhatsApp

• FIXFix: load WhatsApp home channel from env overrides (#18190)

Feishu

• Operator-configurable bot admission and mention policy (#18208)
• FIXFix: force text mode for markdown tables (salvage of #13723 by @WuTianyi123) (#20275)

Matrix + Email

• FIXFix: /sethome on Matrix and Email now persists across restarts (#18272)

Teams

• Docs + feat: sidebar + threading with group-chat fallback (#20042)

Weixin

• FIXFix: deduplicate Weixin messages by content fingerprint (#19742)

QQBot

• Port SDK improvements in-tree — chunked upload, approval keyboards, quoted attachments (#21342)
• Wire native tool-approval UX via inline keyboards (#21353)

---

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Provider & Model Support

Pluggable providers

• ProviderProfile ABC + plugins/model-providers/ — inference providers are now a pluggable surface (salvage of #14424) (#20324)
• list_picker_providers — credential-filtered picker (salvage #13561) (#20298)
• Remove /provider alias for /model (#20358)
• Shared Hermes dotenv loader across CLI + plugins (salvage #13660) (#20281)
• Nous OAuth persisted across profiles via shared token store (#19712)

New models

• deepseek/deepseek-v4-pro added to OpenRouter + Nous Portal (#20495)
• x-ai/grok-4.3 added to OpenRouter + Nous Portal (#20497)
• openrouter/owl-alpha (free tier) added to curated OpenRouter list (#18071)
• tencent/hy3-preview paid route on OpenRouter (@Contentment003111) (#21077)
• Arcee Trinity Large Thinking — temperature + compression overrides (#20473)
• Rename x-ai/grok-4.20-beta to x-ai/grok-4.20 (#19640)
• Demote Vercel AI Gateway to bottom of provider picker (#18112)

Provider configuration

• OpenRouter — response caching support (@kshitijk4poor) (#19132)
• image_gen.model from config.yaml honored (salvage #19376) (#21273)
• FIXFix: honor runtime default model during delegate provider resolution (@johnncenae) (#17587)
• FIXFix: avoid Bedrock credential probe in provider picker (@helix4u) (#18998)
• FIXFix: drop stale env-var override of persisted provider for cron (#19627)
• FIXFix: auxiliary curator api_key/base_url into runtime resolution (#19421)

Agent Loop & Conversation

• video_analyze — native video understanding tool (@alt-glitch) (#19301)
• Show context compression count in status bar (CLI + TUI) (#21218)
• Isolate get_tool_definitions quiet_mode cache + dedup LCM injection (#17335) (#17889)
• FIXFix: warning-first tool-call loop guardrails (#18227)
• FIXFix: break permanent empty-response loop from orphan tool-tail (#21385)
• FIXFix: propagate ContextVars to concurrent tool worker threads (salvage #16660) (#18123)
• FIXFix: surface self-improvement review summaries across CLI, TUI, and gateway (#18073)
• FIXFix: serialize concurrent hermes_tools RPC calls from execute_code (#17894, #17902)
• FIXFix: include system prompt + tool schemas in token estimates for compression (#18265)

Compression

• FIXFix: skip non-string tool content in dedup pass to prevent AttributeError (#19398)
• FIXFix: reset _summary_failure_cooldown_until on session reset (#19622)
• FIXFix: trigger fallback on timeout errors alongside model-unavailable errors (#19665)
• FIXFix: _prune_old_tool_results boundary direction (#19725)
• FIXFix: soften summary prompt for content filters (salvage #19456) (#21302)

Delegate

• FIXFix: inherit parent fallback_chain in _build_child_agent (#19601)
• FIXFix: guard _load_config() against delegation: null in config.yaml (#19662)
• FIXFix: inherit parent api_key when delegation.base_url set without delegation.api_key (#19741)
• FIXFix: expand composite toolsets before intersection (salvage #19455) (#21300)
• FIXFix: correct ACP docs — Claude Code CLI has no --acp flag (salvage #19058) (#21201)

Session & Memory

• Hindsight — probe API for update_mode='append' to dedupe across processes (@nicoloboschi) (#20222)

Curator

• hermes curator archive and prune subcommands (#20200)
• hermes curator list-archived (#20651) (#21236)
• Synchronous manual hermes curator run (#20555) (#21216)
• FIXFix: preserve last_report_path in state (#18169)
• FIXFix: rewrite cron job skill refs after consolidation (#18253)
• FIXFix: defer first run + --dry-run preview (#18373) (#18389)
• FIXFix: authoritative absorbed_into on delete + restore cron skill links on rollback (#18671) (#18731)
• FIXFix: prevent false-positive consolidation from substring matching (#19573)
• FIXFix: only mark agent-created for background-review sediment (#19621)
• FIXFix: protect hub skills by frontmatter name (#20194)

---

🔧 Tool System

File tools

• Post-write delta lint on write_file + patch — in-proc linters for Python, JSON, YAML, TOML (#20191)

Cron

• no_agent mode — script-only cron jobs (watchdog pattern) (#19709)
• context_from chaining docs (salvage #15724) (#20394)
• FIXFix: treat non-dict origin as missing instead of crashing tick (#19283)
• FIXFix: bump skill usage when cron jobs load skills (#19433)
• FIXFix: recover null next_run_at jobs (#19576)
• FIXFix: skip AI call when prerun script produces no output (#19628)
• FIXFix: expand config.yaml refs during job execution (#19872)
• FIXFix: serialize get_due_jobs writes to prevent parallel state corruption (#19874)
• FIXFix: initialize MCP servers before constructing the cron AIAgent (#21354)

MCP

• SSE transport support (salvage #19135) (#21227)
• Forward OAuth auth + bump sse_read_timeout on SSE transport (#21323)
• Retry stale pipe transport failures as session-expired (#21289)
• Surface image tool results as MEDIA tags instead of dropping them (#21328)
• Periodic keepalive to _wait_for_lifecycle_event (salvage #17016) (#20209)
• FIXFix: reconnect on terminated sessions (#19380)
• FIXFix: decouple AnyUrl import from mcp dependency (#19695)
• FIXFix: mcp add --command gets distinct argparse dest (#21204)
• FIXFix: clear stale thread interrupt before MCP discovery (#21276)
• FIXFix: report configured timeout in MCP call errors (#21281)
• FIXFix: include exception type in error messages when str(exc) is empty (salvage #19425) (#21292)
• FIXFix: re-raise CancelledError explicitly in MCPServerTask.run (#21318)
• FIXFix: coerce numeric tool args defensively in mcp_serve (#21329)
• FIXFix: gate utility stubs on server-advertised capabilities (#21347)

Browser

• FIXFix: allow explicit CDP override without local agent-browser (#19670)
• FIXFix: inject --no-sandbox for root + AppArmor userns restrictions (#19747)
• FIXFix: tighten Lightpanda fallback edge cases (@kshitijk4poor) (#20672)

Web tools

• Per-capability backend selection — search/extract split (@kshitijk4poor) (#20061)
• SearXNG native search-only backend (@kshitijk4poor) (#20823)

Approval / Tool gating

• FIXFix: wake blocked gateway approvals on session cleanup (#18171)
• FIXFix: harden YOLO mode env parsing against quoted-bool strings (#18214)
• FIXFix: extend sensitive write target to cover shell RC and credential files (#19282)

---

🔌 Plugin System

• transform_llm_output plugin hook (salvage of #20813) (#21235)
• Document env_enablement_fn + cron_deliver_env_var platform-plugin hooks (#21331)
• Pluggable surfaces coverage — model-provider guide, full plugin map, opt-in fix (#20749)
• Plugin-authoring gaps — image-gen provider guide + publishing a skill tap (#20800)

---

🧩 Skills Ecosystem

New optional skills

• Shopify — Admin + Storefront GraphQL optional skill (#18116)
• here.now — optional skill (#18170)
• shop-app — personal shopping assistant (optional) (#20702)
• Anthropic financial-services bundle — ported as optional finance skills (#21180)
• kanban-video-orchestrator — creative optional skill (@SHL0MS) (#19281)
• searxng-search — optional skill + Web Search + Extract docs page (@kshitijk4poor) (#20841, #20844)

Skill UX

• Linear skill — add Documents support + Python helper script (#20752)
• Modernize Obsidian skill to use file tools (salvage #19332) (#20413)
• Default custom tool creation to plugins (@kshitijk4poor) (#19755)
• skill_commands cache — rescan on platform scope changes (salvage #14570 by @LeonSGP43) (#18739)
• Skills — additional rescan paths in skill_commands cache (salvage #19042) (#21181)
• FIXFix: regression tests for non-dict metadata in extract_skill_conditions (#18213)
• DOCSDocs: explain restoring bundled skills (salvage #19254) (#20404)
• DOCSDocs: document hermes skills reset subcommand (salvage #11544) (#20395)
• DOCSDocs: himalaya v1.2.0 folder.aliases syntax (#19882)
• Point agent at hermes-agent skill + docs site sync (#20390)

---

🖥️ CLI & User Experience

CLI

• /new accepts optional session name argument (salvage of #19555) (#19637)
• 100 new CLI startup tips (#20168)
• display.language — static message translation (zh/ja/de/es) (#20231)
• French (fr) locale (@Foolafroos) (#20329)
• Ukrainian (uk) locale (#20467)
• Turkish (tr) locale (#20474)
• FIXFix: recover classic CLI output after resize (@helix4u) (#20444)
• FIXFix: complete absolute paths as paths (@helix4u) (#19930)
• FIXFix: resolve lazy session creation regressions (#18370 fallout) (@alt-glitch) (#20363)
• FIXFix: local backend CLI always uses launch directory (@alt-glitch) (#19334)
• CHORERefactor: drop dead c-S-c key binding (follow-up to #19895) (#19919)

TUI (Ink)

