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Hermes Agent v0.2.0 (v2026.3.12)

Release Date: March 12, 2026

First tagged release since v0.1.0 (the initial pre-public foundation). In just over two weeks, Hermes Agent went from a small internal project to a full-featured AI agent platform — thanks to an explosion of community contributions. This release covers 216 merged pull requests from 63 contributors, resolving 119 issues.

✨ Highlights

  • Multi-Platform Messaging Gateway — Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email (IMAP/SMTP), and Home Assistant platforms with unified session management, media attachments, and per-platform tool configuration.

  • MCP (Model Context Protocol) Client — Native MCP support with stdio and HTTP transports, reconnection, resource/prompt discovery, and sampling (server-initiated LLM requests). (#291 — @0xbyt4, #301, #753)

  • Skills Ecosystem — 70+ bundled and optional skills across 15+ categories with a Skills Hub for community discovery, per-platform enable/disable, conditional activation based on tool availability, and prerequisite validation. (#743 — @teyrebaz33, #785 — @teyrebaz33)

  • Centralized Provider Router — Unified call_llm()/async_call_llm() API replaces scattered provider logic across vision, summarization, compression, and trajectory saving. All auxiliary consumers route through a single code path with automatic credential resolution. (#1003)

  • ACP Server — VS Code, Zed, and JetBrains editor integration via the Agent Communication Protocol standard. (#949)

  • CLI Skin/Theme Engine — Data-driven visual customization: banners, spinners, colors, branding. 7 built-in skins + custom YAML skins.

  • Git Worktree Isolation — hermes -w launches isolated agent sessions in git worktrees for safe parallel work on the same repo. (#654)

  • Filesystem Checkpoints & Rollback — Automatic snapshots before destructive operations with /rollback to restore. (#824)

  • 3,289 Tests — From near-zero test coverage to a comprehensive test suite covering agent, gateway, tools, cron, and CLI.

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Provider & Model Support

  • Centralized provider router with resolve_provider_client() + call_llm() API (#1003)
  • Nous Portal as first-class provider in setup (#644)
  • OpenAI Codex (Responses API) with ChatGPT subscription support (#43) — @grp06
  • Codex OAuth vision support + multimodal content adapter
  • Validate /model against live API instead of hardcoded lists
  • Self-hosted Firecrawl support (#460) — @caentzminger
  • Kimi Code API support (#635) — @christomitov
  • MiniMax model ID update (#473) — @tars90percent
  • OpenRouter provider routing configuration (provider_preferences)
  • Nous credential refresh on 401 errors (#571, #269) — @rewbs
  • z.ai/GLM, Kimi/Moonshot, MiniMax, Azure OpenAI as first-class providers
  • Unified /model and /provider into single view

Agent Loop & Conversation

  • Simple fallback model for provider resilience (#740)
  • Shared iteration budget across parent + subagent delegation
  • Iteration budget pressure via tool result injection
  • Configurable subagent provider/model with full credential resolution
  • Handle 413 payload-too-large via compression instead of aborting (#153) — @tekelala
  • Retry with rebuilt payload after compression (#616) — @tripledoublev
  • Auto-compress pathologically large gateway sessions (#628)
  • Tool call repair middleware — auto-lowercase and invalid tool handler
  • Reasoning effort configuration and /reasoning command (#921)
  • Detect and block file re-read/search loops after context compression (#705) — @0xbyt4

Session & Memory

  • Session naming with unique titles, auto-lineage, rich listing, and resume by name (#720)
  • Interactive session browser with search filtering (#733)
  • Display previous messages when resuming a session (#734)
  • Honcho AI-native cross-session user modeling (#38) — @erosika
  • Proactive async memory flush on session expiry
  • Smart context length probing with persistent caching + banner display
  • /resume command for switching to named sessions in gateway
  • Session reset policy for messaging platforms

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

Telegram

  • Native file attachments: send_document + send_video
  • Document file processing for PDF, text, and Office files — @tekelala
  • Forum topic session isolation (#766) — @spanishflu-est1918
  • Browser screenshot sharing via MEDIA: protocol (#657)
  • Location support for find-nearby skill
  • TTS voice message accumulation fix (#176) — @Bartok9
  • Improved error handling and logging (#763) — @aydnOktay
  • Italic regex newline fix + 43 format tests (#204) — @0xbyt4

Discord

  • Channel topic included in session context (#248) — @Bartok9
  • DISCORD_ALLOW_BOTS config for bot message filtering (#758)
  • Document and video support (#784)
  • Improved error handling and logging (#761) — @aydnOktay

