Hermes Agent v0.20.6 (v2026.8.27)

Release Date: August 27, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~525 PRs merged since v0.20.5 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

About this release

Since v0.20.5 (v2026.8.19, tagged August 21), this window landed ~1,313 commits across ~1,557 files (+177,113 / −21,682) — ~525 merged PRs including consent-gated real-profile browsing (use your default Chromium profile for local browsing, with Windows close-with-approval flow); the desktop Browser getting its own OS window plus a managed SSH remote-update engine and fleet profile rail; a large remote MCP catalog expansion (50+ live-verified vendor-hosted servers incl. Cloudflare, Grafana Cloud, Better Stack, Railway); TTL result caching for web_search/web_extract; lean-tail compression as the default; multi-query tool_search with stemming; opt-in OS-keychain encryption for stored secrets (no more per-launch macOS Keychain prompts); updaters pausing gateways over the control socket instead of tree-killing them; image/package-managed installs refusing unsafe in-place updates (#91277 Phase 3); cron durable-incident acks and clearer code-skew failures; Slack link-unfurl controls; shared Docker container identities; pluggable terminal environment backends; and new models across the pickers (GLM-5.3-Flash, MiniMax M3 free, MiniMax H3 Max video).

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

Updating

hermes update from an existing install

Fresh install: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Full Changelog: v2026.8.19...v2026.8.27

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.20.5 (v2026.8.19)

Release Date: August 19, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~323 PRs merged since v0.20.4 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

About this release

Since v0.20.4 (v2026.8.18, tagged August 18), this window landed ~746 commits across ~1,250 files (+111,500 / −20,701) — ~323 merged PRs including Bot Mode group-room threads, foldable conversation summaries, blob-face avatars, and PDF/file attachments with drag & drop; the keyless web tier (5-vendor free rotation with ring failover, web search on fresh installs with zero keys); a CLI polish wave (fuzzy /model picker, Ctrl+P command palette, richer /status); execution-discipline and runtime stall guards from the Composio eval findings; hermes update receipts and fleet --plan verification; hermes worktree list/prune; the opencode-free zero-auth provider; multi-question clarify; desktop perf work (paint-first Bot Mode hydration, compositor spinners, React Compiler in both renderers); and cron jobs gaining persistent memory and per-job reasoning effort.

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

Updating

hermes update from an existing install

Fresh install: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Full Changelog: v2026.8.18...v2026.8.19

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.20.4 (v2026.8.18)

Release Date: August 18, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~74 PRs merged since v0.20.3 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

About this release

Since v0.20.3 (v2026.8.16.2, tagged August 17), this window landed ~146 commits across ~265 files (+21,697 / −2,217) — ~74 merged PRs including the desktop glass/translucency surface work (matte glass, frost picker, macOS pre-select), the tabbed SESSIONS|BOTS sidebar with per-bot hide/unhide, Bot Mode group-chat fixes (long-running member turns, Markdown rendering, cross-machine routing), NVIDIA SkillEvaluator Tier 1 advisory scanning on skill installs (license + security checks), cron media-send hardening (configurable timeout, manual-run attachments, missed-fire surfacing), SessionDB event-loop-thread and contention fixes, hermes update parked-branch honesty, and kanban native OS notifications.

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

Updating

hermes update from an existing install

Fresh install: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Full Changelog: v2026.8.16.2...v2026.8.18

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.20.3 (v2026.8.16.2)

Release Date: August 16, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~125 PRs merged since v0.20.2 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

About this release

Since v0.20.2 (v2026.8.16, tagged earlier today), this window landed ~250 commits across ~461 files (+42,613 / −1,641) — ~125 merged PRs including the MCP 2.x SDK migration and 2026-07-28 stateless protocol support, the bundled Bot Mode (hermes-bots) plugin with the core teammate protocol, the CommandCode provider plugin, subprocess Python runtime ownership hardening (PYTHONHOME/PYTHONPATH isolation), Cua Driver 0.20 runtime contracts for computer use, kanban worktree/dispatch fixes, cron continuity flags, desktop remote-gateway headers and connection self-healing, cron scheduler self-heal (EMFILE recovery, stale-claim reconciliation, wedged-job re-arm), session handoff data-loss fixes, plus a wave of ports from the ecosystem scout slate (plugin install security scanning, /worktree, /rollback hand-edit preservation, UTF-16 file reads, Gemini 3 tool-call ID preservation, and more).

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

Updating

hermes update from an existing install

Fresh install: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Full Changelog: v2026.8.16...v2026.8.16.2

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.20.2 (v2026.8.16)

Release Date: August 16, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~397 PRs merged since v0.20.1 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

About this release

Since v0.20.1 (v2026.8.13, tagged August 13), this window landed ~967 commits across ~1,279 files (+128,522 / −7,622) — ~397 merged PRs of fixes and improvements spanning the desktop app (multi-gateway Connections registry, profile-scoped refreshes, MCP health checks and deep links), the CLI (Windows update probes, Kitty keyboard protocol, chat -c hardening), the gateway (persisted model routes, /loop completion, Telegram DM topics), prompt caching for LiteLLM Claude on the OpenAI wire, cron hardening, auth resolution through profile scopes, and installer robustness on both Linux and Windows.

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

Updating

hermes update from an existing install

Fresh install: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Full Changelog: v2026.8.13...v2026.8.16

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.20.1 (v2026.8.13)

Release Date: August 13, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~656 PRs merged since v0.20.0 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, and anyone installing from the latest tag).

About this release

Since v0.20.0 (August 3), this window landed 1,444 commits across ~656 merged PRs, touching 2,172 files (+233,872 / −75,244), and closed ~481 issues. It is a broad stabilization-and-fixes rollup spanning the desktop app, gateway platforms, installers, tool system, and provider catalogs.

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

Updating

Existing installs: hermes update

Fresh install: see the installer one-liner in the README

Full Changelog: v2026.8.3...v2026.8.13

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.20.0 (v2026.8.3)

Release Date: August 3, 2026

Since v0.19.0: ~3,650 commits · ~1,400 merged PRs · ~5,200 files changed · ~559,000 insertions · ~405,000 deletions · ~1,200 issues closed · 650+ contributors

The Herald Release. Hermes is the herald of the gods, and this release makes him one in earnest: he speaks (real-time conversational voice with streaming TTS, barge-in, on-device wake words, and hands-free control across the CLI, desktop, and every audio-capable gateway platform), he carries word to other agents (A2A v1.0), he announces events to your systems (signed outbound webhooks), and he cites his sources (grounded research with verifiable citations and fact-checking). Around that spine: the desktop app became a platform (artifacts with live preview, a plugin SDK, quick-entry from anywhere, multiple windows), the CLI got a wave of power commands (! shell mode, /init, /diff, /context, /focus), compression got smarter and gentler, and the tools themselves now recover from their own failures instead of making the model guess. This release rolls up everything from the v0.19.1 infrastructure patch tag — that window is fully documented here.

✨ Highlights

Talk to Hermes — streaming, conversational voice with barge-in — Voice mode used to mean: speak, wait for the whole reply to generate, then listen to one long audio file. Now Hermes speaks clause-by-clause as the response streams, you can interrupt it mid-sentence by just talking (it stops, listens, and the model is told you cut in), and busy-aware silence detection means it doesn't talk over you. This works in CLI voice mode, on the desktop, and through gateway adapters. Talking to Hermes finally feels like a conversation, not a voicemail exchange. (#69511, #73862, #74223, #74000, #69602 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Wake words and hands-free control — Say your own open-vocabulary wake phrase ("hey Hermes", or anything you pick) and Hermes starts listening — detection runs on-device, so no audio leaves your machine while it waits. Multi-profile voice routing means different wake words can reach different profiles, and saying "stop" ends the voice chat on every surface without touching the keyboard. Your terminal is now something you can talk to from across the room. (#70509, #73106, #73933 — @teknium1)

Voice on every platform — Send a voice note to Hermes on WhatsApp, Feishu, DingTalk, LINE, QQ, Photon, or Weixin and it's transcribed and answered; auto-TTS replies are delivered platform-aware (opus where platforms want opus, captions attached correctly). STT is now fully configurable — its own hermes tools category, GUI toggles, dashboard dropdowns, unified language resolution so transcripts stop coming back in the wrong language, and OpenAI's gpt-transcribe support. One unified spoken-text preprocessor cleans markdown, code, and URLs out of speech across all TTS providers. (#73515, #73508, #73910, #73513, #73067 — @teknium1)

Research you can trust — grounded citations with fact-checking — The new grounded-citations skill makes Hermes produce research where every claim is backed by a verifiable source: quotes are matched against the actual page text (not hallucinated), citations link to the exact evidence, and a fact-checking mode turns the same machinery on any document or claim you hand it — it tells you what checks out, what doesn't, and what couldn't be verified. If you use Hermes for research, this is the difference between "sounds right" and "provably sourced." (#71698, #77104 — @teknium1)

Outbound webhooks — Hermes pushes events to your systems — Until now, integrating with Hermes meant polling or listening on a platform. Now Hermes pushes signed lifecycle events (session activity, turn completions, tool events) to any HTTP endpoint you register — with HMAC signatures so your receiver can verify authenticity. Wire Hermes into your CI, your home automation, your dashboards, or any service that speaks HTTP, with no polling loop. (#69406 — @teknium1)