• /model picker overhaul to match hermes model with inline auth (@austinpickett) (#18117)
• Collapsible sections in startup banner — skills, system prompt, MCP (@kshitijk4poor) (#20625)
• Show context compression count in status bar (#21218)
• PERFPerf: reduce overlay render churn with focused selectors (@OutThisLife) (#20393)
• FIXFix: restore voice push-to-talk parity (salvage of #16189 by @Montbra) (@OutThisLife) (#20897)
• FIXFix: kanban button (@austinpickett) (#18358)

Dashboard

• Plugins page — manage, enable/disable, auth status (@austinpickett) (#18095)
• Profiles management page (@vincez-hms-coder) (#16419)
• Interactive column sorting in analytics tables (#18192)
• default-large built-in theme with 18px base size (#20820)
• Support serving under URL prefix via X-Forwarded-Prefix (salvage #19450) (#21296)
• Launch dashboard as side-process via HERMES_DASHBOARD=1 in Docker (@benbarclay) (#19540)
• FIXFix: dashboard theme layout shift (@AllardQuek) (#17232)
• FIXFix: gateway model picker current context (@helix4u) (#20513)

Update + setup

• hermes update --yes/-y to skip interactive prompts (#18261)
• Restart manual profile gateways after update (#18178)

Profiles

• --no-skills flag for empty profile creation (#20986)

---

🎵 Voice, Image & Media

• xAI Custom Voices — voice cloning (@alt-glitch) (#18776)
• Achievements — share card render on unlocked badges (#19657)
• Refresh systemd unit on gateway boot (not just start/restart) (@alt-glitch) (#19684)

---

🔗 API Server & Remote Access

• X-Hermes-Session-Key header for long-term memory scoping (closes #20060) (#20199)

---

🧰 ACP Adapter (VS Code / Zed / JetBrains)

• /steer and /queue slash commands (@HenkDz) (#18114)
• FIXFix: translate Windows cwd for WSL sessions (salvage #18128) (#18233)
• FIXFix: run /steer as a regular prompt on idle sessions (#18258)
• FIXFix: route Zed thoughts to reasoning + polish tool/context rendering (#19139)
• FIXFix: atomic session persistence via replace_messages (salvage #13675) (#20279)
• FIXFix: preserve assistant reasoning metadata in session persistence (salvage #13575) (#20296)
• DOCSDocs: update VS Code setup for ACP Client extension (salvage #12495) (#20433)

---

🐳 Docker

• Launch dashboard as side-process via HERMES_DASHBOARD=1 (@benbarclay) (#19540)
• Refuse root gateway runs in official image (salvage #19215) (#21250)
• Chown runtime node_modules trees to hermes user (salvage #19303) (#21267)
• FIXFix: exclude compose/profile runtime state from build context (#19626)
• CICI: don't cancel overlapping builds, guard :latest (@ethernet8023) (#20890)
• TESTTest: align Dockerfile contract tests with simplified TUI flow (salvage #19024) (#21174)
• DOCSDocs: connect to local inference servers (vLLM, Ollama) (salvage #12335) (#20407)
• DOCSDocs: document API_SERVER_* env vars (salvage #11758) (#20409)
• DOCSDocs: clarify Docker terminal backend is a single persistent container (#20003)

---

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

Agent

• FIXFix: recover lazy session creation regressions (#18370 fallout) (@alt-glitch) (#20363)
• FIXFix: propagate ContextVars to concurrent tool worker threads (salvage #16660) (#18123)
• FIXFix: warning-first tool-call loop guardrails (#18227)
• FIXFix: surface self-improvement review summaries across CLI, TUI, and gateway (#18073)

Gateway streaming

• FIXFix: harden StreamingConfig bool and numeric coercion (@simbam99) (#16463)

Model

• FIXFix: avoid Bedrock credential probe in provider picker (@helix4u) (#18998)

Doctor

• FIXFix: check global agent-browser when local install not found (#19671)
• TESTTest: kimi-coding-cn provider validation regression (#19734)

Update

• FIXFix: patch isatty on real streams to fix xdist-flaky --yes tests (salvage #19026) (#21175)
• FIXFix: teach restart-mocks about the post-update survivor sweep (salvage #19031) (#21177)

Auth

• FIXFix: acp preserve assistant reasoning metadata (#20296)

Redact

• FIXFix: add code_file param to skip false-positive ENV/JSON patterns (#19715)

Email

• FIXFix: quoted-relative file-drop paths + Date header on tool email path (#19646)

---

🧪 Testing

• ACP — accept prompt persistence kwargs in MCP E2E mocks (@stephenschoettler) (#18047)
• Toolsets — include kanban in expected post-#17805 toolset assertions (@briandevans) (#18122)
• Agent — cover max-iterations summary message sanitization (#19580)
• run_agent — -inf and nan regression coverage for _coerce_number (#19703)

---

📚 Documentation

Major docs additions

• llms.txt + llms-full.txt — agent-friendly ingestion (#18276)
• User Stories and Use Cases collage page (#18282)
• Persistent Goals (/goal) feature page (#18275)
• Windows (WSL2) guide expansion — filesystem, networking, services, pitfalls (#20748)
• Chinese (zh-CN) README translation (salvage #13508) (#20431)
• zh-Hans Docusaurus locale + Tool Gateway / image-gen / WSL quickstart translations (salvage #11728) (#20430)
• Tool Gateway docs restructure — lead with what it does, config moved to bottom (#20827)
• Quickstart — Onchain AI Garage Hermes tutorials playlist (#20192)
• Open WebUI bootstrap script (salvage #9566) (#20427)
• Local Ollama setup guide (salvage #5842) (#20426)
• Google Gemini guide (salvage #17450) (#20401)
• Custom model aliases for /model command (#20475)
• Together/Groq/Perplexity cookbook via custom_providers (salvage #15214) (#20400)
• Doubao speech integration examples (TTS + STT) (salvage #18065) (#20418)
• WSL-to-Windows Chrome MCP bridge (salvage #8313) (#20428)
• Hermes skills docs sync — slash commands + durable-systems section (#20390)
• AGENTS.md — curator/cron/delegation/toolsets + fix plugin tree (#20226)
• Bedrock quickstart entry + fallback comment + deployment link (salvage #11093) (#20397)

Docs polish

• Collapse exploding skills tree to a single Skills node (#18259)
• Clarify session_search auxiliary model docs (#19593)
• Open WebUI Quick Setup gap fill (#19654)
• Default custom tool creation to plugins (@kshitijk4poor) (#19755)
• Clarify Telegram group chat troubleshooting (salvage #18672) (#20416)
• Codex OAuth auth prerequisite clarification (salvage #18688) (#20417)
• Discord Server Members Intent + SSRC-mapping drift + /voice join slash Choice (salvage #11350) (#20411)
• Document ctx.dispatch_tool() (salvage #10955) (#20391)
• Document hermes webhook subscribe --deliver-only (salvage #12612) (#20392)
• Document hermes import reference (salvage #14711) (#20396)
• Document per-provider TTS max_text_length caps (salvage #13825) (#20389)
• Clarify supported prompt customization surfaces (salvage #19987) (#20383)
• Correct web_extract summarizer timeout comment (salvage #20051) (#20381)
• FIXFix fallback provider config paths (salvage #20033) (#20382)
• FIXFix misleading RL install-extras claim (salvage #19080) (#21213)
• Clarify API server tool execution locality (salvage #19117) (#21223)
• Prefer .venv to match AGENTS.md and scripts/run_tests.sh (@xxxigm) (#21334)
• Align tool discovery + test runner with AGENTS.md (@xxxigm) (#20791)
• Align terminal-backend count and naming across docs and code (salvage #19044) (#20402)
• Refresh stale platform counts (salvage #19053) (#20403)

---

👥 Contributors

Core

• @teknium1 — salvage, triage, review, feature work, and release management

Top Community Contributors

• @kshitijk4poor (21 PRs) — SearXNG native search backend, per-capability backend selection, collapsible TUI startup banner, Slack ephemeral ack + format fixes, Lightpanda fallback hardening, searxng-search optional skill + Web Search + Extract docs, default custom tool creation to plugins, kanban failure-column fix
• @alt-glitch (13 PRs) — video_analyze tool, xAI Custom Voices (voice cloning), local-backend CLI launch-directory fix, lazy-session creation regression recovery, systemd unit refresh on gateway boot
• @OutThisLife (9 PRs) — TUI perf — overlay render churn reduction, voice push-to-talk parity restoration (salvaging @Montbra)
• @helix4u (6 PRs) — Classic CLI output recovery after resize, absolute-path TUI completion, gateway model picker current-context fix, Bedrock credential probe avoidance, kanban docs fixes
• @ethernet8023 (3 PRs) — Docker CI — don't cancel overlapping builds, :latest guard
• @benbarclay (3 PRs) — Docker — launch dashboard as side-process via HERMES_DASHBOARD=1
• @austinpickett (3 PRs) — Dashboard Plugins page, TUI /model picker overhaul with inline auth, kanban button fix
• @sprmn24 (2 PRs) — Contributor (2 PRs)
• @asheriif (2 PRs) — Contributor (2 PRs)
• @xxxigm (2 PRs) — Contributing docs — .venv preference and test runner alignment with AGENTS.md
• @stephenschoettler (1 PR) — ACP — MCP E2E mock kwargs
• @vincez-hms-coder (1 PR) — Dashboard — Profiles management page
• @cdanis (1 PR) — Contributor
• @briandevans (1 PR) — Toolsets test — kanban assertions post-#17805
• @heyitsaamir (1 PR) — Contributor

All Contributors

Thanks to everyone who contributed to v0.13.0 — commits, co-authored work, and salvaged PRs. 295 contributors in one week.