Slack

  • App_mention 404 fix + document/video support (#784)
  • Structured logging replacing print statements — @aydnOktay

WhatsApp

  • Native media sending — images, videos, documents (#292) — @satelerd
  • Multi-user session isolation (#75) — @satelerd
  • Cross-platform port cleanup replacing Linux-only fuser (#433) — @Farukest
  • DM interrupt key mismatch fix (#350) — @Farukest

Signal

  • Full Signal messenger gateway via signal-cli-rest-api (#405)
  • Media URL support in message events (#871)

Email (IMAP/SMTP)

  • New email gateway platform — @0xbyt4

Home Assistant

  • REST tools + WebSocket gateway integration (#184) — @0xbyt4
  • Service discovery and enhanced setup
  • Toolset mapping fix (#538) — @Himess

Gateway Core

  • Expose subagent tool calls and thinking to users (#186) — @cutepawss
  • Configurable background process watcher notifications (#840)
  • edit_message() for Telegram/Discord/Slack with fallback
  • /compress, /usage, /update slash commands
  • Eliminated 3x SQLite message duplication in gateway sessions (#873)
  • Stabilize system prompt across gateway turns for cache hits (#754)
  • MCP server shutdown on gateway exit (#796) — @0xbyt4
  • Pass session_db to AIAgent, fixing session_search error (#108) — @Bartok9
  • Persist transcript changes in /retry, /undo; fix /reset attribute (#217) — @Farukest
  • UTF-8 encoding fix preventing Windows crashes (#369) — @ch3ronsa

🖥️ CLI & User Experience

Interactive CLI

  • Data-driven skin/theme engine — 7 built-in skins (default, ares, mono, slate, poseidon, sisyphus, charizard) + custom YAML skins
  • /personality command with custom personality + disable support (#773) — @teyrebaz33
  • User-defined quick commands that bypass the agent loop (#746) — @teyrebaz33
  • /reasoning command for effort level and display toggle (#921)
  • /verbose slash command to toggle debug at runtime (#94) — @cesareth
  • /insights command — usage analytics, cost estimation & activity patterns (#552)
  • /background command for managing background processes
  • /help formatting with command categories
  • Bell-on-complete — terminal bell when agent finishes (#738)
  • Up/down arrow history navigation
  • Clipboard image paste (Alt+V / Ctrl+V)
  • Loading indicators for slow slash commands (#882)
  • Spinner flickering fix under patch_stdout (#91) — @0xbyt4
  • --quiet/-Q flag for programmatic single-query mode
  • --fuck-it-ship-it flag to bypass all approval prompts (#724) — @dmahan93
  • Tools summary flag (#767) — @luisv-1
  • Terminal blinking fix on SSH (#284) — @ygd58
  • Multi-line paste detection fix (#84) — @0xbyt4

Setup & Configuration

  • Modular setup wizard with section subcommands and tool-first UX
  • Container resource configuration prompts
  • Backend validation for required binaries
  • Config migration system (currently v7)
  • API keys properly routed to .env instead of config.yaml (#469) — @ygd58
  • Atomic write for .env to prevent API key loss on crash (#954)
  • hermes tools — per-platform tool enable/disable with curses UI
  • hermes doctor for health checks across all configured providers
  • hermes update with auto-restart for gateway service
  • Show update-available notice in CLI banner
  • Multiple named custom providers
  • Shell config detection improvement for PATH setup (#317) — @mehmetkr-31
  • Consistent HERMES_HOME and .env path resolution (#51, #48) — @deankerr
  • Docker backend fix on macOS + subagent auth for Nous Portal (#46) — @rsavitt

🔧 Tool System

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

  • Native MCP client with stdio + HTTP transports (#291 — @0xbyt4, #301)
  • Sampling support — server-initiated LLM requests (#753)
  • Resource and prompt discovery
  • Automatic reconnection and security hardening
  • Banner integration, /reload-mcp command
  • hermes tools UI integration

Browser

  • Local browser backend — zero-cost headless Chromium (no Browserbase needed)
  • Console/errors tool, annotated screenshots, auto-recording, dogfood QA skill (#745)
  • Screenshot sharing via MEDIA: on all messaging platforms (#657)