The desktop app becomes a platform — artifacts, plugin SDK, quick entry — Hermes desktop now renders artifacts: versioned cards with sandboxed live preview in a right-rail viewer, so generated HTML/apps run safely next to the chat. A real plugin SDK landed with Kanban as its founding plugin, ctx.download for handing users files, floating pane placement, and multiple GUI windows. A global-hotkey quick-entry window captures a thought into any session from anywhere in your OS. The desktop stopped being a chat client and started being a workbench. (#72345, #61173, #74413, #72315, #68259, #73143 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Hermes speaks Agent-to-Agent — A2A v1.0 — A new bundled plugin implements the Agent-to-Agent protocol, so Hermes can discover, talk to, and be driven by other A2A-compatible agents. This closes issue #514 — one of the oldest open feature requests in the repo. If you're building multi-agent systems with heterogeneous stacks, Hermes now has a standard wire protocol for joining them. (#77109 — @teknium1)

CLI power-user wave — !command runs a shell command instantly without spending a model turn. /init scans your project and generates (or updates) an AGENTS.md. /diff shows staged/all/session changes from any surface, /context breaks down exactly what's filling your context window, /focus gives you a reduced-output view with hidden-line recovery, and Ctrl+S stashes a half-written prompt into a browsable panel. Plus hermes import-agent migrates your Claude Code or Codex CLI setup into Hermes in one command. (#72257, #72178, #72240, #72242, #72302, #72262, #72190 — @teknium1, several salvaging long-standing community PRs)

Correct the agent mid-turn — redirects — If Hermes is heading the wrong way, you no longer have to /stop and re-explain. Type a correction while it works and the active turn is redirected: work in flight is preserved, the original prompt is kept, and the agent course-corrects with your new guidance. Paired with double-ESC draft discard and a composer undo stack, steering feels like editing, not restarting. (#63104, #72339, #74736 — @OutThisLife)

Tools that fix themselves — A sweep of self-recovery upgrades means the agent wastes far fewer turns on tool friction: truncated terminal output spills to a file the agent can read back, patch detects already-applied edits and diagnoses whitespace mismatches, write_file verifies content on disk, searches that match nothing probe for near-misses and recover, and common failure classes come back with actionable hints. The default tool-calling iteration limit also jumped 90 → 500 — long autonomous runs stopped hitting an artificial wall. (#77041, #76998, #77024, #77055, #77011, #76992, #72176 — @teknium1)

Compression that respects your conversation — Context compression got a deep overhaul: proactive tool-result pruning for large-window models, per-turn micro-compaction that amortizes the cost instead of one giant pause, a guaranteed N-user-message tail so recent conversation always survives, progress-aware timeouts that stop punishing slow summary models, and ghost-skill defense so a pruned skill can never silently haunt a session. Thresholds are now configurable per-model and in absolute tokens. Long sessions stay coherent and stop stalling. (#70254, #75345, #70250, #71508, #70275 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, salvaging multiple community PRs)

Smart approvals grow up — hermes approvals suggest mines your approval history into allowlist proposals, operators can customize the smart-approval policy, a consecutive-denial circuit breaker stops a misbehaving loop cold, and desktop pairing approvals are profile-correct with a proper surface to answer them from. Plus a new approval gate for docker/podman daemon-redirect commands. Less clicking "approve", without giving an inch of control. (#72259, #72186, #72203, #74446, #71092 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Faster everywhere, again — Prompt caching now covers tool schemas on native Anthropic without history loss. hermes -w cold start dropped ~14s → ~1.8s, hermes update no-ops got 2–6s faster, heavy SDKs lazy-load off the import path, config reads stopped deep-copying (54× faster on the telemetry gate), and the desktop shipped a second 60fps wave — streaming cost independent of transcript length, drag at 60fps with five streaming tabs, idle CPU near zero in the background. (#76032, #71637, #74218, #74204, #71835, #72346, #75218 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

New places to run and be reached — Buzz lands as a bundled gateway platform (Block's Nostr-based messenger, with native WebSocket transport and NIP-42 auth), the Vercel AI Gateway provider and Vercel Sandbox terminal backend return modernized, desktop gains an SSH remote-backend connection mode, and the Relay shipped four phases of parity — media, interactive prompts, thread lifecycle, typing indicators — plus HSP personal + org skill sync. (#73610, #73761, #74518, #68130, #71300–#71624, #66730 — @teknium1, @yoniebans, @benbarclay)

🎙️ Voice & Speech

Conversational voice

Streaming, conversational TTS with barge-in across all surfaces; clause-by-clause synthesis for CLI voice mode + gateway adapters (#69511, #73862 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Voice chat UX polish — busy-aware silence, stop hint, thinking sounds, barge-in fix; full-duplex turn listener (interrupt by voice during generation AND playback) (#74000, #74223 — @teknium1)

On-device wake words with open-vocabulary phrases + multi-profile voice routing; say "stop" to end voice chat hands-free on every surface (#70509, #73106, #73933 — @teknium1)

The model is told when the user interrupts its spoken reply; desktop speaks the whole turn and idle-flushes held narration (#69602, #69936 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

15-item CLI/TUI voice-mode UX and environment fix wave (#73520 — @teknium1)

TTS / STT infrastructure

Unified spoken-text preprocessing + speed/instructions/provider tool params; unified STT language resolution (fixes the wrong-language transcription class); global stt.language defaults to en (#73513, #73067, #73100 — @teknium1)

Fully configurable STT — hermes tools category, GUI toggle/matrix, dashboard dropdowns, setup status; OpenAI gpt-transcribe support (#73910, #73853 — @teknium1)

Platform-aware auto-TTS voice delivery (opus platforms, streamed/global gap, captions); inbound voice classification/routing for Feishu, DingTalk, LINE, QQ, Photon, WhatsApp, Weixin (#73508, #73515 — @teknium1)

Command TTS/STT provider hardening — idle timeouts, env scrubbing, no-shell, path guards (#73514 — @teknium1)

Sync per-sentence TTS synthesis pipelined with playback — the next sentence renders while the current one speaks (#77355 — @kshitijk4poor)

Discord voice PCM streams to ffmpeg stdin instead of a temp file (#76970 — @kshitijk4poor)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Compression & context

Proactive tool-result pruning for large-window models; per-turn micro-compaction; N-user tail guarantee (compression.min_tail_user_messages); bounded summarizer input with head+tail retention (#70254, #75345, #70250, #70249 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

Ghost-skill defense — [SKILL_PRUNED] markers, protected prune, deterministic survival; progress-aware timeouts; lock-contended compression soft-defers instead of exhausting (#70275, #71508, #70285 — @teknium1)

Per-model threshold overrides; absolute token threshold (compression.threshold_tokens); opt-in idle-triggered compaction; opt-in progress notices; structured local logging for compression attempts (#69339, #69335, #69360, #70457, #69338 — @teknium1)

Context-engine ABC grows select_context() + on_turn_complete() verbs (salvage of @chaos-xxl's RFC work); engines can suppress or customize compaction status (#70458, #69859 — @teknium1)

Strict redaction applied at every compaction text boundary (#69294 — @teknium1)

Prompt caching & hot-path performance

Tool schemas cached on native Anthropic without history loss + consolidated cache-plan internals (#76032, #76067 — @kshitijk4poor)

DeepSeek prompt caching on OpenCode gateways; per-API-call token accounting off the turn thread; OpenAI wire client reused across sequential LLM calls; send-path tool-call canonicalization memoized (#75886, #73359, #73375, #76880 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

Readonly config loader at 29 call sites (28× cheaper reads); per-turn config deepcopies killed (telemetry gate 54×); one raw config.yaml parse per process; inter-tool delay removed (#74322, #74211, #74228, #64172 — @teknium1, @Soju06)

Lazy heavy-SDK imports (−8-10% import cost on top of the mcp/tool-discovery diet); streaming hot loop drops per-chunk repr() (~3× cheaper accounting); cursor/memo optimizations for per-iteration history walks (#74204, #74194, #74221, #74231 — @teknium1)

Cold-start ~14s GIL stall during backend init mitigated; turn flush batched into one SQLite transaction; provider-capability-gated prompt cache keys (implied for api.openai.com) (#77814, #77619, #77609 — @kshitijk4poor)

AIAgent hot-path salvage — prompt-cache copy, reasoning-timeout precompute, lazy compressor init (#57229 — @kshitijk4poor)

Approvals & the agent loop

hermes approvals suggest mines approval history into allowlist proposals; operator-customizable approvals.smart_policy; consecutive-denial circuit breaker; cross-surface approvals mode command (#72259, #72186, #72203, #63517 — @teknium1)

Docker/podman daemon-redirect commands require approval; session-wide runaway-loop caps for web_search + delegate_task (Claude Code-inspired) (#71092, #66600 — @teknium1)

Mid-turn redirects — user corrections steer the active turn, preserving in-flight work and the original prompt (#63104, #72339 — @OutThisLife)

Delegation: structured timeout/stall metadata + live per-child status in /agents; subagents can use execute_code; redacted child tool history exposed in subagent_stop; public subagent lifecycle API for plugins (#72300, #69325, #72403, #72501 — @teknium1)

Single-owner refactors for backend identity + failure-scoped skips, empty-content wire repair, call_id/reasoning sanitization, model-switch parsing (#72505, #73071, #74319, #74229 — @teknium1)

Labeled reasoning excerpt surfaced at the empty-response terminal; tool_search probe-validates blind tool_call args (#65144, #59267 — @teknium1)