@0oAstro, @0xDevNinja, @0xharryriddle, @0xKingBack, @0xsir0000, @0xyg3n, @0z1-ghb, @abhinav11082001-stack, @acc001k, @acesjohnny, @adamludwin, @adybag14-cyber, @agentlinker, @agilejava, @ai-ag2026, @AJV20, @alanxchen85, @albert748, @AllardQuek, @alt-glitch, @altmazza0-star, @ambition0802, @amitgaur, @amroessam, @andrewhosf, @Asce66, @asheriif, @ashermorse, @asimons81, @Aslaaen, @Asunfly, @atongrun, @austinpickett, @banditburai, @barteqpl, @Bartok9, @Beandon13, @beardthelion, @beibi9966, @benbarclay, @binhnt92, @bjianhang, @BlackJulySnow, @bobashopcashier, @bogerman1, @Bongulielmi, @Brecht-H, @briandevans, @brooklynnicholson, @c3115644151, @camaragon, @CashWilliams, @CCClelo, @cdanis, @CES4751, @cg2aigc, @changchun989, @ChanlerDev, @CharlieKerfoot, @chengoak, @chenyunbo411, @chinadbo, @CIRWEL, @cixuuz, @cmcgrabby-hue, @colorcross, @Contentment003111, @CoreyNoDream, @counterposition, @curiouscleo, @DaniuXie, @deep-name, @dengtaoyuan450-a11y, @discodirector, @donramon77, @dpaluy, @ee-blog, @ehz0ah, @el-analista, @elmatadorgh, @EmelyanenkoK, @Emidomenge, @emozilla, @Es1la, @EthanGuo-coder, @etherman-os, @ethernet8023, @EvilDrag0n, @exxmen, @Fearvox, @Feranmi10, @firefly, @flobo3, @fmercurio, @Foolafroos, @formulahendry, @franksong2702, @ggnnggez, @GinWU05, @giwaov, @glesperance, @gnanirahulnutakki, @GodsBoy, @Gosuj, @Grey0202, @guillaumemeyer, @Gutslabs, @h0tp-ftw, @haidao1919, @halmisen, @happy5318, @hedirman, @helix4u, @hendrixfreire, @HenkDz, @hex-clawd, @heyitsaamir, @hharry11, @Hinotoi-agent, @holynn-q, @hrkzogw, @Hypn0sis, @Hypnus-Yuan, @ideathinklab01-source, @IMHaoyan, @Interstellar-code, @ishardo, @jacdevos, @jackey8616, @JanCong, @jasonoutland, @jatingodnani, @JayGwod, @jethac, @JezzaHehn, @JiaDe-Wu, @jjjojoj, @jkausel-ai, @John-tip, @johnncenae, @jrusso1020, @jslizar, @JTroyerOvermatch, @julysir, @Junass1, @JustinUssuri, @Kailigithub, @keepcalmqqf, @kiala9, @konsisumer, @kowenhaoai, @Krionex, @kshitijk4poor, @kyan12, @leavrcn, @leon7609, @LeonSGP43, @leprincep35700, @lhysdl, @likejudy, @lisanhu, @liu-collab, @liuguangyong93, @liuhao1024, @LucianoSP, @luoyuctl, @luyao618, @M3RCUR2Y, @maciekczech, @Magicray1217, @magicray1217, @MaHaoHao-ch, @malaiwah, @manateelazycat, @masonjames, @megastary, @memosr, @MichaelWDanko, @mikeyobrien, @millerc79, @Mind-Dragon, @mioimotoai-lgtm, @misery-hl, @molvikar, @momowind, @Montbra, @MottledShadow, @mrbob-git, @mrcharlesiv, @mrcoferland, @ms-alan, @mwnickerson, @nazirulhafiy, @nftpoetrist, @nicoloboschi, @nightq, @nikolay-bratanov, @NikolayGusev-astra, @nocturnum91, @noOne-list, @nouseman666, @novax635, @npmisantosh, @nudiltoys-cmyk, @olisikh, @oluwadareab12, @Oxidane-bot, @pama0227, @pander, @pasevin, @paul-tian, @pdonizete, @perlowja, @pingchesu, @PratikRai0101, @priveperfumes, @probepark, @QifengKuang, @quocanh261997, @qWaitCrypto, @qxxaa, @r266-tech, @rames-jusso, @revaraver, @Ricardo-M-L, @rob-maron, @Roy-oss1, @rxdxxxx, @SandroHub013, @Sanjays2402, @Sertug17, @shashwatgokhe, @shellybotmoyer, @SHL0MS, @SimbaKingjoe, @simbam99, @simplenamebox-ops, @socrates1024, @sonic-netizen, @sprmn24, @steezkelly, @stephen0110, @stephenschoettler, @stevenchanin, @stevenchouai, @stormhierta, @subtract0, @suncokret12, @swithek, @taeng0204, @TakeshiSawaguchi, @tangyuanjc, @TheEpTic, @thelumiereguy, @Tkander1715, @tmdgusya, @Tranquil-Flow, @TruaShamu, @UgwujaGeorge, @valda, @vincez-hms-coder, @VinVC, @vominh1919, @wabrent, @WadydX, @wanazhar, @WanderWang, @warabe1122, @web-dev0521, @WideLee, @willy-scr, @wmagev, @WuTianyi123, @wxst, @wysie, @Wysie, @xsfX20, @xxxigm, @xyiy001, @YanzhongSu, @ygd58, @Yoimex, @yuehei, @Yukipukii1, @yuqianma, @YX234, @zeejaytan, @zhanggttry, @zhao0112, @zng8418, @zons-zhaozhy, @Zyproth

---

Full Changelog: v2026.4.30...v2026.5.7

Hermes Agent v0.12.0 (v2026.4.30)

Release Date: April 30, 2026 Since v0.11.0: 1,096 commits · 550 merged PRs · 1,270 files changed · 217,776 insertions · 213 community contributors (including co-authors)

The Curator release — Hermes Agent now maintains itself. An autonomous background Curator grades, prunes, and consolidates your skill library on its own schedule. The self-improvement loop that reviews what to save got a substantial upgrade. Four new inference providers, a 18th messaging platform, a 19th via Teams plugin, native Spotify + Google Meet integrations, ComfyUI and TouchDesigner-MCP moved from optional to bundled-by-default, and a ~57% cut to visible TUI cold start.

---

✨ Highlights

• Autonomous Curator — hermes curator runs as a background agent on the gateway's cron ticker (7-day cycle default). It grades your skill library, consolidates related skills, prunes dead ones, and writes per-run reports to logs/curator/run.json + REPORT.md. Archived skills are classified consolidated-vs-pruned via model + heuristic. Defense-in-depth gates protect bundled/hub skills from mutation. Unified under auxiliary.curator — pick the curator's model in hermes model, manage it from the dashboard. hermes curator status ranks skills by usage (most-used / least-used). (#17277, #17307, #17941, #17868, #18033)

• Self-improvement loop — substantially upgraded — The background review fork (the core of Hermes' self-improvement: after each turn it decides what memories/skills to save or update) is now class-first (rubric-based rather than free-form), active-update biased (prefers the skill the agent just loaded), handles references//templates/ sub-files, and properly inherits the parent's live runtime (provider, model, credentials actually propagate). Restricted to memory + skills toolsets so it can't sprawl. Memory providers shut down cleanly. Prior-turn tool messages excluded from the summary so the fork sees a clean context. (#16026, #17213, #16099, #16569, #16204, #15057)

• Skill integrations — major expansion — ComfyUI v5 with official CLI + REST + hardware-gated local install, moved from optional to built-in by default (#17610, #17631, #17734). TouchDesigner-MCP bundled by default, expanded with GLSL, post-FX, audio, geometry, and 9 new reference docs (#16753, #16624, #16768 — @kshitijk4poor + @SHL0MS). Humanizer skill ports a text-cleaner that strips AI-isms (#16787). claude-design HTML artifact skill + design-md (Google DESIGN.md spec) + airtable salvage + skill_manage edits in external_dirs + direct-URL skill install + /reload-skills slash command. (#16358, #14876, #16291, #17512, #16323, #17744)

• LM Studio — first-class provider — upgraded from a custom-endpoint alias to a full-blown native provider: dedicated auth, hermes doctor checks, reasoning transport, live /models listing. (Salvage of @kshitijk4poor's #17061.) (#17102)

• Four more new inference providers — GMI Cloud (first-class, salvage of #11955 — @isaachuangGMICLOUD), Azure AI Foundry with auto-detection, MiniMax OAuth with PKCE browser flow (salvage #15203), Tencent Tokenhub (salvage of #16860). (#16663, #15845, #17524, #16960)

• Pluggable gateway platforms + Microsoft Teams — the gateway is now a plugin host. Drop-in messaging adapters live outside the core, and Microsoft Teams is the first plugin-shipped platform. (Salvage of #17664.) (#17751, #17828)

• Tencent 元宝 (Yuanbao) — 18th messaging platform — native gateway adapter with text + media delivery. (#16298, #17424)

• Spotify — native tools + bundled skill + wizard — 7 tools (play, search, queue, playlists, devices) behind PKCE OAuth, interactive setup wizard, bundled skill, surfacing in hermes tools, cron usage documented. (#15121, #15130, #15154, #15180)

• Google Meet plugin — join calls, transcribe, speak, follow up. Realtime OpenAI transport + Node bot server, full pipeline bundled as a plugin. (#16364)

• hermes -z one-shot mode + hermes update --check — non-interactive hermes -z <prompt> with --model/--provider/HERMES_INFERENCE_MODEL. hermes update --check preflight. Opt-in pre-update HERMES_HOME backup. (#15702, #15704, #15841, #16539, #16566)

• Models dashboard tab + in-browser model config — rich per-model analytics, switch main + auxiliary models from the dashboard. (#17745, #17802)

• Remote model catalog manifest — OpenRouter + Nous Portal model catalogs are now pulled from a remote manifest so new models show up without a release. (#16033)

