What is Hermes Agent?
Hermes Agent is the self-improving AI agent from Nous Research. It writes skills from experience and keeps improving them as it works, remembers what matters across sessions, and runs where you are: the terminal, the Hermes Desktop app, Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal and more, all through one gateway. You can bring any model (Nous Portal, OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, your own endpoint) and run it on a laptop, a $5 VPS or serverless infrastructure.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
A lean core, with plugins at the edges
The Hermes core keeps the parts every user needs: the agent loop, memory, skills, the gateway, model routing and the tool runtime. Everything specific to one product, one vendor or one hobby belongs in a plugin, which you install when you want it and which ships on its own schedule.
That gives you:
- Smaller, faster installs. You don't download a Spotify client to run a coding agent.
- Fixes without waiting for a release. A plugin ships a fix as soon as it's reviewed. It doesn't wait for the next Hermes version.
- A clear owner for each integration. Vendor plugins live with the vendors who build them, community plugins with their authors, and Nous's own plugins live here.
The plugin catalog
The Hermes plugin catalog is the reviewed index of everything you can install: model providers, memory providers, messaging platforms, Desktop extensions, voice, web and automation tools. It has hundreds of entries from Nous, vendors and the community. Each entry is pinned to a reviewed commit, so what you install is exactly what was reviewed, and an update moves you only when a new pin passes review.
hermes plugins search # browse the catalog
hermes plugins info spotify # what it does, what it needs, which commit
hermes plugins install spotify # install at the reviewed pin
hermes plugins update spotify # follow the catalog to the next reviewed pin
Hermes Desktop has the same catalog under Capabilities → Plugins.
Catalog entries come in two tiers:
| Tier | Who maintains it | Where it lives |
|---|
| official | Nous Research | This repo, one directory per plugin |
| community | Vendors and independent authors | Their own repos, reviewed when they enter the catalog |
The plugins
Already used one of these?
Most plugins here used to live somewhere else: Home Assistant and Spotify were built into Hermes core and then briefly had their own repos, Langfuse shipped bundled with core as observability/langfuse, the Singularity/Apptainer terminal backend and the Camofox browser backend were built into core, MCP Serve was core's hermes mcp serve, and the rest each had a standalone NousResearch/hermes-* repo. Except for MCP Serve, you don't need to do anything.
- You used the built-in Home Assistant, Spotify, Langfuse, Singularity or Camofox backend:
hermes update, or the first start after updating, installs the plugin from the catalog with your existing config, env vars and login.
- You installed it from the catalog: the catalog now points here, so
hermes plugins update <name> moves your install to this repo and keeps your files.
- You used the built-in
hermes import-agent: profiles that registered an import for --sync get the agent-importers plugin on update; anywhere else, running hermes import-agent prints the one-line install (hermes plugins install agent-importers).
- You used
hermes claw migrate (OpenClaw): it now comes with the same plugin. After hermes plugins install agent-importers, both hermes import-agent openclaw and the old hermes claw migrate / hermes claw cleanup work with the same flags.
- You ran
hermes mcp serve: install with hermes plugins install mcp-serve and change your MCP client's args from ["mcp", "serve"] to ["mcp-serve"]. MCP clients are configured outside Hermes, so this one is not installed for you.
- You installed it by URL (for example
hermes plugins install NousResearch/hermes-homeassistant): reinstall once from the catalog with hermes plugins install <name> --force to follow future updates. The old repos are archived and get no new fixes.
Repository layout
hermes-official-plugins/
├── assets/ # README and catalog art
├── homeassistant/ # one self-contained plugin per directory
│ ├── plugin.yaml # manifest: name, tools, env vars, Hermes version
│ ├── __init__.py # register(ctx)
│ ├── pyproject.toml # plugin dependencies
│ └── tests/ # the plugin's own suite
├── blender/ # portable plugins: plugin.json + mcp.json + skills/
├── accent-picker/ # Desktop plugins: plugin.yaml + desktop/plugin.js
└── ...
Each directory is a complete Hermes plugin. The catalog installs one by repo + subdir at a pinned commit, and Hermes fetches only that directory (a blobless sparse clone), so installing Spotify never downloads Home Assistant.
Development
Every plugin is tested against current Hermes core on Linux, macOS and Windows, on every push and pull request. A nightly run catches core changes that break a plugin before users see them.
git clone https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
git clone https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-official-plugins
cd hermes-official-plugins/spotify
HERMES_AGENT_REPO=../../hermes-agent PYTHONPATH=../../hermes-agent python -m pytest -q
To try your local checkout in a real Hermes, install the directory: hermes plugins install ./spotify --force.
Releasing: merge to main, then open a PR on hermes-agent that bumps the plugin's sha: in plugin-catalog/<name>.yaml. The catalog pin is the release; every installed copy moves on its next hermes plugins update.
Issues: open them here and name the plugin in the title ([spotify] ...). Bugs in Hermes core belong on hermes-agent.
Build your own
Plugins are plain Python with a plugin.yaml. Start with the plugin guide and the example plugins, then submit yours to the catalog.