Terminal & Execution

  • execute_code sandbox with json_parse, shell_quote, retry helpers
  • Docker: custom volume mounts (#158) — @Indelwin
  • Daytona cloud sandbox backend (#451) — @rovle
  • SSH backend fix (#59) — @deankerr
  • Shell noise filtering and login shell execution for environment consistency
  • Head+tail truncation for execute_code stdout overflow
  • Configurable background process notification modes

File Operations

  • Filesystem checkpoints and /rollback command (#824)
  • Structured tool result hints (next-action guidance) for patch and search_files (#722)
  • Docker volumes passed to sandbox container config (#687) — @manuelschipper

🧩 Skills Ecosystem

Skills System

  • Per-platform skill enable/disable (#743) — @teyrebaz33
  • Conditional skill activation based on tool availability (#785) — @teyrebaz33
  • Skill prerequisites — hide skills with unmet dependencies (#659) — @kshitijk4poor
  • Optional skills — shipped but not activated by default
  • hermes skills browse — paginated hub browsing
  • Skills sub-category organization
  • Platform-conditional skill loading
  • Atomic skill file writes (#551) — @aydnOktay
  • Skills sync data loss prevention (#563) — @0xbyt4
  • Dynamic skill slash commands for CLI and gateway

New Skills (selected)

  • ASCII Art — pyfiglet (571 fonts), cowsay, image-to-ascii (#209) — @0xbyt4
  • ASCII Video — Full production pipeline (#854) — @SHL0MS
  • DuckDuckGo Search — Firecrawl fallback (#267) — @gamedevCloudy; DDGS API expansion (#598) — @areu01or00
  • Solana Blockchain — Wallet balances, USD pricing, token names (#212) — @gizdusum
  • AgentMail — Agent-owned email inboxes (#330) — @teyrebaz33
  • Polymarket — Prediction market data (read-only) (#629)
  • OpenClaw Migration — Official migration tool (#570) — @unmodeled-tyler
  • Domain Intelligence — Passive recon: subdomains, SSL, WHOIS, DNS (#136) — @FurkanL0
  • Superpowers — Software development skills (#137) — @kaos35
  • Hermes-Atropos — RL environment development skill (#815)
  • Plus: arXiv search, OCR/documents, Excalidraw diagrams, YouTube transcripts, GIF search, Pokémon player, Minecraft modpack server, OpenHue (Philips Hue), Google Workspace, Notion, PowerPoint, Obsidian, find-nearby, and 40+ MLOps skills

🔒 Security & Reliability

Security Hardening

  • Path traversal fix in skill_view — prevented reading arbitrary files (#220) — @Farukest
  • Shell injection prevention in sudo password piping (#65) — @leonsgithub
  • Dangerous command detection: multiline bypass fix (#233) — @Farukest; tee/process substitution patterns (#280) — @dogiladeveloper
  • Symlink boundary check fix in skills_guard (#386) — @Farukest
  • Symlink bypass fix in write deny list on macOS (#61) — @0xbyt4
  • Multi-word prompt injection bypass prevention (#192) — @0xbyt4
  • Cron prompt injection scanner bypass fix (#63) — @0xbyt4
  • Enforce 0600/0700 file permissions on sensitive files (#757)
  • .env file permissions restricted to owner-only (#529) — @Himess
  • --force flag properly blocked from overriding dangerous verdicts (#388) — @Farukest
  • FTS5 query sanitization + DB connection leak fix (#565) — @0xbyt4
  • Expand secret redaction patterns + config toggle to disable
  • In-memory permanent allowlist to prevent data leak (#600) — @alireza78a

Atomic Writes (data loss prevention)

  • sessions.json (#611) — @alireza78a
  • Cron jobs (#146) — @alireza78a
  • .env config (#954)
  • Process checkpoints (#298) — @aydnOktay
  • Batch runner (#297) — @aydnOktay
  • Skill files (#551) — @aydnOktay

Reliability

  • Guard all print() against OSError for systemd/headless environments (#963)
  • Reset all retry counters at start of run_conversation (#607) — @0xbyt4
  • Return deny on approval callback timeout instead of None (#603) — @0xbyt4
  • Fix None message content crashes across codebase (#277)
  • Fix context overrun crash with local LLM backends (#403) — @ch3ronsa
  • Prevent _flush_sentinel from leaking to external APIs (#227) — @Farukest
  • Prevent conversation_history mutation in callers (#229) — @Farukest
  • Fix systemd restart loop (#614) — @voidborne-d
  • Close file handles and sockets to prevent fd leaks (#568 — @alireza78a, #296 — @alireza78a, #709 — @memosr)
  • Prevent data loss in clipboard PNG conversion (#602) — @0xbyt4
  • Eliminate shell noise from terminal output (#293) — @0xbyt4
  • Timezone-aware now() for prompt, cron, and execute_code (#309) — @areu01or00