• Native multimodal image routing — images now route based on the model's actual vision capability rather than provider defaults. (#16506)

• Gateway media parity — native multi-image sending across Telegram, Discord, Slack, Mattermost, Email, and Signal; centralized audio routing with FLAC support + Telegram document fallback. (#17909, #17833)

• TUI catches up to (and past) the classic CLI — LaTeX rendering (@austinpickett), /reload .env hot-reload, pluggable busy-indicator styles (@OutThisLife, #13610), opt-in auto-resume of last session, expanded light-terminal auto-detection, session delete from /resume picker with d, modified mouse-wheel line scroll, and a /mouse toggle that kills ConPTY's phantom mouse injection (@kevin-ho). (#17175, #17286, #17150, #17130, #17113, #17668, #17669, #15488)

• Observability + achievements plugins — bundled Langfuse observability plugin (salvage #16845) + bundled hermes-achievements plugin that scans full session history. (#16917, #17754)

• TTS provider registry + Piper local TTS — pluggable tts.providers.<name> registry; Piper ships as a native local TTS provider. (Closes #8508.) (#17843, #17885)

• Vercel Sandbox backend — Vercel sandboxes as an execute_code/terminal backend (@kshitijk4poor). (#17445)

• Secret redaction off by default — default flipped to off. Prevents the long-standing patch-corruption incidents where fake secret-shaped substrings mangled tool outputs. Opt in via redaction.enabled: true when you need it. (#16794)

• Cold-start performance — visible TUI cold start cut ~57% via lazy agent init (@OutThisLife), lazy imports of OpenAI / Anthropic / Firecrawl / account_usage, mtime-cached load_config(), memoized get_tool_definitions() with TTL-cached check_fn results, precompiled dangerous-command patterns. (#17190, #17046, #17041, #17098, #17206)

• Configurable prompt cache TTL — prompt_caching.cache_ttl (5m default, 1h opt-in — cost savings for bursty sessions that keep cache warm). Salvage of #12659. (#15065)

---

🧠 Autonomous Curator & Self-Improvement Loop

Curator — autonomous skill maintenance

• hermes curator as a background agent — runs on the gateway's cron ticker, 7-day cycle by default, umbrella-first prompt, inherits parent config, unbounded iterations (#17277 — issue #7816)
• Per-run reports — logs/curator/run.json + REPORT.md per cycle (#17307)
• Consolidated vs pruned classification — archived skills split with model + heuristic (#17941)
• hermes curator status — ranks skills by usage, shows most-used and least-used (#18033)
• Unified under auxiliary.curator — pick the model in hermes model, configure from the dashboard (#17868)
• Documentation — dedicated curator feature page on the docs site (#17563)
• FIXFix: seed defaults on update, create logs/curator/ directory, defer fire import (#17927)
• FIXFix: scan nested archive subdirs in restore_skill (@0xDevNinja) (#17951)
• FIXFix: use actual skill activity in curator status (@y0shua1ee) (#17953)
• FIXFix: skill_manage refuses writes on pinned skills; pinning now blocks curator writes (#17562, #17578)
• FIXFix: bump_use() wired into skill invocation + preload + skill_view (salvage #17782) (#17932)

Self-improvement loop (background review fork)

• Class-first skill-review prompt — rubric-based grading rather than free-form "should this update" (#16026)
• Active-update bias — prefers updating skills the agent just loaded, handles references/ + templates/ sub-files (#17213)
• Fork inherits parent's live runtime — provider, model, credentials actually propagate now (#16099)
• Scoped toolsets — review fork restricted to memory + skills (no shell, no web) (#16569)
• Clean shutdown — background review memory providers exit properly (salvage #15289) (#16204)
• Clean context — prior-history tool messages excluded from review summary (salvage #14967) (#15057)

---

🧩 Skills Ecosystem

Skill integrations — newly bundled or promoted

• ComfyUI v5 — official CLI + REST + hardware-gated local install; moved from optional to built-in (#17610, #17631, #17734, #17612)
• TouchDesigner-MCP — bundled by default (#16753 — @kshitijk4poor), expanded with GLSL, post-FX, audio, geometry references (#16624), 9 new reference docs (#16768 — @SHL0MS)
• Humanizer — strips AI-isms from text (#16787)
• claude-design — HTML artifact skill with disambiguation from other design skills (#16358)
• design-md — Google's DESIGN.md spec skill (#14876)
• airtable — salvaged skill + skill API keys wired into .env (#15838) (#16291)
• pretext — creative browser demos with @chenglou/pretext (#17259)
• spike + sketch — throwaway experiments + HTML mockups, adapted from gsd-build (#17421)

Skills UX

• Install skills from a direct HTTP(S) URL — hermes skills install <url> (#16323)
• /reload-skills slash command (salvage #17670) (#17744)
• hermes skills list shows enabled/disabled status (#16129)
• skill_manage refuses writes on pinned skills (#17562)
• skill_manage edits external_dirs skills in place (salvage #9966) (#17512, #17289)
• FIXFix: inline-shell rendering in skill_view (#15376)
• FIXFix: exclude .archive/ from skill index walk (salvage #17639) (#17931)
• FIXFix: dedicated docs page per bundled + optional skill (#14929)
• FIXFix: google-workspace shared HERMES_HOME helper + ship deps as optional extra (#15405)
• FIXFix: auto-wrap ASCII-art code blocks in generated skill pages (#16497)
• Point agent at hermes-agent skill + docs site for Hermes questions (#16535)

---

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Provider & Model Support

New providers

• GMI Cloud — first-class API-key provider on par with Arcee/Kilocode/Xiaomi (salvage of #11955 — @isaachuangGMICLOUD) (#16663)
• Azure AI Foundry — auto-detection, full wiring (#15845)
• LM Studio — upgraded from custom-endpoint alias to first-class provider: dedicated auth, doctor checks, reasoning transport, live /models (salvage of #17061 — @kshitijk4poor) (#17102)
• MiniMax OAuth — PKCE browser flow with full OAuth integration (salvage #15203) (#17524)
• Tencent Tokenhub — new provider (salvage of #16860) (#16960)

Model catalog

• Remote model catalog manifest — OpenRouter + Nous Portal catalogs pulled from remote manifest so new models show up without a release (#16033)
• openai/gpt-5.5 and gpt-5.5-pro added to OpenRouter + Nous Portal (#15343)
• deepseek-v4-pro and deepseek-v4-flash added (#14934)
• qwen3.6-plus added to Alibaba-supported models (#16896)
• Gemini free-tier keys blocked at setup with 429 guidance surfacing (#15100)

Model configuration

• Configurable prompt_caching.cache_ttl — 5m default, 1h opt-in (salvage #12659) (#15065)
• /fast whitelist broadened to all OpenAI + Anthropic models (#16883)
• auxiliary.extra_body.reasoning translates into Codex Responses API (#17004)
• hermes fallback command for managing fallback providers (#16052)

Agent Loop & Conversation

• Native multimodal image routing — based on model vision capability, not provider defaults (#16506)
• Delegate child_timeout_seconds default bumped to 600s (#14809)
• Diagnostic dump when subagent times out with 0 API calls (#15105)
• Gateway busts cached agent on compression/context_length config edits (#17008)
• Opt-in runtime-metadata footer on final replies (#17026)
• /reload-mcp awareness — rebuild cached agents + prompt-cache cost confirmation (#17729)
• FIXFix: repair CamelCase + _tool suffix tool-call emissions (#15124)
• FIXFix: retry on json.JSONDecodeError instead of treating as local validation error (#15107)
• FIXFix: handle unescaped control chars in tool_call.arguments (#15356)
• FIXFix: ordering fix in _copy_reasoning_content_for_api — cross-provider reasoning isolation (@Zjianru) (#15749)
• FIXFix: inject empty reasoning_content for DeepSeek/Kimi tool_calls unconditionally (@Zjianru) (#15762)
• FIXFix: persist streamed reasoning_content on assistant turns (#16844) (#16892)
• FIXFix: cancel coroutine on timeout so worker thread exits; full traceback on tool failure (#17428)
• FIXFix: isolate get_tool_definitions quiet_mode cache + dedup LCM injection (#17335) (#17889)
• FIXFix: serialize concurrent hermes_tools RPC calls from execute_code (#17770) (#17894, #17902)
• FIXFix: rename [SYSTEM: → [IMPORTANT: in all user-injected markers (dodges Azure content filter) (#16114)

Compression

• Retry summary on main model for unknown errors before giving up (#16774)
• Notify users when configured aux model fails even if main-model fallback recovers (#16775)
• /compress wrapped in _busy_command to block input during compression (#15388)
• FIXFix: reserve system + tools headroom when aux binds threshold (#15631)
• FIXFix: use text-char sum for multimodal token estimation in _find_tail_cut_by_tokens (#16369)

Session, Memory & State

• Trigram FTS5 index for CJK search, replace LIKE fallback (@alt-glitch) (#16651)
• Index tool_name + tool_calls in FTS5, with repair + migration (salvages #16866) (#16914)
• Checkpoints: auto-prune orphan and stale shadow repos at startup (#16303)
• Memory providers notified on mid-process session_id rotation (#6672) (#17409)
• FIXFix: quote underscored terms in FTS5 query sanitization (#16915)
• FIXFix: resolve viking_read 500/412 on file URIs + pseudo-summary URIs (salvage #5886) (#17869)
• FIXFix: skip external-provider sync on interrupted turns (#15395)
• FIXFix: close embedded Hindsight async client cleanly (salvage #14605) (#16209)
• FIXFix: pass session transcript to shutdown_memory_provider on gateway + CLI (#15165) (#16571)
• FIXFix: write-origin metadata seam (#15346)
• FIXFix: preserve symlinks during atomic file writes (#16980)
• CHORERefactor: remove flush_memories entirely (#15696)