Tool self-recovery wave

Terminal: recoverable truncation (full output spilled + pre-truncation size), cwd echoed when a command changes directory, output-pattern failure hints (#77041, #77004, #76992 — @teknium1)

Patch: already-applied edits return success no-op, whitespace-visualized no-match diagnosis, ambiguous-match locations listed (#76998, #77024, #77001 — @teknium1)

Search: zero-match probes + multi-path recovery, auto-multiline for newline patterns; read_file default limit 500 → 2000 lines; negative-result cache for read/search misses; write_file verifies on-disk content (#77011, #77102, #76996, #76945, #77055 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

execute_code recovery hints; skill_view dedup stub for unchanged re-reads; terminal/execute_code schema prose trimmed ~40%; tiered tool disclosure scales with catalog size; default iteration limit 90 → 500 (#77106, #77095, #77023, #67034, #72176 — @teknium1)

Providers & models

Vercel AI Gateway provider + Vercel Sandbox terminal backend return, modernized (SDK 0.7.2, telemetry off) (#74518 — @teknium1)

Gemini 3.1 Pro + 3.6 Flash in catalogs; Gemini salvage cluster (3.6-flash aux default, Vertex catalog, direct cost tracking); claude-opus-5 in OpenRouter + Nous Portal; deepseek-v4-flash-0731 (#73479, #73516, #70946, #75501 — @teknium1)

Bedrock Converse API prompt caching (cachePoint) (#70231 — @JoaoMarcos44)

OpenAI data-residency endpoints get declared transport + correct catalog; provider-aware API-server request routing; backend-acknowledged session model lock; Nous sticky routing via top-level session_id (#74958, #70853, #70950, #69253 — @victor-kyriazakos, @teknium1)

Model picker: curated defaults + collapsible providers + select-all; stale caches served instantly with background refresh; custom-endpoint probe capped at 1.5s; honcho OAuth device-code login (#73172, #76430, #76922, #61608 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @akattelu)

ACP: named custom providers in the model selector; authenticated cross-provider model choices; non-blocking startup via background MCP discovery (#70082, #70404, #75985 — @israellot, @amanning3390, @kshitijk4poor)

Secrets & config

Command-helper secret source (composes with all vaults); one-command token rotation + actionable startup errors; opt-in encrypted break-glass cache for Bitwarden; vault-injected keys scoped per profile home; orchestrator preserve_existing + profile aliasing (#69266, #68605, #69251, #69250, #69058 — @teknium1)

${env:VAR} SecretRef parity between config.yaml and MCP config; secret-source env vars reach stdio MCP servers (#69267, #69053 — @teknium1)

Canonical config loaders for behavioral reads; table-driven config migration registry; DEFAULT_CONFIG extracted to config_defaults.py; auto-migration support floor at v12 (#74237, #74200, #74182, #74433 — @teknium1)

🌐 Gateway, Relay & Fleet

Session activity heartbeats, stall watchdog, and bounded compression waits — re-landed hardened after an in-window revert cycle (originally #72424 by @fangliquanflq) (#76354 — @teknium1)

SessionState consolidation (19 session-keyed dicts → one turn/conversation/persistent-scoped object); TurnContext/TurnRunner seam extraction; declarative busy_policy on CommandDef (#74289, #74353, #74197 — @teknium1)

Relay parity waves: Phase 1 (supported_ops discovery, identity fields, /handoff aliasing), Phase 2 media, Phase 3 interactive prompts, Phase 4 thread lifecycle; egress typing indicators (#71300, #71363, #71404, #71624, #69721 — @benbarclay)

HSP skill sync: personal client (M1) + org-skills client (M2) + org-skill namespace with token-gated discovery (#66730, #70024, #70459 — @benbarclay)

Buzz (Block/Nostr) platform adapter with native WebSocket inbound transport + NIP-42 auth (#73610, #73761 — @teknium1)

Photon: native polls, effects, clarify-as-poll, rich links (4-PR salvage) (#73614 — @teknium1)

Slack: native Block Kit clarify buttons; opt-in reaction triggers; outbound payload sanitization; thread-context lifecycle fixes (#69318, #70195, #69317, #69320 — @teknium1)

Discord auto-thread sessions keyed on prospective_thread_id; reply references built from ids (no fetch_message); WhatsApp configurable inbound read receipts (#76513, #76875, #73322 — @benbarclay, @kshitijk4poor)

Kanban wakes resume the creator's DM/thread session; kanban/delegate wake-ups reach api_server sessions; per-task model + thinking-depth from the board (#72191, #70171, #69876, #76417 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Relay: Discord tool-progress routed into the auto-thread instead of the parent channel (#77830 — @benbarclay)

Outbound webhooks — push signed lifecycle events to external endpoints; simplex channel enumeration in hermes send --list (#69406, #77110 — @teknium1)

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

The platform wave

Artifacts — versioned cards, sandboxed live preview, right-rail viewer (#72345 — @teknium1)

Plugin SDK — Kanban as the founding desktop plugin; ctx.download hands the user a file; widget-app SDK (apps as state+reducer+render) with three reference apps; widget-grid layout engine + background-aware theme engine (#61173, #74413, #68306, #20379 — @OutThisLife)

Quick-entry window (global hotkey → any session); multiple GUI windows; floating pane placement; pane toggles anywhere + hidden header; ⌘O open-folder-as-project (#72315, #68259, #73143, #75848, #74623 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

SSH remote-backend connection mode; event-driven live sync replaces always-on polls; remote profile routing/sessions/pool lifecycle repaired (#68130, #73673, #72835 — @yoniebans, @OutThisLife)

Let the agent drive the shell (preview pane + pane focus) AND inspect the desktop app it's developing; find-in-page (Ctrl+F); GUI terminal copy/paste + font picker (#69519, #73121, #72235, #73705, #76395 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Composer & UX

Attach files/folders/links via picker; composer chips for @ paths and pasted links; composer undo stack; double-ESC discards draft; double-Enter sends the queued turn; type-to-focus (#74668, #73110, #72201, #72288, #74736, #73101, #68918 — @OutThisLife)

2-keypress model switching (⌘⇧M); YOLO in ⌘K with live toggle state; keyboard-first pickers; keyboard navigation for clarify choices; server-owned pins that follow you between apps (#74545, #74674, #74602, #69799, #74234 — @OutThisLife)

Grouped, live-ticking tool-activity line; improved tool call detail views; @session links resolve to clickable titles; brand icons on known-domain links; iMessage-style emoji reactions (opt-in, two-way); double-click to heart (#72893, #69868, #71162, #73047, #74533, #74644 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Sidebar date dividers + pinned section + opt-in stale-session auto-archive; sessions stop lying about running state; credit-usage toasts; configurable attachment size limit; Cron Blueprints + Webhooks pages; searchable timezone picker (#70822, #72303, #69828, #73221, #70066, #69687, #73505 — @OutThisLife, @austinpickett, @Adolanium, @teknium1)

RFC 8252 native desktop sign-in (system browser + PKCE, no webview cookies); "Connect to existing Hermes" in first-run onboarding; profile-correct pairing approvals with a desktop surface (#67920, #70907, #74446 — @benbarclay, @OutThisLife)

Keep-computer-awake toggle + notch wake indicator; /battery status-bar toggle; UI zoom 90% default preset; status bar hideable (#68140, #76396, #68860, #73161, #72960 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Desktop performance (60fps wave 2)

Streaming cost independent of transcript length; 60fps on real sessions (reflow-gated pins, adaptive flush); drag at 60fps with five streaming tabs; multitab streaming made fast (#71835, #72504, #72346, #71780 — @OutThisLife)

Hidden-pane timers paused (agents view, cron sidebar, floating pet), scroll/status loops stopped in busy sessions (#77651 — @kshitijk4poor); idle CPU near zero in the background; sidebar/overlay render churn killed; statusbar + transcript stop re-rendering per token/sash-drag/session-switch; ⌘K opens instantly; renderer cold start keeps shiki/mermaid off the boot path (#75218, #73698, #72163, #72245, #72524, #74665, #73024 — @OutThisLife)

State diagnostics (render + store churn counters) + a lint rule banning atom-mirrored refs so the stale-read bug class cannot return; Playwright E2E suite with visual regression diffs (#71925, #71560, #65805 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1, @ethernet8023)

🖥️ CLI, TUI & Dashboard

! shell mode; /init AGENTS.md generation; /diff (staged/all/session, cross-surface); /context breakdown; /focus reduced-output view; Ctrl+S prompt stash; persistent /goal indicator; multi-select clarify (checkboxes) across CLI/gateway/TUI (#72257, #72178, #72240, #72242, #72302, #72262, #72244, #72188 — @teknium1, salvaging @SHL0MS, @iRonin, @gigi206 + more)

hermes import-agent — one-command migration from Claude Code / Codex CLI setups (#72190 — @teknium1)

Per-turn summary line + live token flow in the spinner; cross-surface theme SDK (one skin themes CLI, TUI, and desktop, live) (#72246, #68857 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

TUI: reach the model picker without wrecking your draft + mid-turn switching; slash menu leads with your most-used skills; attachments live in the composer; Arabic (ar) locale with RTL across desktop/dashboard/agent (#74756, #75931, #75210, #70870 — @OutThisLife)

hermes -w startup ~14s → ~1.8s; global --version fast path; banner update-check 6× faster; dashboard lazy-loads routes + GROUP BY session stats; session filtering tabs (Chats/Automation/All) (#71637, #62096, #74188, #72294, #73362, #73865 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