Windows Compatibility

  • Guard POSIX-only process functions (#219) — @Farukest
  • Windows native support via Git Bash + ZIP-based update fallback
  • pywinpty for PTY support (#457) — @shitcoinsherpa
  • Explicit UTF-8 encoding on all config/data file I/O (#458) — @shitcoinsherpa
  • Windows-compatible path handling (#354, #390) — @Farukest
  • Regex-based search output parsing for drive-letter paths (#533) — @Himess
  • Auth store file lock for Windows (#455) — @shitcoinsherpa

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

  • Fix DeepSeek V3 tool call parser silently dropping multi-line JSON arguments (#444) — @PercyDikec
  • Fix gateway transcript losing 1 message per turn due to offset mismatch (#395) — @PercyDikec
  • Fix /retry command silently discarding the agent's final response (#441) — @PercyDikec
  • Fix max-iterations retry returning empty string after think-block stripping (#438) — @PercyDikec
  • Fix max-iterations retry using hardcoded max_tokens (#436) — @Farukest
  • Fix Codex status dict key mismatch (#448) and visibility filter (#446) — @PercyDikec
  • Strip <think> blocks from final user-facing responses (#174) — @Bartok9
  • Fix <think> block regex stripping visible content when model discusses tags literally (#786)
  • Fix Mistral 422 errors from leftover finish_reason in assistant messages (#253) — @Sertug17
  • Fix OPENROUTER_API_KEY resolution order across all code paths (#295) — @0xbyt4
  • Fix OPENAI_BASE_URL API key priority (#420) — @manuelschipper
  • Fix Anthropic "prompt is too long" 400 error not detected as context length error (#813)
  • Fix SQLite session transcript accumulating duplicate messages — 3-4x token inflation (#860)
  • Fix setup wizard skipping API key prompts on first install (#748)
  • Fix setup wizard showing OpenRouter model list for Nous Portal (#575) — @PercyDikec
  • Fix provider selection not persisting when switching via hermes model (#881)
  • Fix Docker backend failing when docker not in PATH on macOS (#889)
  • Fix ClawHub Skills Hub adapter for API endpoint changes (#286) — @BP602
  • Fix Honcho auto-enable when API key is present (#243) — @Bartok9
  • Fix duplicate 'skills' subparser crash on Python 3.11+ (#898)
  • Fix memory tool entry parsing when content contains section sign (#162) — @aydnOktay
  • Fix piped install silently aborting when interactive prompts fail (#72) — @cutepawss
  • Fix false positives in recursive delete detection (#68) — @cutepawss
  • Fix Ruff lint warnings across codebase (#608) — @JackTheGit
  • Fix Anthropic native base URL fail-fast (#173) — @adavyas
  • Fix install.sh creating ~/.hermes before moving Node.js directory (#53) — @JoshuaMart
  • Fix SystemExit traceback during atexit cleanup on Ctrl+C (#55) — @bierlingm
  • Restore missing MIT license file (#620) — @stablegenius49

🧪 Testing

  • 3,289 tests across agent, gateway, tools, cron, and CLI
  • Parallelized test suite with pytest-xdist (#802) — @OutThisLife
  • Unit tests batch 1: 8 core modules (#60) — @0xbyt4
  • Unit tests batch 2: 8 more modules (#62) — @0xbyt4
  • Unit tests batch 3: 8 untested modules (#191) — @0xbyt4
  • Unit tests batch 4: 5 security/logic-critical modules (#193) — @0xbyt4
  • AIAgent (run_agent.py) unit tests (#67) — @0xbyt4
  • Trajectory compressor tests (#203) — @0xbyt4
  • Clarify tool tests (#121) — @Bartok9
  • Telegram format tests — 43 tests for italic/bold/code rendering (#204) — @0xbyt4
  • Vision tools type hints + 42 tests (#792)
  • Compressor tool-call boundary regression tests (#648) — @intertwine
  • Test structure reorganization (#34) — @0xbyt4
  • Shell noise elimination + fix 36 test failures (#293) — @0xbyt4