Auxiliary models

• FIXFix: surface auxiliary failures in UI (previously silent) (#15324)
• FIXFix: surface title-gen auxiliary failures instead of silently dropping (#16371)
• FIXFix: generalize unsupported-parameter detector and harden max_tokens retry (#15633)

---

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

New Platforms

• Microsoft Teams (19th platform) — as a plugin, + xdist collision guard (#17828)
• Yuanbao (Tencent 元宝, 18th platform) — native adapter with text + media delivery (#16298, #17424, #16880)

Pluggable Gateway Platforms

• Drop-in messaging adapters — the gateway is now a plugin host for platforms (salvage of #17664) (#17751)

Telegram

• Chat allowlists for groups and forums (@web3blind) (#15027)
• Send fresh finals for stale preview streams (port openclaw#72038) (#16261)
• Render markdown tables as row-group bullets + prompt hint (#16997)
• Document fallback in centralized audio routing (#17833)
• Native multi-image sending (#17909)

Discord

• Opt-in toolsets + ID injection + tool split + Feishu wiring (salvage #15457, #15458) (#15610, #15613)
• FIXFix: coerce limit parameter to int before min() call (#16319)

Slack

• Register every gateway command as a native slash (Discord/Telegram parity) (#16164)
• strict_mention config — prevents thread auto-engagement (#16193)
• channel_skill_bindings — bind specific skills to specific Slack channels (#16283)

Signal

• Native formatting — markdown → bodyRanges, reply quotes, reactions (#17417)
• Native multi-image sending (#17909)

Feishu / Mattermost / Email / Signal

• All participate in native multi-image sending (#17909)

Gateway Core

• Centralized audio routing + FLAC support + Telegram doc fallback (#17833)
• Native multi-image sending across Telegram, Discord, Slack, Mattermost, Email, Signal (#17909)
• Make hygiene hard message limit configurable (#17000)
• Opt-in runtime-metadata footer on final replies (#17026)
• pre_gateway_dispatch hook — plugins can intercept before dispatch (#15050)
• pre_approval_request / post_approval_response hooks (#16776)
• FIXFix: timeouts — guard load_config() call against runtime exceptions (#16318)
• FIXFix: support passing handler tools via registry (#15613)

---

🔧 Tool System

Plugin-first architecture

• Pluggable gateway platforms — platforms can ship as plugins (#17751)
• Microsoft Teams as first plugin-shipped platform (#17828)
• pre_gateway_dispatch hook (#15050)
• pre_approval_request + post_approval_response hooks (#16776)
• duration_ms on post_tool_call (inspired by Claude Code 2.1.119) (#15429)
• Bundled plugins: Spotify (#15174), Google Meet (#16364), Langfuse observability (#16917), hermes-achievements (#17754)
• Page-scoped plugin slots for built-in dashboard pages (#15658)
• Declarative plugin installation for NixOS module (@alt-glitch) (#15953)

Browser

• CDP supervisor — dialog detection + response + cross-origin iframe eval (#14540)
• Auto-spawn local Chromium for LAN/localhost URLs when cloud provider is configured (#16136)

Execute code / Terminal

• Vercel Sandbox backend for execute_code / terminal (@kshitijk4poor) (#17445)
• Collapse subagent task_ids to shared container (#16177)
• Docker: run container as host user to avoid root-owned bind mounts (@benbarclay) (#17305)
• FIXFix: safely quote ~/ subpaths in wrapped cd commands (#15394)
• FIXFix: close file descriptor in LocalEnvironment._update_cwd (#17300)
• FIXFix: SSH — prevent tar from overwriting remote home dir permissions (#17898, #17867)

Image generation

• See Provider section for updates; no new image providers this window.

TTS / Voice

• Pluggable TTS provider registry under tts.providers.<name> (#17843)
• Piper as native local TTS provider (closes #8508) (#17885)
• Voice mode CLI parity in the TUI — VAD loop + TTS + crash forensics (#14810)
• FIXFix: vision — use HERMES_HOME-based cache dir instead of cwd (#17719)

Cron

• Honor hermes tools config for the cron platform (#14798)
• Per-job workdir — project-aware cron runs (#15110)
• context_from field — chain cron job outputs (#15606)
• FIXFix: promote croniter to a core dependency (#17577)

Web search

• Expose limit for web_search (#16934)

Maps

• FIXFix: include seconds in timezone UTC offset output (#16300)

Approvals

• Hardline blocklist for unrecoverable commands (#15878)
• PERFPerf: precompile DANGEROUS_PATTERNS and HARDLINE_PATTERNS (#17206)

ACP

• Advertise and forward image prompts (#18030)

API Server

• POST /v1/runs/{run_id}/stop (salvage of #15656) (#15842)
• Expose run status for external UIs (#17085) (#17458)

Nix

• Declarative plugin installation for NixOS module (@alt-glitch) (#15953)
• FIXFix: use --rebuild in fix-lockfiles to bypass cached FOD store paths (#15444)
• FIXFix: extraPackages now actually works via per-user profile (#17047)
• FIXFix: refresh web/ npm-deps hash to unblock main builds (#17174)
• FIXFix: replace magic-nix-cache with Cachix (#17928)

---

🖥️ TUI

New features

• LaTeX rendering (@austinpickett) (#17175)
• /reload .env hot-reload — ported from the classic CLI (#17286)
• Pluggable busy-indicator styles (@OutThisLife, #13610) (#17150)
• Opt-in auto-resume of the most recent session (@OutThisLife) (#17130)
• Expanded light-terminal auto-detection — HERMES_TUI_THEME + background hex (@OutThisLife) (#17113)
• Delete sessions from /resume picker with d (@OutThisLife) (#17668)
• Line-by-line scroll on modified mouse wheel (@OutThisLife) (#17669)
• Delete queued message while editing with ctrl-x / cancel with esc (@OutThisLife) (#16707)
• Per-section visibility for the details accordion (@OutThisLife) (#14968)
• Voice mode CLI parity — VAD loop + TTS + crash forensics (#14810)
• Contextual first-touch hints ported to TUI — /busy, /verbose (#16054)
• Mini help menu on ? in the input field (@ethernet8023) (#18043)

Fixes

• FIXFix: proactive mouse disable on ConPTY + /mouse toggle command (@kevin-ho, WSL2 ghost-mouse fix) (#15488)
• FIXFix: restore skills search RPC (#15870)
• PERFPerf: cache text measurements across yoga flex re-passes (#14818)
• PERFPerf: stabilize long-session scrolling (#15926)
• PERFPerf: lazily seed virtual history heights (#16523)
• PERFPerf: cut visible cold start ~57% with lazy agent init (#17190)

---

🖱️ CLI & User Experience

New commands

• hermes -z <prompt> — non-interactive one-shot mode (#15702)
• hermes -z with --model / --provider / HERMES_INFERENCE_MODEL (#15704)
• hermes update --check preflight flag (#15841)
• hermes fallback command for managing fallback providers (#16052)
• /busy slash command for busy input mode (#15382)
• /busy input mode 'steer' as a third option (#16279)
• /btw as alias for /background (#16053)
• /reload-skills slash command (salvage #17670) (#17744)
• Surface /queue, /bg, /steer in agent-running placeholder (#16118)

Setup / onboarding

• Auto-reconfigure on existing installs (#15879)
• Contextual first-touch hints for /busy and /verbose (#16046)
• Cost-saving tips from the April 30 tip-of-the-day (#17841)
• Hyperlink startup banner title to the latest GitHub Release (#14945)

Update / backup

• Snapshot pairing data before git pull (#16383)
• Auto-backup HERMES_HOME before hermes update (opt-in, off by default) (#16539, #16566)
• Exclude checkpoints/ from backups (#16572)
• Exclude SQLite WAL/SHM/journal sidecars from backups (#16576)
• Installer FHS layout for root installs on Linux (#15608)
• FIXFix: kill stale dashboards instead of warning (#17832)
• FIXFix: show correct update status on nix-built hermes (#17550)

Slash-command housekeeping

• CHORERefactor: drop /provider, /plan handler, and clean up slash registry (#15047)
• CHORERefactor: drop persist_session plumbing + fix broken /btw mid-turn bypass (#16075)

OpenClaw migration (for folks coming from OpenClaw)

• Hardened OpenClaw import — plan-first apply, redaction, pre-migration backup (#16911)
• FIXFix: case-preserving brand rewrite + one-time ~/.openclaw residue banner (#16327)
• FIXFix: resolve openclaw workspace files from agents.defaults.workspace (#16879)
• FIXFix: resolve model aliases against real OpenClaw catalog schema (salvage #16778) (#16977)

---

📊 Web Dashboard

• Models tab — rich per-model analytics (#17745)
• Configure main + auxiliary models from the Models page (#17802)
• Dashboard Chat tab — xterm.js + JSON-RPC sidecar (supersedes #12710 + #13379, @OutThisLife) (#14890)
• Dashboard layout refresh (@austinpickett) (#14899)
• --stop and --status flags on the dashboard CLI (#17840)
• Page-scoped plugin slots for built-in pages (#15658)
• FIXFix: replace all buttons for design system buttons (#17007)

---

⚡ Performance

• TUI visible cold start cut ~57% via lazy agent init (#17190)
• Lazy-import OpenAI, Anthropic, Firecrawl, account_usage (#17046)
• mtime-cache load_config() and read_raw_config() (#17041)
• Memoize get_tool_definitions() + TTL-cache check_fn results (#17098)
• Precompile DANGEROUS_PATTERNS and HARDLINE_PATTERNS (#17206)
• Cache Ink text measurements across yoga flex re-passes (#14818)
• Stabilize long-session scrolling (#15926)
• Lazily seed virtual history heights (#16523)