Runtime: Node 26 required across installers/heal/upgrade, managed Node/uv resolve before bare PATH, outdated managed trees heal to target major; brew + pip/PyPI wheel channels retired (shell installer / Docker / Nix are the supported channels) (#76459, #68217 — @ethernet8023)

🧩 Skills, Plugins & MCP

A2A v1.0 — Agent-to-Agent protocol plugin (closes #514) (#77109 — @teknium1)

Curator: surface unmanaged skills + curator adopt; skill-description truncation surfaced to authors; grounded-citations skill (+ fact-checking mode); simplify-code v1.1; tldraw-offline scripting skill (#71648, #70519, #71698, #77104, #70440, #66896 — @teknium1)

Office skills bundled: docx, xlsx, pdf + refreshed powerpoint; skills-tree debloat continues (yuanbao, segment-anything, jupyter, heartmula, audiocraft → optional-skills; claude-marketplace source removed; hub restructure absorbing themes/desktop-plugins/tui-widgets) (#68595, #70452–#70456, #73903 — @teknium1)

MCP: Comfy Cloud catalog entry with curated 20-tool default; hidden-whitespace warnings in MCP config; pinecone-research optional skill (#66112, #75736, #70512 — @teknium1)

MCP lazy server startup from a fingerprint-keyed on-disk tool-schema cache — configured servers no longer all boot at session start (design from #56832) (#77511 — @kshitijk4poor)

NeMo Relay observability integration — re-landed after an in-window revert, on stable NeMo Relay 0.6 (#67607 — @afourniernv)

Gateway health & diagnostics OTLP export (#64536 — @victor-kyriazakos)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Iron-proxy credential-injection egress firewall re-landed (#70848 — @teknium1)

DNS-pinned SSRF-safe fetches + Slack CDN allowlist; strict redaction at compaction boundaries; ReDoS eliminated in config-key redaction patterns; prose words embedding a secret keyword no longer masked (#70193, #69294, #76083, #67776 — @teknium1)

Tier-3 credential reads scoped (FAL/XAI/VERCEL/DAYTONA/GITHUB presence checks etc.); CVE dependency pins refreshed (cryptography, starlette, python-multipart); hindsight env file 0600; /model moved off the gateway event loop (#75888, #72362 — @teknium1)

Windows hardening wave: text-mode subprocess decode bug class closed repo-wide, console flashes hidden across daemons/env probes/LSP/installer paths, residual encoding gaps (MCP stdio, gateway update I/O, STT/TTS, desktop spawn) (#70875, #70205, #70264, #71014 — @teknium1, salvaging several community PRs)

State/session integrity: four session-state fixes (safe close tracking, flush-cursor class fix, row-retry, usage-PK healer); compact v23 FTS layout + hermes sessions optimize + CJK-bigram FTS; read-path split with per-thread read-only connections (#75883, #65798, #69423, #73344 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

OpenViking memory-provider hardening — fail closed on blocked endpoints, server verification before credentials are sent, config.yaml-first settings (#77747 — @kshitijk4poor)

Credential pool: reset-aware primary restore (stay on fallback until the rate-limit window resets) + deferred-refresh locking fixes; FTS UPDATE triggers narrowed with fail-closed CJK migration (#77631, #77628 — @kshitijk4poor)

Config-driven memory allocator trim with telemetry; holographic memory vectors stored float32; loop-invariant HRR encodes hoisted (#76905, #76917, #76881 — @kshitijk4poor)

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

Voice: full-duplex interruption during generation AND playback; whole-turn desktop speech; auto-TTS delivery gaps (#74223, #69936, #73508 — @teknium1)

Desktop: Stop parks the queue instead of firing the next queued prompt; branch-in-new-chat restart loss; false remote-gateway reauthentication; cross-session composer leaks (#68725, #71960, #68250, #70986 — @SHL0MS, @alelpoan, @helix4u, @OutThisLife)

Gateway: session lists scoped before limiting; relay-backed home delivery after restart; timeline display events persisted (#65509, #70102, #69771 — @GodsBoy, @victor-kyriazakos, @ethernet8023)

Agent: context-length fallback logging + batch trajectory durability; Codex OAuth context windows revalidated against the live catalog (#76027, #68554 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)

...plus roughly 770 more fix: PRs across every subsystem this window.

👥 Contributors

647 contributors shipped this release (commit authors, co-authors, and salvaged-PR credits).

Core
@teknium1, @OutThisLife (desktop, voice, perf), @kshitijk4poor (perf, caching, salvage), @ethernet8023 (runtime, E2E, desktop), @benbarclay (relay, HSP, auth)