🔬 RL & Evaluation Environments

  • WebResearchEnv — Multi-step web research RL environment (#434) — @jackx707
  • Modal sandbox concurrency limits to avoid deadlocks (#621) — @voteblake
  • Hermes-atropos-environments bundled skill (#815)
  • Local vLLM instance support for evaluation — @dmahan93
  • YC-Bench long-horizon agent benchmark environment
  • OpenThoughts-TBLite evaluation environment and scripts

📚 Documentation

  • Full documentation website (Docusaurus) with 37+ pages
  • Comprehensive platform setup guides for Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email
  • AGENTS.md — development guide for AI coding assistants
  • CONTRIBUTING.md (#117) — @Bartok9
  • Slash commands reference (#142) — @Bartok9
  • Comprehensive AGENTS.md accuracy audit (#732)
  • Skin/theme system documentation
  • MCP documentation and examples
  • Docs accuracy audit — 35+ corrections
  • Documentation typo fixes (#825, #439) — @JackTheGit
  • CLI config precedence and terminology standardization (#166, #167, #168) — @Jr-kenny
  • Telegram token regex documentation (#713) — @VolodymyrBg

👥 Contributors

Thank you to the 63 contributors who made this release possible! In just over two weeks, the Hermes Agent community came together to ship an extraordinary amount of work.

Core

  • @teknium1 — 43 PRs: Project lead, core architecture, provider router, sessions, skills, CLI, documentation

Top Community Contributors

  • @0xbyt4 — 40 PRs: MCP client, Home Assistant, security fixes (symlink, prompt injection, cron), extensive test coverage (6 batches), ascii-art skill, shell noise elimination, skills sync, Telegram formatting, and dozens more
  • @Farukest — 16 PRs: Security hardening (path traversal, dangerous command detection, symlink boundary), Windows compatibility (POSIX guards, path handling), WhatsApp fixes, max-iterations retry, gateway fixes
  • @aydnOktay — 11 PRs: Atomic writes (process checkpoints, batch runner, skill files), error handling improvements across Telegram, Discord, code execution, transcription, TTS, and skills
  • @Bartok9 — 9 PRs: CONTRIBUTING.md, slash commands reference, Discord channel topics, think-block stripping, TTS fix, Honcho fix, session count fix, clarify tests
  • @PercyDikec — 7 PRs: DeepSeek V3 parser fix, /retry response discard, gateway transcript offset, Codex status/visibility, max-iterations retry, setup wizard fix
  • @teyrebaz33 — 5 PRs: Skills enable/disable system, quick commands, personality customization, conditional skill activation
  • @alireza78a — 5 PRs: Atomic writes (cron, sessions), fd leak prevention, security allowlist, code execution socket cleanup
  • @shitcoinsherpa — 3 PRs: Windows support (pywinpty, UTF-8 encoding, auth store lock)
  • @Himess — 3 PRs: Cron/HomeAssistant/Daytona fix, Windows drive-letter parsing, .env permissions
  • @satelerd — 2 PRs: WhatsApp native media, multi-user session isolation
  • @rovle — 1 PR: Daytona cloud sandbox backend (4 commits)
  • @erosika — 1 PR: Honcho AI-native memory integration
  • @dmahan93 — 1 PR: --fuck-it-ship-it flag + RL environment work
  • @SHL0MS — 1 PR: ASCII video skill

All Contributors

@0xbyt4, @BP602, @Bartok9, @Farukest, @FurkanL0, @Himess, @Indelwin, @JackTheGit, @JoshuaMart, @Jr-kenny, @OutThisLife, @PercyDikec, @SHL0MS, @Sertug17, @VencentSoliman, @VolodymyrBg, @adavyas, @alireza78a, @areu01or00, @aydnOktay, @batuhankocyigit, @bierlingm, @caentzminger, @cesareth, @ch3ronsa, @christomitov, @cutepawss, @deankerr, @dmahan93, @dogiladeveloper, @dragonkhoi, @erosika, @gamedevCloudy, @gizdusum, @grp06, @intertwine, @jackx707, @jdblackstar, @johnh4098, @kaos35, @kshitijk4poor, @leonsgithub, @luisv-1, @manuelschipper, @mehmetkr-31, @memosr, @PeterFile, @rewbs, @rovle, @rsavitt, @satelerd, @spanishflu-est1918, @stablegenius49, @tars90percent, @tekelala, @teknium1, @teyrebaz33, @tripledoublev, @unmodeled-tyler, @voidborne-d, @voteblake, @ygd58

Full Changelog: v0.1.0...v2026.3.12