Hermes Research Agent

A shareable Hermes Agent profile distribution for evidence-grounded research. It packages a clean SOUL.md, minimal config.yaml, and bundled research workflow skills so the agent can be installed from GitHub without copying a personal Hermes profile.

Install

hermes profile install github.com/deeploaf/hermes-research-agent --alias

Then copy the generated env example and add your own API key:

cp ~/.hermes/profiles/research-agent/.env.EXAMPLE ~/.hermes/profiles/research-agent/.env
$EDITOR ~/.hermes/profiles/research-agent/.env

Run it:

research-agent chat
# or
hermes -p research-agent chat -q "Research the current state of ..."

Update

hermes profile update research-agent

Hermes preserves user-owned state such as .env, sessions, memories, auth files, logs, workspaces, and local caches. config.yaml is normally preserved on update so installers can keep their model/provider overrides. Use --force-config only if you want to reset config from this repo.

What is included

• distribution.yaml — profile distribution manifest and required environment variables.
• SOUL.md — research-agent persona and quality bar.
• config.yaml — OpenRouter default model and a minimal research toolset.
• skills/research/source-first-research/SKILL.md — reusable source-first research workflow.
• skills/research/research-synthesis/SKILL.md — synthesis/reporting workflow.
• .env.EXAMPLE — key names only, no secrets.

No cron jobs are enabled by default. This keeps first installs read-only unless the user explicitly asks the agent to take an action.

Security and privacy notes

This repository is intended to be safe to publish. It must not contain:

• .env files or API keys
• auth.json or OAuth tokens
• memories/
• sessions/
• logs/
• state.db* or other SQLite runtime state
• workspaces, caches, or browser screenshots
• personal/private profile content from ~/.hermes/default

Before publishing updates, run:

git status --short
python3 scripts/secret_scan.py

Change model/provider

The distribution defaults to OpenRouter:

model:
  provider: openrouter
  default: anthropic/claude-sonnet-4

Installers can edit ~/.hermes/profiles/research-agent/config.yaml to use any Hermes-supported provider and put the relevant API key in .env.

Development install test

From a local checkout:

hermes profile install . --name research-agent-test -y
hermes profile info research-agent-test