All Contributors (alphabetical)
@02356abc, @0301chris, @0xAlcibiades, @0xDevNinja, @0xLeathery, @0xprincess, @0xr00tf3rr3t, @100yenadmin,
@2001Y, @3ssiri, @55nx954gn6-debug, @686f6c61, @87degrees, @aaronlab, @abundantbeing, @Adolanium,
@adriansotomora, @adurham, @afourniernv, @afurm, @AgenticSpark, @ahmadashfq, @AhmetArif0, @ai-ag2026,
@AIalliAI, @aider4ryder, @airclear, @ajzrva-sys, @akattelu, @AKAZIK-py, @akb4q, @akshan-main, @AlanBurningsuit,
@alelpoan, @AlexFucuson9, @AlexxRussell, @AllardQuek, @alt-glitch, @aman-merchant, @amanning3390, @amathxbt,
@aml1973, @amoreno16003, @AndrewMoryakov, @andrexibiza, @andynguyendk, @andyylin, @aneym, @angelos,
@aniruddhaadak80, @AnnasMazhar, @annguyenNous, @anoopmehendale-cue, @AnthonyFrancis, @arcabotai, @ArcherQAQ,
@Ares4Tech, @arimu1, @arnoldfrancisca, @asimons81, @asorry75, @AtakanGs, @ATran28, @austinpickett,
@Automata-intelligentsia, @awain7, @aweiker, @aydnOktay, @ayushere, @b, @baau, @baauzi, @baenregod,
@bakhtiersizhaev, @Baophan00, @baoyu0, @Bartok9, @basilalshukaili, @BB-light, @bbopen, @Beandon13,
@beardedeagle, @bedirhancode, @benbarclay, @benegessarit, @benjamin2026-dot, @bennybuoy, @BenSheridanEdwards,
@BKStock, @BlackishGreen33, @bnikanjam, @bounce12340, @Bounty13, @bpross, @briandevans, @bricelb, @brunopirz,
@bryanneva, @byshubham, @camaleonidas, @canorionen, @carbongotfound, @carljborg, @carlotestor, @carrion256,
@caseyanthony, @cat-thats-fat, @Cdddo, @ceverson70, @chancelu, @chaos-xxl, @CharlesMcquade, @chazmaniandinkle,
@chefboyrdave21, @chelsealong, @Christopher-Schulze, @chuenchen309, @ciabata-git, @cifangyiquan, @cipry0200,
@ckaznocha, @ckorhonen, @CleanDev-Fix, @CocaKova, @coffee-the-dev, @colingreig, @commander, @connorblack,
@CoreyNoDream, @Cossackx, @crayfish-ai, @criptogus, @ctaylor86, @cucurigoo, @cypres0099, @d31tcjg, @Da7-Tech,
@damiankluk, @danielblankhh, @DanielMaly, @Dannou, @davesecops, @davidgut1982, @DavidMetcalfe, @davidrobertson,
@ddifa86, @ddy4633, @deacon-botdoctor, @deaneeth, @deepjia, @deltaahead, @DESXIE, @devsart95, @dhruvkej9,
@dhruvraajeev, @DI404N, @diegomarino, @diffen77, @dirtyren, @dnth, @DocAwk, @dolphin-creator, @Dolverin,
@dombejar, @doncazper, @dongjiang1989, @DonutsDelivery, @dorukardahan, @Doud-FR, @drafish, @Drexuxux,
@drleadflow, @dsitmilis, @dskwe, @dso2ng, @dstkwll, @Dusk1e, @dyreckt, @eagle-nyp, @Eapwrk, @eason2026,
@eazye19, @egilewski, @ehz0ah, @elcocoel, @eliemada, @eloklam, @elphamale, @embwl0x, @emozilla, @Enough1122,
@enzo2, @erick713006, @ErnestHysa, @Esther-Zhu023, @ethernet8023, @evgyur, @f-trycua, @faikwo, @falkoro,
@fangliquanflq, @fazerluga-creator, @fcavalcantirj, @ferminquant, @fesalfayed, @FixItFoundry, @flag0x369,
@floatingrain, @FlorianVal, @flyingdoubleG, @FraserHum, @frizikk, @frohsinnllc, @Frowtek, @FvanW, @fyzanshaik,
@ganzziani, @gercamjr, @giggling-ginger, @gigi206, @giladbau, @glesperance, @gnanam1990, @GodsBoy, @golldyck,
@gonzalofrancoceballos, @gshall, @gumclaw, @Guoen0, @Gurud25, @gvago, @HaisamAbbas, @hansai-art, @hanyu1212,
@happy5318, @haran2001, @hariNEzuMI928, @harjothkhara, @harrisonmedmedmetrics, @Harshkamdar67, @hdd69,
@heathley, @helix4u, @HeLLGURD, @hellofrommorgan, @hereicq, @hermz580, @HexLab98, @hinablue, @HOYALIM, @hrnbld,
@huntsyea, @iamwongeeeee, @ianks, @ibaldr89, @Icather, @ijevin, @ildunari, @Imgaojp, @imgyf, @immuhammadfurqan,
@iniak, @iRonin, @isheng-eqi, @iso2kx, @israellot, @itsflownium, @IvanMiao, @iveywest, @izumi0uu, @Jaaneek,
@JabberELF, @jackjin1997, @jakelongvu-bot, @Janig88, @jasoisjaso, @jbbottoms, @jeeaay, @jeeves-assistant,
@jeff-mettel, @JeffStone69, @JeliTron, @jethac, @jfmusa2024-cyber, @Jiahui-Gu, @jinglun010-cpu, @JoaoMarcos44,
@joelbrilliant, @John-Lussier, @johnkattenhorn, @Johnny-xuan, @johnnykor82, @joncaldwell90, @JonthanaHanh,
@jordanhubbard, @JorkeyLiu, @jquesnelle, @jrfbch, @juanmartitegui, @Julientalbot, @juniperbevensee, @justemu,
@kael-odin, @kaishi00, @kaiyisg, @kamonspecial, @kandotrun, @KCAYAAI, @keepConcentration, @kelsia14, @Kenmege,
@kerpopule, @Kev-fs, @Kewe63, @kharitonov-ivan, @Kingdomwarrior23, @kingrubic, @Kinkoolino-Hermes, @kjames2001,
@knoal, @kohoj, @Kolektori, @konsisumer, @koshaji, @kronexoi, @kshitijk4poor, @kuangmi-bit, @kudi88, @kylezh,
@kyssta-exe, @Kyzcreig, @lanyusea, @LauraGPT, @LavyaTandel, @LeonSGP43, @leoprodz, @LevSky22, @lEWFkRAD,
@lewis4x4, @lexgenius, @LFDMcore, @LiangYang666, @lidises, @light-merlin-dark, @lihengming, @Linux2010,
@LionGateOS, @liuhao1024, @liusencomic-cyber, @ljsdut, @lkevincc0, @LLQWQ, @locker95, @logical-and,
@LordNikon1983, @lost9999, @Love-JourneY, @LunarNexus, @luxiaolu4827, @lxman, @m4r13y, @MaartenDMT,
@MacroAnarchy, @maff-t2b, @MahdiHedhli, @mahdiwafy, @malaiwah, @mannnrachman, @mapu-og, @markoub, @matarbot,
@materemias, @matt-strawbridge, @mattezell, @MattMaximo, @mattmillerai, @mattshapsss, @MaxFreedomPollard,
@maxmilian, @McHermes, @mehmetkr-31, @menhguin, @metamon-p, @mijanx, @MLcogTech, @moeadham, @mollusk,
@monerostar, @MorAlekss, @morolab, @motoblurr, @MrAbsaroka, @mrzlab630, @ms-alan, @muctobi, @MustafaK99,
@mwbrooks, @myk0la-b, @mzkarami, @namredips, @nanami7777777, @nanckh, @natebransc, @nateEc, @navahc09,
@Ne0teric, @necoweb3, @nftpoetrist, @nickkarhan, @Ninso112, @nkreadly07, @nnnet, @NPFernando, @nrmjeremy,
@nu476, @null-runner, @nullptr0807, @NYTEMODEONLY, @obelisk-complex, @OfficialDelta, @okalentiev,
@oliviaaaa7788, @OmarB97, @omid3098, @ooiuuii, @oppenheimor, @oreoluwa, @ousiaresearch, @OutThisLife,
@panDing19, @paralegalia, @patp, @PavelTajdus, @peacockesq, @Pebrd, @peterw, @phantom-instruction-set,
@pierrenode, @PINKIIILQWQ, @piyushbag, @plainOldCode, @pnascimento9596, @pooyan6, @pprism13, @praneshnikhar,
@PRATHAMESH75, @Prontsevich, @quantumbyte1617, @QuarkAssistant, @Que0x, @Qwinty, @rayjerrywoo, @rayjun,
@Reaper-Forge, @RedClaus, @redsol-llc, @reinbeumer, @RelaxJonh, @RemyFevry, @replygirl, @rerdi92, @rhylryan21,
@RichardHojunJang, @richkapp, @rkfshakti, @rlaope, @rob-coco, @rob-maron, @robbyczgw-cla, @robgfl45,
@robzolkos, @rod-nxtlevel, @rodboev, @Roger--Han, @rsayar, @rudironsoni, @ruizanthony, @rungmc357, @s00rz,
@s905060, @Sahil-SS9, @sakhnenkoff, @salimhamed, @samrusani, @sbe27, @ScaleLeanChris, @schattenan, @sealca,
@seamusmore, @sebaorrego-koronet, @seppegadeyne, @sergioperezcheco, @sethmills21, @sg-shag, @sgtworkman,
@shady2k, @shannonsands, @shellybotmoyer, @sherman-yang, @shivasymbl, @Shizoqua, @SHL0MS, @simonmmafs,
@skyer-flyyy, @Skywind5487, @sl4m3, @Slopez2023, @SmallNew2003, @smfworks, @Soju06, @Solitud1nem,
@solyanviktor-star, @somewheresy, @Sora-bluesky, @sowork-skills, @soynchux, @sparkeros, @spfcraze,
@spiky02plateau, @spro-work, @SquabbyZ, @srojk34, @StanleyStetson, @StartupBros-com, @StellarisW,
@stephenschoettler, @Stoltemberg, @stremtec, @Studio729, @stwith, @subhoya, @sunwz1115, @suparious,
@supplefrog, @sycamoregroupltd, @szzhoujiarui, @tachyon-r, @Tamaz-sujashvili, @tandixit95, @tank321, @tavva,
@tcconnally, @temalo, @th3wingman, @the3asic, @TheAngryPit, @TheEpTic, @theone139344, @TheSmokeDev,
@thirstycrow, @tianma-if, @Tianworld, @tinetwork, @to-na, @tom-channel, @tomqiaozc, @toomij99, @trac3r00,
@Tranquil-Flow, @Trantor-develops, @trevorgordon981, @trevornk, @trippyogi, @trymhaak, @tsuk1nose, @tusharui,
@TutkuEroglu, @tw0316, @twe-cloud, @tymrtn, @UltraInstinct0x, @umi008, @unixwzrd, @upicat, @vaibhavjnf, @valda,
@Vansh5632, @Variable85, @vb3, @VerbalChainsaw, @vexclawx31, @victor-kyriazakos, @vigilancetech-com,
@virtuadex, @Vissirexa, @VittoriaLanzo, @VIVAAN-DHAWAN, @wangyunyou, @waroffchange, @wayne1992127, @web3blind,
@webtecnica, @WeiYusc, @wen0531, @wernerhp, @wesleysimplicio, @westkite1201, @wgd753, @wgu9,
@wjj1872744570-source, @wjq990112, @WojtekMR3, @WOLIKIMCHENG, @Wpnx330, @wreed4, @wuli666, @WXBR, @wz-heng,
@x7peeps, @xcompass, @xd-Neji, @xenodmc, @Xipong, @xrazai, @Xue-1997, @xxxigm, @y0shua1ee, @yaleman,
@yemi-lagosinternationalmarket, @ygd58, @yingliang-zhang, @yinkev, @yitang, @YLChen-007, @yoniebans,
@youzi-1122, @ypwcharles, @yuexiongHNU, @yungchentang, @yuzilongleif-collab, @yyzquwu, @z23, @ZachariahChu,
@zakhounet, @zapabob, @Zavianx, @zehuaw1, @zengzheqing, @Zeraphim, @zgzczzw, @zhangyang-crazy-one,
@Zhekinmaksim, @Zioywishing, @zmlgit, @zombopanda, @ZundamonnoVRChatkaisetu

Also: @kyssta-exe 25470058+kyssta-exe.

Thank you to every one of the 647 people who contributed code, co-authored fixes, filed the ~1,200 issues this release closes, and had their PRs salvaged into main. Hermes ships this fast because of you.

Full Changelog: v2026.7.20...v2026.8.3

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.19.1 (v2026.7.30)

Release Date: July 30, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~1,000+ PRs merged since v0.19.0 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

About this release

Since v2026.7.20 (v0.19.0, July 20): ~2,789 commits · ~4,748 files changed · ~442,000 insertions · ~392,300 deletions on main. This window is dominated by bug-fix and salvage waves across the gateway, voice subsystem, desktop app, and installer, plus continued platform work (Buzz/Nostr channel, FLUX3 video generation and delivery, Telegram media reliability, voice-mode regressions).

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.20.0, which will document everything from v0.19.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

Updating

hermes update

or fresh install:

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

Full Changelog: v2026.7.20...v2026.7.30

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.19.0 (v2026.7.20)

Release Date: July 20, 2026

Since v0.18.0: ~2,245 commits · ~1,065 merged PRs · ~2,465 files changed · ~300,000 insertions · ~36,000 deletions · ~3,300 issues closed · 450+ community contributors

The Quicksilver Release. Hermes is the messenger god, and this window we made him move like it. First-turn time-to-first-token dropped ~80% on every platform, reasoning streams live by default, the desktop app got a ~20-PR speed overhaul (14× faster streaming markdown, virtualized diffs, snappy session switching), and the TUI renders markdown incrementally. Around that speed spine: you can now manage your Nous subscription without leaving the terminal, plug Bitwarden and 1Password straight into Hermes, let smart approvals judge flagged commands for you by default, watch your subagents work live, and trust that a finished response survives a gateway crash thanks to a durable delivery ledger. This release also rolls up everything from the v0.18.1 and v0.18.2 infrastructure patch tags — those windows are fully documented here.