---

🔒 Security & Reliability

• Secret redaction off by default — stops corrupting patches / API payloads with fake-key substitutions. Opt in via redaction.enabled: true (#16794)
• [SYSTEM: → [IMPORTANT: in all user-injected markers (Azure content filter dodge) (#16114)
• Hardline blocklist for unrecoverable commands (#15878)
• Canonical mask_secret helper; fix status.py DIM drift (#17207)
• Sweep expired paste.rs uploads on a real timer (#16431)
• Preserve symlinks during atomic file writes (#16980)
• Probe /dev/tty by opening it, not bare existence (#17024)

---

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

This window includes 360 fix: PRs. Selected highlights from across the stack:

• Background review fork inherits parent's live runtime — provider/model/creds now propagate correctly (#16099)
• Hindsight configurable HINDSIGHT_TIMEOUT env var (#15077)
• Tools: normalize numeric entries + clear stale no_mcp in _save_platform_tools (#15607)
• MCP: rewrite definitions refs to $defs in input schemas — closes provider-side 400s
• Azure content filter compatibility — renamed [SYSTEM: markers so Azure's content filter stops flagging them (#16114)
• Vision cache uses HERMES_HOME instead of cwd (#17719)
• FTS5 search — tool_name + tool_calls indexing with repair + migration (#16914)
• Streaming reasoning persists on assistant turns (#16892)
• execute_code concurrent RPC serialization (#17770) (#17894, #17902)
• Background reviewer scoped to memory + skills toolsets — no more accidental web/shell escapes (#16569)
• Compression recovery — retry on main before giving up; notify user when aux fails (#16774, #16775)
• croniter promoted to a core dependency (#17577)
• Discord tool limit parameter coerced to int before min() call (#16319)
• Yuanbao messaging platform entrance fix (#16880)
• ACP advertise and forward image prompts (#18030)
• DeepSeek / Kimi reasoning content isolation across cross-provider histories (@Zjianru) (#15749, #15762)
• Preserve reasoning_content replay on DeepSeek v4 + Kimi/Moonshot thinking (#18045)

The vast majority of the 360 fixes landed in the streaming/compression/tool-calling paths across all providers — DeepSeek, Kimi, Moonshot, GLM, Qwen, MiniMax, Gemini, Anthropic, OpenAI — alongside TUI polish (resize, scroll, sticky-prompt) and gateway platform-specific edge cases.

---

🧪 Testing & CI

• Hermetic test parity (scripts/run_tests.sh) held across this window
• Microsoft Teams xdist collision guard — prevents worker collisions when Teams platform tests run in parallel (#17828)
• CHOREChore: remove unused imports and dead locals (ruff F401, F841) (#17010)

---

📚 Documentation

• Curator feature page added to docs site (#17563)
• Document pin also blocking skill_manage writes (#17578)
• Direct-URL skill install documented across features, reference, guide, and hermes-agent skill (#16355)
• Hooks tutorial — build a BOOT.md startup checklist (replaces the removed built-in hook) (#17202)
• ComfyUI docs: ask local vs cloud FIRST before hardware check (#17612)
• Obliteratus skill: link YouTube video guide in SKILL.md (#15808)
• Per-skill docs pages generated for bundled + optional skills; ASCII art code blocks auto-wrapped (#14929, #16497)

---

⚖️ Removed / Reverted

• Kanban multi-profile collaboration board — landed in #16081, reverted in (#16098) while the design is reworked
• computer-use cua-driver — 3 preparatory PRs landed then were reverted in (#16927)
• BOOT.md built-in hook removed (#17093); the hooks tutorial (#17202) shows how to build the same workflow yourself with a shell hook
• /provider + /plan slash commands dropped (#15047)
• flush_memories removed entirely (#15696)

---

👥 Contributors

Core

• @teknium1 (Teknium)

Top Community Contributors (by merged PR count since v0.11.0)

• @OutThisLife (Brooklyn) — 52 PRs · TUI — light-terminal detection + pluggable busy styles + auto-resume + session-delete from /resume + mouse-wheel scrolling + xterm.js dashboard Chat tab + cold-start cut + accordion polish
• @kshitijk4poor — 12 PRs · LM Studio first-class provider (salvage), Vercel Sandbox backend, GMI Cloud salvage, bundled-by-default touchdesigner-mcp, many tool-call / reasoning fixes
• @helix4u — 10 PRs · MCP schema robustness, assorted stability fixes
• @alt-glitch — 8 PRs · trigram FTS5 CJK search, declarative Nix plugin install, matrix/feishu hints and fixes
• @ethernet8023 — 4 PRs
• @austinpickett — 4 PRs · LaTeX rendering in TUI, dashboard layout refresh
• @benbarclay — 3 PRs · Docker run-as-host-user so bind mounts don't get root-owned
• @vominh1919 — 2 PRs
• @stephenschoettler — 2 PRs
• @kevin-ho — ConPTY mouse-injection fix (#15488)
• @Zjianru — cross-provider reasoning_content isolation + DeepSeek/Kimi empty-reasoning injection (#15749, #15762)
• @web3blind — Telegram chat allowlists for groups and forums (#15027)
• @SHL0MS — 9 new TouchDesigner-MCP reference docs (#16768)
• @0xDevNinja — curator restore_skill nested-archive fix (#17951)
• @y0shua1ee — curator use activity fix (#17953)

Also contributing

Salvaged or co-authored work from @isaachuangGMICLOUD (GMI Cloud), earlier upstream PRs from the original author of each salvage chain, and a long tail of one-shot fixes, documentation nudges, and skill contributions from the community.

All Contributors (alphabetical, excluding @teknium1)

@0xbyt4, @0xharryriddle, @0xDevNinja, @0z1-ghb, @5park1e, @A-FdL-Prog, @aj-nt, @akhater, @alblez, @alexg0bot, @alexzhu0, @AllardQuek, @alt-glitch, @amanning3390, @amanuel2, @AndreKurait, @andrewhosf, @Andy283, @andyylin, @angel12, @AntAISecurityLab, @ash, @austinpickett, @badgerbees, @BadTechBandit, @Bartok9, @beenherebefore, @beesrsj2500, @BeliefanX, @benbarclay, @benjaminsehl, @BlackishGreen33, @bloodcarter, @BlueBirdBack, @briandevans, @brooklynnicholson, @bsgdigital, @buray, @bwjoke, @camaragon, @cdanis, @cgarwood82, @charles-brooks, @chen1749144759, @chengoak, @ching-kaching, @Contentment003111, @crayfish-ai, @CruxExperts, @cyclingwithelephants, @dandaka, @danklynn, @ddupont808, @dhabibi, @difujia, @dimitrovi, @dlkakbs, @dontcallmejames, @EKKOLearnAI, @emozilla, @ericnicolaides, @Erosika, @ethernet8023, @exiao, @Feranmi10, @flobo3, @foxion37, @georgeglessner, @georgex8001, @ghostmfr, @H-Ali13381, @HangGlidersRule, @harryplusplus, @haru398801, @heathley, @hejuntt1014, @hekaru-agent, @helix4u, @Heltman, @HenkDz, @heyitsaamir, @hharry11, @hhhonzik, @hhuang91, @HiddenPuppy, @htsh, @iamagenius00, @in-liberty420, @innocarpe, @irispillars, @iRonin, @isaachuangGMICLOUD, @Ito-69, @j3ffffff, @jackjin1997, @jakubkrcmar, @Jason2031, @JayGwod, @jerome-benoit, @johnncenae, @Kailigithub, @keiravoss94, @kevin-ho, @knockyai, @konsisumer, @kshitijk4poor, @kunlabs, @l0hde, @Leihb, @leoneparise, @LeonSGP43, @liizfq, @liuhao1024, @loongzhao, @lsdsjy, @luyao618, @ma-pony, @Magaav, @MagicRay1217, @math0r-be, @MattMaximo, @maxims-oss, @MaxyMoos, @maymuneth, @mcndjxlefnd, @memosr, @MestreY0d4-Uninter, @mewwts, @Mirac1eSky, @MorAlekss, @mrhwick, @mrunmayee17, @mssteuer, @Nanako0129, @nazirulhafiy, @Nerijusas, @Nicecsh, @nicoloboschi, @nightq, @ningfangbin, @octo-patch, @Octopus, @OutThisLife, @Paperclip, @pein892, @perlowja, @prasadus92, @qike-ms, @qiyin-code, @Readon, @ReginaldasR, @revaraver, @rfilgueiras, @rmoen, @romanornr, @rugvedS07, @rylena, @samrusani, @Sanjays2402, @sasha-id, @Satoshi-agi, @scheidti, @scotttrinh, @season179, @SeeYangZhi, @sgaofen, @shamork, @shannonsands, @SHL0MS, @simbam99, @Societus, @socrates1024, @Sonoyunchu, @sprmn24, @stephenschoettler, @tangyuanjc, @TechPrototyper, @tekgnosis-net, @ThomassJonax, @tmimmanuel, @tochukwuada, @Tosko4, @Tranquil-Flow, @twozle, @txbxxx, @UgwujaGeorge, @Versun, @vlwkaos, @voidborne-d, @vominh1919, @Wang-tianhao, @Wangshengyang2004, @web3blind, @westers, @Wysie, @xandersbell, @xiahu88988, @XieNBi, @xinbenlv, @xnbi, @y0shua1ee, @yatesjalex, @yes999zc, @yeyitech, @Yoimex, @YueLich, @Yukipukii1, @zhiyanliu, @zicochaos, @Zjianru, @zkl2333, @zons-zhaozhy, @ztexydt-cqh.

Also: @Siddharth Balyan, @YuShu.

---

Full Changelog: v2026.4.23...v2026.4.30

Hermes Agent v0.10.0 (v2026.4.16)

Release Date: April 16, 2026

The Tool Gateway release — paid Nous Portal subscribers can now use web search, image generation, text-to-speech, and browser automation through their existing subscription with zero additional API keys.