✨ Highlights

Hermes got dramatically faster — first token in a fraction of the time — Cold-start "Initializing agent..." used to eat ~4.3 seconds before your first turn even reached the model; it's now ~0.9s, an ~80% cut that applies to the CLI, gateway, TUI, desktop, and cron alike. Round 2 attacked what you see while waiting: reasoning models now stream their thinking live by default (no more staring at a spinner for 30 seconds), and the response box paints per token instead of per line. If Hermes ever felt like it took a deep breath before answering, that breath is gone. (#59332, #59389 — @teknium1)

The desktop app speed wave — 20+ targeted perf PRs — Long replies used to cost 14× more CPU in the markdown splitter than they do now; giant diffs froze the review pane until we virtualized it; switching sessions thrashes layout no more. Streaming no longer re-renders the sidebar and every tool row per token, profile backends pre-warm on hover intent, and boot-hidden panes mount at idle instead of on the cold-start critical path. The net effect: the desktop app feels like a native app under load, even with huge transcripts and busy agents. (#67154, #67818, #65898, #66033, #66747, #67742 and more — @OutThisLife)

Manage your Nous plan from the terminal — /subscription and /topup — Changing your subscription used to mean a trip to the billing website. Now /subscription opens a full flow right in the TUI or classic CLI: see your plan and remaining allowance, preview exactly what an upgrade costs ("Pay $46.30 & upgrade now") or when a downgrade takes effect, and apply it — with scheduled-change banners and undo. The desktop app got a matching billing settings tab. Your wallet never has to leave the keyboard. (#51639, #61054, #61067 — @alt-glitch)

Smart approvals are now the default — When Hermes wants to run a flagged command, an LLM reviewer now assesses it independently instead of asking you to approve every single one — and each verdict covers only that exact command, so a later command matching the same pattern gets its own review. Combined with the new user-defined deny rules (which block commands even under yolo mode) and /deny <reason> (which tells the agent why you refused so it course-corrects), day-to-day approval fatigue drops sharply without giving up control. (#62661, #59164, #54518 — @teknium1)

Plug your password manager into Hermes — Bitwarden & 1Password secret sources — API keys no longer have to live in a plaintext .env. A new pluggable SecretSource interface lets Hermes fetch secrets from Bitwarden and 1Password (op:// references) at load time, with multiple vaults enabled simultaneously, deterministic precedence, conflict warnings, and per-variable provenance. This consolidated eleven competing community PRs into one orchestrated interface — future vault providers drop in as plugins. (#59498 — @teknium1, 1Password provider salvaged from @hwrdprkns)

Watch your subagents work — live transcripts + durable background delegation — delegate_task dispatches now return live transcript files you can tail -f the moment the subagents launch: every tool call, result, and streamed reply, one human-readable log per child. And background delegation completions are now durable — if the process restarts mid-run, results are restored and delivered through an ownership-checked ledger instead of vanishing. Fan out a fleet, watch any worker live, and never lose the results. (#67479, #63494 — @teknium1)

A finished answer can no longer be lost — the delivery-obligation ledger — If the gateway died between generating your response and confirming the platform actually delivered it, that answer used to be silently gone (and you'd paid for the turn). Final responses are now recorded in a durable ledger in state.db around the platform send and redelivered on the next boot — closing a P1 silent-loss window for Telegram, Discord, Slack, and every other channel. (#67181 — @teknium1)

One gateway, many profiles — profile-based message routing — A single multiplexed gateway sharing one bot token can now route specific guilds, channels, or threads to different profiles — each with fully isolated config, skills, memory, and secrets. Point your work Discord server at the work profile and your hobby server at personal, from one bot. A second multiplex hardening wave means one misconfigured profile can no longer take down the whole gateway. (#64835 salvaging @Burgunthy, #65700, #60589 — @teknium1, @benbarclay + six salvaged contributors)

New providers and the newest frontier models — Fireworks AI and DeepInfra land as first-class providers (Fireworks with cost estimation and a #2 slot in the provider picker), Upstage Solar joins via salvage, and the model catalogs picked up GPT-5.6 (Sol/Terra/Luna + Pro variants, wired end-to-end across every route), grok-4.5 (GA), moonshotai/kimi-k3, claude-fable-5 / claude-sonnet-5, and GA tencent/hy3 — plus LM Studio JIT model loading for local setups. (#62593, #63969, #61616 — @kshitijk4poor completing @rob-maron's #61578, #60887, #65913, #64541, #65472)

Crank the thinking to max — new reasoning effort tiers and per-model control — Reasoning effort gained max and ultra levels (GPT-5.6 and Codex's top tiers), selectable everywhere from the CLI to the desktop, with sane clamping on providers with smaller scales. You can now also pin per-model reasoning-effort overrides in config, set per-slot effort in MoA presets (your advisors think hard, your synthesizer stays fast), and per-task effort for auxiliary models. Thinking depth is now a dial, not a global switch. (#62650, #64458, #64631, #64597 — @teknium1)

Your sessions, your data — export everything — hermes sessions export now writes Markdown, Quarto, HTML, prompt-only, and even Hugging Face-ready trace formats, with the full filter surface (age, workspace, platform), an opt-in --redact secret-scrubbing pass, and compacted-session lineage stitched into one logical export. Pair with the new prune filters and bulk archive to keep your session store tidy. Your conversation history is a real dataset now, not a black box. (#60186 salvaging @web3blind, #60492, #60507, #59327 — @teknium1)

Security hardening round — This window closed a long list of credential-surface gaps: Vertex credentials scoped away from subprocess env and through profile secret scopes, media/vision/image-gen local-file reads routed through one shared credential-read guard, a webhook body-size-cap sweep across every aiohttp server, bot-token redaction in Telegram transport errors, Fireworks token prefixes added to the redactor, six P1 browser/MEDIA/.env hardening PRs salvaged in one pass, and CI hardened against untrusted-ref interpolation. (#57660, #58709, #59215, #56582, #57842 — @teknium1, @srojk34, @kshitijk4poor, @jquesnelle)

⚡ Performance — the speed spine

First-turn latency (all platforms)

~80% TTFT cut — Discord capability detection off the critical path (token-keyed 24h disk cache + background refresh), Ollama probe skipped for known non-Ollama providers, agent-init blocking work removed; cold submit→dispatch ~4.3s → ~0.9s (#59332 — @teknium1)

Perceived-latency round 2 — display.show_reasoning default ON (watch the model think instead of a spinner), per-token response-box painting with width-aware force-flush, prompt-build caching, mtime-cached timezone resolution (#59389 — @teknium1)

Segment mixed tool batches to recover lost concurrency; drop per-call base64 re-serialization from request-size estimates (#64460, #67788 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Desktop speed wave

14× less splitter CPU via incremental block lexing for streaming markdown; virtualized review-pane diffs (no more full-Shiki freeze); snappy session switching on large transcripts; killed the layout-thrash cascade on session switch (#67154, #67818, #65898, #66033 — @OutThisLife)

Cut startup serialization + per-turn REST amplification; pre-warm profile backends and gateway sockets on hover intent; idle-mount boot-hidden panes; fast model picker + dialogs (#66747, #66347, #67857, #66470 — @OutThisLife)

Stop per-token sidebar + tool-row re-renders during streaming; stop eager JSON.stringify of every tool's args/result; scope tool-diff subscriptions; batch sidebar session slices into one profile-DB pass; targeted file-tree revalidation; rAF-coalesced sash resizes (#67742, #67842, #67195, #67245, #67824, #67838, #67844 — @OutThisLife)

Systematized perf benchmark harness with trustworthy cold-start + first-token measurement, replacing 12 one-off scripts (#67466, #67697 — @OutThisLife)

Everywhere else

TUI renders streamed markdown incrementally per block (#67236 — @OutThisLife)

Skill discovery cached by scan signature; snapshot manifest builds ~5× faster; text prefilter before AST parse in tool discovery (#61414, #61131, #63941 — @kshitijk4poor, @ethernet8023)

Copy-on-write message prep instead of full deepcopy; model-metadata probe-cache cluster; gateway session.resume model + display history from one SELECT (#61133, #61368, #67247 — @kshitijk4poor, @OutThisLife)

hermes update skips npm install when Node manifests are unchanged; dashboard session-list payloads trimmed + messages paginated (#61580, #60883 — @kshitijk4poor)

Byte-stable gateway system prompts — pinned session-context render keeps the prompt cache alive across turns (#67403 — @kshitijk4poor)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Providers & models

Fireworks AI provider with cost estimation + cached picker price columns, promoted to #2 in provider pickers (#62593, #65476, #65214 — @teknium1)

DeepInfra hardened integration; Upstage Solar provider (#42231 salvage) (#63969, #64541 — @kshitijk4poor)

GPT-5.6 (Sol/Terra/Luna + Pro) end-to-end — context lengths, native/Codex catalogs, pricing, compaction caps across every route (#61616 — @kshitijk4poor, building on @rob-maron)

grok-4.5 (GA) catalog + reasoning allowlist; kimi-k3 on Nous Portal + OpenRouter (kimi-k2.x retired) + K3 discovery on the Kimi Coding endpoint; claude-fable-5 / claude-sonnet-5 / fugu-ultra curated; GA tencent/hy3 (#60887, #65913, #65922, #56617, #60943 — @teknium1)

Catalog-labeled silent default (GLM-5.2) + bare-provider /model cost-safe routing; LM Studio JIT load mode; adaptive thinking for Kimi-family Anthropic endpoints (#64771, #65472, #67606 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

GLM-5.2 native reasoning_effort controls; Gemini request-context improvements; extra HTTP headers for LLM API calls; per-client model routing on the API server (#58884, #61873 — @vishal-dharm, #57038, #57028 — @teknium1)

Claude Sonnet 5 fully wired — curated lists, intro pricing, and metadata across every route (#67932 — @teknium1)

Hide providers you don't use — enabled: false per-provider flag + excluded_providers config scrub unwanted providers from /model pickers and built-in resolution (#67971 — @teknium1)

Bedrock catalog wave: real context-window probing from the live endpoint, 1M-context rows for current-gen Claude + Fable, geo-prefix parity, versioned profile-ID pricing, Opus 4.8/4.7 rows (#68007, #67977, #68005, #67976 — @teknium1)

kimi-k3 rollout completed across Kimi-direct catalog surfaces with 1M context on canonical Kimi Coding endpoints (#68108 — @teknium1)

Provider pickers: Qwen providers folded into one group row; collapsible provider groups in the desktop model picker; friendlier TUI model display grouping same-endpoint providers (#67758, #67904, #67908 — @teknium1)

Reasoning & MoA

max + ultra effort levels across every surface and route (#62650 — @teknium1)

Per-model reasoning_effort overrides via a unified resolution chokepoint; per-task auxiliary effort; per-slot MoA preset effort; session-scoped /reasoning in the CLI (#64458, #64597, #64631, #67946 — @teknium1)

MoA: reference_max_tokens to cap advisor output and cut latency; per-preset fanout cadence (user_turn runs advisors once per user turn); stale presets surfaced without retries; half-filled preset saves rejected at the API boundary; aggregator resolves reasoning like an acting model (#56756, #57591, #64756 — @teknium1)

Delegation, approvals & the agent loop

Live subagent transcripts + durable background completions (see Highlights) (#67479, #63494 — @teknium1)

Smart approvals default; user-defined deny rules (block even under yolo); /deny <reason> relays the denial reason; plugin pre_tool_call approve action escalates to a human gate (re-landed with rule keys) (#62661, #59164, #54518, #60504 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

Unified delegation concurrency caps (max_async_children deprecated); explain long provider waits on the live status line; deterministic tool-output risk exposure (#56955, #64775, #61793 — @teknium1)

Codex: live TUI/desktop tool cards for the app-server runtime, commentary streamed as visible interim messages, compaction routed through thread/compact/start, max-output truncation recovery, oversized message ids dropped on replay, banked usage-limit resets via /usage reset (#66514, #66115, #60114, #58155, #62225 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @JoaoMarcos44, #64280 — @teknium1)

Hooks: oversized hook-injected context spills to disk (#20468 — @teknium1)

Vibe reactions — floating hearts on affection across CLI/TUI/desktop, token-free core detection (#62016 — @OutThisLife)

Secrets & config

Pluggable SecretSource interface + Bitwarden & 1Password providers (see Highlights) (#59498 — @teknium1, @hwrdprkns)

hermes config get / unset; warn on unknown root config keys + doctor deprecated-key reporting; display.timestamp_format (#65540, #67370, #40622 — @teknium1)

Auxiliary model usage recorded per task in session accounting; conversation-scoped Nous Portal usage tags across aux/MoA/delegate calls; --usage-file JSON report for hermes -z (#65537, #65468, #59615 — @teknium1)

Sessions & compression

Sessions export: Markdown/QMD/HTML/prompt-only/trace formats, HF upload, --redact, unified filters; full prune filter surface + bulk archive; CLI workspace filter + restore-cwd-on-resume (#60186, #60492, #60507, #59327, #63091 — @teknium1, @web3blind)

Compression: preserve human intent and durable handoffs; retain prompt cache when memory is unchanged; flatten multimodal content for the summarizer keeping image handles; gateway compression routing integrity (#67275, #67916, #65046, #56868 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)

Gateway session metadata consolidated into state.db; routing index moved to state.db (sessions.json now an optional legacy mirror); exact API bytes persisted in an api_content sidecar (#58899, #59203, #67274 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🌐 Gateway, Fleet & Relay

Durable delivery-obligation ledger for final responses (see Highlights) (#67181 — @teknium1)

Profile-based routing for inbound messages + multiplex hardening wave 2 + GATEWAY_MULTIPLEX_PROFILES override (see Highlights) (#64835, #65700, #60589 — @teknium1, @benbarclay + salvaged contributors)

Per-session turn lease + conversation-scope funnel; unified session reset boundaries (reset sessions stay reset); truthful runtime readiness checks; per-channel model and system prompt overrides; per-session /model overrides persist across restarts (#67401, #65783, #62645, #56967, #57030 — @teknium1)

Session auto-reset default off; /sessions search <query>; webhook payload filters + route scripts; platform HTTP event callback routing; configurable long-running status phrases (#60194, #57685, #60944, #65702, #58872 — @teknium1)

Relay: generic OIDC client-credentials provisioning (NAS-free), routed profile carried from the connector wire source, channel context consumed from the connector; Nous auth forensics + nous_session_valid on /api/status for hosted self-heal; Docker re-seeds a terminally-dead Nous bootstrap session on boot (#60730, #60586, #64649, #59976, #59969, #59983 — @benbarclay)

📱 Messaging Platforms

Inline choice pickers for /reasoning and /fast on Telegram, Discord, and Matrix — one-tap native buttons instead of typing (#65799 — @teknium1)

WhatsApp: native Baileys polls (clarify renders as a poll), locations, rich inbound metadata; dashboard pairing flow (#58865, #60571 — @teknium1)

Discord: recover messages missed during reconnect; auto-created threads renamed to generated session titles; configurable interactive view timeout; opt-in owner mentions on exec-approval prompts; optional admin-only gate for approval buttons (#66149, #60187, #60230, #60493, #51751 — @teknium1)

Slack: live per-tool status line (#67080 — @teknium1, salvaging #62007)

Telegram: per-topic free-response allowlist; Google Chat clarify prompts rendered as cards (#65543, #65546 — @teknium1)

Voice: stt.echo_transcripts toggle; MEDIA: captions attached to the media bubble on standalone sends; display.tool_progress: log option (#58859, #61415, #57014 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

Contribution-driven shell on a layout-tree model — panes, zones, and layouts as data; plugin-scoped i18n locale bundles followed (#60638, #67303 — @OutThisLife)

Capabilities page — Skills/Tools/MCP + Hub in one place, with responsive overlay nav; CLI/dashboard parity for skills hub, MCP test/toggle/catalog, maintenance ops, log filters; five UX fixes from live testing (#57590, #57441, #67482 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Hermes Cloud connection mode (salvage of #55402); soft gateway switch + gateway-settings polish; terminal execution backend picker with health probes (#61912, #61916, #67203 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Keybind hint tooltips + keybinds settings tab + unified worktree dialog; base-branch picker for new worktrees; green unread dot for background-finished sessions; background-task sidebar indicators; grouped tool calls across text-less messages; auto-scrolling window for long tool-call runs (#65204, #62243, #65109, #65174, #61147, #57913 — @ethernet8023, @OutThisLife)

Session + project color system (inherit from project, per-session override, shared across sidebar/tabs); unified active-project identity in chat status; workspace path status action (#67469, #67681, #67282, #63086 — @OutThisLife)

Declarative memory-provider panel + full-config modal; config-defined TTS/STT providers + xAI TTS params; custom endpoint settings; per-job cron model picker; profile-aware approval mode control; UI scale setting; Ctrl/Cmd+wheel zoom; chat backdrop toggle; /journey opens the memory graph overlay (#67206 salvaging @erosika, #67209, #67759 — @austinpickett, #67472, #63520, #60457, #67029, #64598, #57267 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Full TypeScript conversion of the desktop tree (#57855 — @ethernet8023)

📊 Web Dashboard

Memory provider switching; safe session import flow; WhatsApp pairing; Discord-specific toolsets editable from the web UI; clarified manual Telegram bot setup (#60569, #63699, #60571, #65361, #64636 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @shannonsands)

Terminal keep-alive + reattach for dashboard chat sessions; heavy turns isolated in a compute host; paste/drop images into Chat; browser.headed schema toggle; profile + gateway topology on /api/status; mobile/hosted OpenAI OAuth login (#60515, #65895, #61929, #67046, #60537, #61330 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife, @benbarclay)

hermes serve is a true headless backend (no web UI build/mount) (#55923 — @OutThisLife)

🧰 CLI & TUI

/subscription + /topup terminal billing (see Highlights) (#51639 — @alt-glitch)

/model --once — one-turn model override that reverts automatically (#67113 — @teknium1, salvaging #29923)

Stacked slash-skill invocations — /skill-a /skill-b do XYZ loads both skills in order (Claude Code port), with autocomplete + ghost text (#57987, #58763 — @teknium1)

--safe-mode troubleshooting flag; uninstall dry-run; TLS failures fail fast with fix hints; /compact alias + preview flags; pip/Homebrew installs warned unsupported (#45300, #60111, #57992, #57029, #57225 — @teknium1, @ethernet8023)