---

✨ Highlights

• Nous Tool Gateway — Paid Nous Portal subscribers now get automatic access to web search (Firecrawl), image generation (FAL / FLUX 2 Pro), text-to-speech (OpenAI TTS), and browser automation (Browser Use) through their existing subscription. No separate API keys needed — just run hermes model, select Nous Portal, and pick which tools to enable. Per-tool opt-in via use_gateway config, full integration with hermes tools and hermes status, and the runtime correctly prefers the gateway even when direct API keys exist. Replaces the old hidden HERMES_ENABLE_NOUS_MANAGED_TOOLS env var with clean subscription-based detection. (#11206, based on work by @jquesnelle; docs: #11208)

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🐛 Bug Fixes & Improvements

This release includes 180+ commits with numerous bug fixes, platform improvements, and reliability enhancements across the agent core, gateway, CLI, and tool system. Full details will be published in the v0.11.0 changelog.

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👥 Contributors

• @jquesnelle (emozilla) — Original Tool Gateway implementation (#10799), salvaged and shipped in this release

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Full Changelog: v2026.4.13...v2026.4.16

Hermes Agent v0.9.0 (v2026.4.13)

Release Date: April 13, 2026 Since v0.8.0: 487 commits · 269 merged PRs · 167 resolved issues · 493 files changed · 63,281 insertions · 24 contributors

The everywhere release — Hermes goes mobile with Termux/Android, adds iMessage and WeChat, ships Fast Mode for OpenAI and Anthropic, introduces background process monitoring, launches a local web dashboard for managing your agent, and delivers the deepest security hardening pass yet across 16 supported platforms.

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✨ Highlights

• Local Web Dashboard — A new browser-based dashboard for managing your Hermes Agent locally. Configure settings, monitor sessions, browse skills, and manage your gateway — all from a clean web interface without touching config files or the terminal. The easiest way to get started with Hermes.

• Fast Mode (/fast) — Priority processing for OpenAI and Anthropic models. Toggle /fast to route through priority queues for significantly lower latency on supported models (GPT-5.4, Codex, Claude). Expands across all OpenAI Priority Processing models and Anthropic's fast tier. (#6875, #6960, #7037)

• iMessage via BlueBubbles — Full iMessage integration through BlueBubbles, bringing Hermes to Apple's messaging ecosystem. Auto-webhook registration, setup wizard integration, and crash resilience. (#6437, #6460, #6494)

• WeChat (Weixin) & WeCom Callback Mode — Native WeChat support via iLink Bot API and a new WeCom callback-mode adapter for self-built enterprise apps. Streaming cursor, media uploads, markdown link handling, and atomic state persistence. Hermes now covers the Chinese messaging ecosystem end-to-end. (#7166, #7943)

• Termux / Android Support — Run Hermes natively on Android via Termux. Adapted install paths, TUI optimizations for mobile screens, voice backend support, and the /image command work on-device. (#6834)

• Background Process Monitoring (watch_patterns) — Set patterns to watch for in background process output and get notified in real-time when they match. Monitor for errors, wait for specific events ("listening on port"), or watch build logs — all without polling. (#7635)

• Native xAI & Xiaomi MiMo Providers — First-class provider support for xAI (Grok) and Xiaomi MiMo, with direct API access, model catalogs, and setup wizard integration. Plus Qwen OAuth with portal request support. (#7372, #7855)

• Pluggable Context Engine — Context management is now a pluggable slot via hermes plugins. Swap in custom context engines that control what the agent sees each turn — filtering, summarization, or domain-specific context injection. (#7464)

• Unified Proxy Support — SOCKS proxy, DISCORD_PROXY, and system proxy auto-detection across all gateway platforms. Hermes behind corporate firewalls just works. (#6814)

• Comprehensive Security Hardening — Path traversal protection in checkpoint manager, shell injection neutralization in sandbox writes, SSRF redirect guards in Slack image uploads, Twilio webhook signature validation (SMS RCE fix), API server auth enforcement, git argument injection prevention, and approval button authorization. (#7933, #7944, #7940, #7151, #7156)

• hermes backup & hermes import — Full backup and restore of your Hermes configuration, sessions, skills, and memory. Migrate between machines or create snapshots before major changes. (#7997)

• 16 Supported Platforms — With BlueBubbles (iMessage) and WeChat joining Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Matrix, Email, SMS, DingTalk, Feishu, WeCom, Mattermost, Home Assistant, and Webhooks, Hermes now runs on 16 messaging platforms out of the box.

• /debug & hermes debug share — New debugging toolkit: /debug slash command across all platforms for quick diagnostics, plus hermes debug share to upload a full debug report to a pastebin for easy sharing when troubleshooting. (#8681)

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🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Provider & Model Support

• Native xAI (Grok) provider with direct API access and model catalog (#7372)
• Xiaomi MiMo as first-class provider — setup wizard, model catalog, empty response recovery (#7855)
• Qwen OAuth provider with portal request support (#6282)
• Fast Mode — /fast toggle for OpenAI Priority Processing + Anthropic fast tier (#6875, #6960, #7037)
• Structured API error classification for smart failover decisions (#6514)
• Rate limit header capture shown in /usage (#6541)
• API server model name derived from profile name (#6857)
• Custom providers now included in /model listings and resolution (#7088)
• Fallback provider activation on repeated empty responses with user-visible status (#7505)
• OpenRouter variant tags (:free, :extended, :fast) preserved during model switch (#6383)
• Credential exhaustion TTL reduced from 24 hours to 1 hour (#6504)
• OAuth credential lifecycle hardening — stale pool keys, auth.json sync, Codex CLI race fixes (#6874)
• Empty response recovery for reasoning models (MiMo, Qwen, GLM) (#8609)
• MiniMax context lengths, thinking guard, endpoint corrections (#6082, #7126)
• Z.AI endpoint auto-detect via probe and cache (#5763)

Agent Loop & Conversation

• Pluggable context engine slot via hermes plugins (#7464)
• Background process monitoring — watch_patterns for real-time output alerts (#7635)
• Improved context compression — higher limits, tool tracking, degradation warnings, token-budget tail protection (#6395, #6453)
• /compress <focus> — guided compression with a focus topic (#8017)
• Tiered context pressure warnings with gateway dedup (#6411)
• Staged inactivity warning before timeout escalation (#6387)
• Prevent agent from stopping mid-task — compression floor, budget overhaul, activity tracking (#7983)
• Propagate child activity to parent during delegate_task (#7295)
• Truncated streaming tool call detection before execution (#6847)
• Empty response retry (3 attempts with nudge) (#6488)
• Adaptive streaming backoff + cursor strip to prevent message truncation (#7683)
• Compression uses live session model instead of stale persisted config (#8258)
• Strip <thought> tags from Gemma 4 responses (#8562)
• Prevent <think> in prose from suppressing response output (#6968)
• Turn-exit diagnostic logging to agent loop (#6549)
• Scope tool interrupt signal per-thread to prevent cross-session leaks (#7930)

Memory & Sessions

• Hindsight memory plugin — feature parity, setup wizard, config improvements — @nicoloboschi (#6428)
• Honcho — opt-in initOnSessionStart for tools mode — @Kathie-yu (#6995)
• Orphan children instead of cascade-deleting in prune/delete (#6513)
• Doctor command only checks the active memory provider (#6285)

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📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

New Platforms

• BlueBubbles (iMessage) — full adapter with auto-webhook registration, setup wizard, and crash resilience (#6437, #6460, #6494, #7107)
• Weixin (WeChat) — native support via iLink Bot API with streaming, media uploads, markdown links (#7166, #8665)
• WeCom Callback Mode — self-built enterprise app adapter with atomic state persistence (#7943, #7928)

Discord

• Allowed channels whitelist config — @jarvis-phw (#7044)
• Forum channel topic inheritance in thread sessions — @hermes-agent-dhabibi (#6377)
• DISCORD_REPLY_TO_MODE setting (#6333)
• Accept .log attachments, raise document size limit — @kira-ariaki (#6467)
• Decouple readiness from slash sync (#8016)

Slack

• Consolidated Slack improvements — 7 community PRs salvaged into one (#6809)
• Handle assistant thread lifecycle events (#6433)

Matrix

• Migrated from matrix-nio to mautrix-python (#7518)
• SQLite crypto store replacing pickle (fixes E2EE decryption) — @alt-glitch (#7981)
• Cross-signing recovery key verification for E2EE migration (#8282)
• DM mention threads + group chat events for Feishu (#7423)

Gateway Core

• Unified proxy support — SOCKS, DISCORD_PROXY, multi-platform with macOS auto-detection (#6814)
• Inbound text batching for Discord, Matrix, WeCom + adaptive delay (#6979)
• Surface natural mid-turn assistant messages in chat platforms (#7978)
• WSL-aware gateway with smart systemd detection (#7510)
• All missing platforms added to setup wizard (#7949)
• Per-platform tool_progress overrides (#6348)
• Configurable 'still working' notification interval (#8572)
• /model switch persists across messages (#7081)
• /usage shows rate limits, cost, and token details between turns (#7038)
• Drain in-flight work before restart (#7503)
• Don't evict cached agent on failed runs — prevents MCP restart loop (#7539)
• Replace os.environ session state with contextvars (#7454)
• Derive channel directory platforms from enum instead of hardcoded list (#7450)
• Validate image downloads before caching (cross-platform) (#7125)
• Cross-platform webhook delivery for all platforms (#7095)
• Cron Discord thread_id delivery support (#7106)
• Feishu QR-based bot onboarding (#8570)
• Gateway status scoped to active profile (#7951)
• Prevent background process notifications from triggering false pairing requests (#6434)

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🖥️ CLI & User Experience

Interactive CLI

• Termux / Android support — adapted install paths, TUI, voice, /image (#6834)
• Native /model picker modal for provider → model selection (#8003)
• Live per-tool elapsed timer restored in TUI spinner (#7359)
• Stacked tool progress scrollback in TUI (#8201)
• Random tips on new session start (CLI + gateway, 279 tips) (#8225, #8237)
• hermes dump — copy-pasteable setup summary for debugging (#6550)
• hermes backup / hermes import — full config backup and restore (#7997)
• WSL environment hint in system prompt (#8285)
• Profile creation UX — seed SOUL.md + credential warning (#8553)
• Shell-aware sudo detection, empty password support (#6517)
• Flush stdin after curses/terminal menus to prevent escape sequence leakage (#7167)
• Handle broken stdin in prompt_toolkit startup (#8560)

Setup & Configuration

• Per-platform display verbosity configuration (#8006)
• Component-separated logging with session context and filtering (#7991)
• network.force_ipv4 config to fix IPv6 timeout issues (#8196)
• Standardize message whitespace and JSON formatting (#7988)
• Rebrand OpenClaw → Hermes during migration (#8210)
• Config.yaml takes priority over env vars for auxiliary settings (#7889)
• Harden setup provider flows + live OpenRouter catalog refresh (#7078)
• Normalize reasoning effort ordering across all surfaces (#6804)
• Remove dead LLM_MODEL env var + migration to clear stale entries (#6543)
• Remove /prompt slash command — prefix expansion footgun (#6752)
• HERMES_HOME_MODE env var to override permissions — @ygd58 (#6993)
• Fall back to default model when model config is empty (#8303)
• Warn when compression model context is too small (#7894)

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🔧 Tool System

Environments & Execution

• Unified spawn-per-call execution layer for environments (#6343)
• Unified file sync with mtime tracking, deletion, and transactional state (#7087)
• Persistent sandbox envs survive between turns (#6412)
• Bulk file sync via tar pipe for SSH/Modal backends — @alt-glitch (#8014)
• Daytona — bulk upload, config bridge, silent disk cap (#7538)
• Foreground timeout cap to prevent session deadlocks (#7082)
• Guard invalid command values (#6417)

MCP

• hermes mcp add --env and --preset support (#7970)
• Combine content and structuredContent when both present (#7118)
• MCP tool name deconfliction fixes (#7654)

Browser

• Browser hardening — dead code removal, caching, scroll perf, security, thread safety (#7354)
• /browser connect auto-launch uses dedicated Chrome profile dir (#6821)
• Reap orphaned browser sessions on startup (#7931)

Voice & Vision

• Voxtral TTS provider (Mistral AI) (#7653)
• TTS speed support for Edge TTS, OpenAI TTS, MiniMax (#8666)
• Vision auto-resize for oversized images, raise limit to 20 MB, retry-on-failure (#7883, #7902)
• STT provider-model mismatch fix (whisper-1 vs faster-whisper) (#7113)

Other Tools

• hermes dump command for setup summary (#6550)
• TODO store enforces ID uniqueness during replace operations (#7986)
• List all available toolsets in delegate_task schema description (#8231)
• API server: tool progress as custom SSE event to prevent model corruption (#7500)
• API server: share one Docker container across all conversations (#7127)

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🧩 Skills Ecosystem

• Centralized skills index + tree cache — eliminates rate-limit failures on install (#8575)
• More aggressive skill loading instructions in system prompt (v3) (#8209, #8286)
• Google Workspace skill migrated to GWS CLI backend (#6788)
• Creative divergence strategies skill — @SHL0MS (#6882)
• Creative ideation — constraint-driven project generation — @SHL0MS (#7555)
• Parallelize skills browse/search to prevent hanging (#7301)
• Read name from SKILL.md frontmatter in skills_sync (#7623)

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🔒 Security & Reliability

Security Hardening

• Twilio webhook signature validation — SMS RCE fix (#7933)
• Shell injection neutralization in _write_to_sandbox via path quoting (#7940)
• Git argument injection and path traversal prevention in checkpoint manager (#7944)
• SSRF redirect bypass in Slack image uploads + base.py cache helpers (#7151)
• Path traversal, credential gate, DANGEROUS_PATTERNS gaps (#7156)
• API bind guard — enforce API_SERVER_KEY for non-loopback binding (#7455)
• Approval button authorization — require auth for session continuation — @Cafexss (#6930)
• Path boundary enforcement in skill manager operations (#7156)
• DingTalk/API webhook URL origin validation, header injection rejection (#7455)

Reliability

• Contextual error diagnostics for invalid API responses (#8565)
• Prevent 400 format errors from triggering compression loop on Codex (#6751)
• Don't halve context_length on output-cap-too-large errors — @KUSH42 (#6664)
• Recover primary client on OpenAI transport errors (#7108)
• Credential pool rotation on billing-classified 400s (#7112)
• Auto-increase stream read timeout for local LLM providers (#6967)
• Fall back to default certs when CA bundle path doesn't exist (#7352)
• Disambiguate usage-limit patterns in error classifier — @sprmn24 (#6836)
• Harden cron script timeout and provider recovery (#7079)
• Gateway interrupt detection resilient to monitor task failures (#8208)
• Prevent unwanted session auto-reset after graceful gateway restarts (#8299)
• Prevent duplicate update prompt spam in gateway watcher (#8343)
• Deduplicate reasoning items in Responses API input (#7946)

Infrastructure

• Multi-arch Docker image — amd64 + arm64 (#6124)
• Docker runs as non-root user with virtualenv — @benbarclay contributing (#8226)
• Use uv for Docker dependency resolution to fix resolution-too-deep (#6965)
• Container-aware Nix CLI — auto-route into managed container — @alt-glitch (#7543)
• Nix shared-state permission model for interactive CLI users — @alt-glitch (#6796)
• Per-profile subprocess HOME isolation (#7357)
• Profile paths fixed in Docker — profiles go to mounted volume (#7170)
• CIDocker container gateway pathway hardened (#8614)
• Enable unbuffered stdout for live Docker logs (#6749)
• Install procps in Docker image — @HiddenPuppy (#7032)
• Shallow git clone for faster installation — @sosyz (#8396)
• hermes update always reset on stash conflict (#7010)
• Write update exit code before gateway restart (cgroup kill race) (#8288)
• Nix: setupSecrets optional, tirith runtime dep — @devorun, @ethernet8023 (#6261, #6721)
• launchd stop uses bootout so KeepAlive doesn't respawn (#7119)

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🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

• FIXFix: /model switch not persisting across gateway messages (#7081)
• FIXFix: session-scoped gateway model overrides ignored — @Hygaard (#7662)
• FIXFix: compaction model context length ignoring config — 3 related issues (#8258, #8107)
• FIXFix: OpenCode.ai context window resolved to 128K instead of 1M (#6472)
• FIXFix: Codex fallback auth-store lookup — @cherifya (#6462)
• FIXFix: duplicate completion notifications when process killed (#7124)
• FIXFix: agent daemon thread prevents orphan CLI processes on tab close (#8557)
• FIXFix: stale image attachment on text paste and voice input (#7077)
• FIXFix: DM thread session seeding causing cross-thread contamination (#7084)
• FIXFix: OpenClaw migration shows dry-run preview before executing (#6769)
• FIXFix: auth errors misclassified as retryable — @kuishou68 (#7027)
• FIXFix: Copilot-Integration-Id header missing (#7083)
• FIXFix: ACP session capabilities — @luyao618 (#6985)
• FIXFix: ACP PromptResponse usage from top-level fields (#7086)
• FIXFix: several failing/flaky tests on main — @dsocolobsky (#6777)
• FIXFix: backup marker filenames — @sprmn24 (#8600)
• FIXFix: NoneType in fast_mode check — @0xbyt4 (#7350)
• FIXFix: missing imports in uninstall.py — @JiayuuWang (#7034)

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📚 Documentation

• Platform adapter developer guide + WeCom Callback docs (#7969)
• Cron troubleshooting guide (#7122)
• Streaming timeout auto-detection for local LLMs (#6990)
• Tool-use enforcement documentation expanded (#7984)
• BlueBubbles pairing instructions (#6548)
• Telegram proxy support section (#6348)
• hermes dump and hermes logs CLI reference (#6552)
• tool_progress_overrides configuration reference (#6364)
• Compression model context length warning docs (#7879)

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👥 Contributors

269 merged PRs from 24 contributors across 487 commits.

Community Contributors

• @alt-glitch (6 PRs) — Nix container-aware CLI, shared-state permissions, Matrix SQLite crypto store, bulk SSH/Modal file sync, Matrix mautrix compat
• @SHL0MS (2 PRs) — Creative divergence strategies skill, creative ideation skill
• @sprmn24 (2 PRs) — Error classifier disambiguation, backup marker fix
• @nicoloboschi — Hindsight memory plugin feature parity
• @Hygaard — Session-scoped gateway model override fix
• @jarvis-phw — Discord allowed_channels whitelist
• @Kathie-yu — Honcho initOnSessionStart for tools mode
• @hermes-agent-dhabibi — Discord forum channel topic inheritance
• @kira-ariaki — Discord .log attachments and size limit
• @cherifya — Codex fallback auth-store lookup
• @Cafexss — Security: auth for session continuation
• @KUSH42 — Compaction context_length fix
• @kuishou68 — Auth error retryable classification fix
• @luyao618 — ACP session capabilities
• @ygd58 — HERMES_HOME_MODE env var override
• @0xbyt4 — Fast mode NoneType fix
• @JiayuuWang — CLI uninstall import fix
• @HiddenPuppy — Docker procps installation
• @dsocolobsky — Test suite fixes
• @benbarclay — Docker image tag simplification
• @sosyz — Shallow git clone for faster install
• @devorun — Nix setupSecrets optional
• @ethernet8023 — Nix tirith runtime dep

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Full Changelog: v2026.4.8...v2026.4.13