TUI: model picker refresh support; custom skill bundles dispatched as agent turns; banner sizes skills display to terminal width (#59782 — @helix4u, #62859 — @Adolanium, #40624 — @teknium1)

Hermes Console REPL + perf follow-ups; hermes curator usage all-skills view; entry-point plugins surfaced in hermes plugins list (#57781 — @kshitijk4poor, #36727, #40623 — @teknium1)

🔧 Tool System, Skills & MCP

MCP: mcp__server__tool naming convention; server log notifications surfaced in agent.log; hosted OAuth completed across Dashboard + Desktop; configurable redirect_uri/redirect_host for proxied/WAF setups; OAuth callback port races closed; Blender added to the MCP catalog with a curated 4-tool default (#52750, #57416, #66151, #65610, #65622, #64463 — @teknium1, @benbarclay)

Skills: security/unbroker (autonomous data-broker removal) + blind opt-out hardening; unreal-mcp companion skill; blender-mcp reworked around the catalog entry; humanizer pattern expansion; mcp-oauth-remote-gateway optional skill (#57438, #57902, #65989, #64715 — @SHL0MS, #65066, #65486 — @teknium1)

Browser: full snapshots stored on truncation, eval denylist opt-in; computer_use follows cua-driver's verify→escalate ladder (#65923, #67123 — @teknium1)

Kanban: modal create-task dialog + editable board project directory; Done-card results made obvious; grab-to-pan board scrolling; attachment toolset + CLI with SSRF-guarded URL fetch; project directory captured at board creation (#66333, #63638, #60226, #65698, #63249 — @teknium1)

Cron: durable execution audit history; one-shot stale-removal race fixed; run-claim TTL derived from HERMES_CRON_TIMEOUT (#61791 — @teknium1, #62014 — @PRATHAMESH75, #59567)

mem0: self-hosted dashboard backend + recall tuning + setup-wizard mode (#56943, #60494 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)

Image gen: Codex image inputs; unsupported Codex image accounts classified; tool args recursively normalized by schema (cline port) (#57017, #63627, #52220 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Vertex: credential/project/region resolution through the profile secret scope; VERTEX_CREDENTIALS_PATH/GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS stripped from subprocess env (#56680, #56582 — @srojk34)

Six P1 hardening PRs salvaged in one pass — browser guards, MEDIA anchoring, .env lockdown, delegate ACP transport (#57660 — @teknium1)

Media/vision/image-gen local-file reads routed through the shared credential-read guard; native image routing guarded by file-safety policy; unified image-source resolver + terminal-backend confinement (#58709, #58752, #57890 — @teknium1)

Webhook body-cap sweep: explicit client_max_size on 3 uncapped aiohttp servers + completion sweep; Raft chunked-request body limit; timestamp-bound V2 webhook signatures (#59180, #59215, #58902, #58508 — @teknium1, @srojk34)

Redaction: Fireworks token prefixes + Telegram transport errors; env-lookup false positives fixed for KEY=value and JSON/YAML config fields; bot tokens scrubbed from Telegram connect/send errors (#58501, #58534, #58915, #58893 — @teknium1)

computer-use: subprocess env sanitized across all five cua-driver spawn sites (#58889, #59165 — @teknium1)

Dashboard: managed-files credential guard widened past .env + dir-tree gap closed; OAuth token TOCTOU closed with atomic 0o600 writes; stale dashboards can't recreate deleted profiles (#58222 — @kshitijk4poor, #60236 — @teknium1, #49435 — @LeonSGP43)

CI: untrusted refs passed through env, not run: interpolation; JS/TS tests wired into CI with source-regex tests banned; js-autofix pushes via PR instead of direct-to-main (#57842 — @jquesnelle, #60707, #65186 — @ethernet8023)

Docker: terminal network toggle with full-path coverage; Git Bash Mandatory-ASLR install failures detected; Windows updater console hidden during handoff (#59149 — @teknium1, #64651, #66040 — @helix4u)

Anthropic: request-local clients so the stale/interrupt watchdog never corrupts SQLite; per-profile OAuth file; OAuth login 429 fixed (UA must not be claude-code/) (#67238 — @OutThisLife, #59339, #58178 — @teknium1)

Gateway/agent: tool_call_id deduplicated across pre-API sanitizers; background review inherits parent reasoning_config for Anthropic cache parity; /new memory extraction moved off the command path (#58350, #64379, #61139 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

🔁 Reverted in this window (for the record)

iron-proxy credential-injection egress firewall (#30179 → reverted in #58489) — not shipping in this release

dynamic-workflow orchestration skill (landed, then reverted) — not shipping

memory provider-actions extension point (landed, then reverted) — not shipping

Note: the plugin pre_tool_call approve escalation was reverted mid-window but re-landed in #60504 and ships in this release.

👥 Contributors

450+ people contributed to this release (via commits, co-author trailers, and salvaged PRs) — the biggest contributor window yet. Thank you, all of you.

Core team

@teknium1 — release lead; TTFT perf wave, delivery + delegation durability, smart approvals, SecretSource, gateway multiplex + profile routing, sessions export, security round, and a ~290-PR community salvage burn

@OutThisLife — desktop app (the speed wave, layout-tree shell, Capabilities page, session colors, vibe reactions, TUI incremental markdown, perf harness)

@kshitijk4poor — GPT-5.6 end-to-end, DeepInfra + Upstage Solar providers, perf cluster, compression integrity, mem0, dashboard guards

@ethernet8023 — CI overhaul (JS/TS tests wired in, autofix-via-PR, python speedups), desktop keybinds/worktrees/status indicators, full desktop TypeScript conversion

@benbarclay — relay OIDC provisioning, gateway multiplex override, Nous auth self-heal, hosted MCP OAuth groundwork

@alt-glitch — terminal billing (/subscription, /topup), desktop billing tab

@helix4u — desktop provider/model UX, TUI model picker refresh, Windows install/updater hardening

@austinpickett — desktop custom endpoint settings

@SHL0MS — unbroker + unreal-mcp skills, humanizer expansion

Top community contributors

@srojk34 — security hardening: Vertex credential/project/region scoping through the profile secret scope, subprocess env stripping, Raft chunked-request body limits

@HexLab98 — 11 fixes across MCP capability gating, Windows installer PATH, desktop cron editing, gateway systemd warnings

@UnathiCodex — desktop stability: zoom across display moves, LaTeX rendering, resume-stall and runtime-readiness fixes

@xxxigm — <think> leak fix after thinking-only retry flush, dashboard auth/theme/PTY fixes

@erosika — desktop declarative memory-provider panel + honcho recall/timeout correctness

@Frowtek — credential security: master stores never mounted into skill sandboxes, live-transcript redaction, dashboard api_key precedence

@necoweb3 — browser private-page CDP guard, cron one-shot liveness, gateway compression fail-closed

@DavidMetcalfe — desktop updater version pill, Local/custom endpoint exposure, sidebar collapse behavior

@shannonsands — dashboard: mobile channel setup, Discord toolsets from web UI, Telegram setup clarity

@vishal-dharm — Gemini request-context improvements

@PRATHAMESH75 — cron one-shot stale-removal race, dashboard multiplex port-binding guard

@alelpoan, @embwl0x, @Adolanium, @giggling-ginger, @Drexuxux, @frizikk, @JoaoMarcos44, @wesleysimplici, @LeonSGP43, @pierrenode, @simpolism, @MorAlekss, @r266-tech, @WadydX, @nv-kasikritc — targeted fixes across desktop, TUI, gateway, cron, webhook, nix, and browser surfaces

Salvaged-work authors whose PRs were cherry-picked with credit this window: @Burgunthy (profile routing), @web3blind (sessions export), @hwrdprkns (1Password), @Christopher-Schulze, @Ahmett101, @sjiangtao2024, and many more — see the salvage PR bodies for full attribution

All contributors

@0-CYBERDYNE-SYSTEMS-0, @0disoft, @0xbyt4, @100yenadmin, @17324393074, @2751738943, @8294, @abhibansal-sg,
@adambiggs, @Adolanium, @aeyeopsdev, @aguung, @AhmetArif0, @Ahmett101, @ai-ag2026, @AIalliAI, @ajzrva-sys,
@alastraz, @alelpoan, @alex-fireworks, @alex-heritier, @alex107ivanov, @AlexFucuson9, @Alix-007,
@allenliang2022, @Almurat123, @AlsayedHoota, @alt-glitch, @alvarosanchez, @amanning3390, @AmAzing129,
@AndreasHiltner, @andrewhomeyer, @annguyenNous, @ansel-f, @antydizajn, @arminanton, @arnispiekus, @asimons81,
@asscan, @ats3v, @austinlaw076, @austinpickett, @avifenesh, @aydnOktay, @Bartok9, @bautrey, @bbednarski9,
@bbopen, @benbarclay, @bigstar0920, @binhnt92, @bird, @Black0Fox0, @BlackishGreen33, @bo.fu, @brendandebeasi,
@briandevans, @BROCCOLO1D, @Bruce-anle, @brunz-me, @Burgunthy, @bytesnail, @catbearlove1-lang, @Cdddo,
@cgarwood82, @CharmingGroot, @chouqin, @Christopher-Schulze, @claudlos, @CocaKova, @Code-suphub, @CodeForgeNet,
@craigdfrench, @CrazyBoyM, @crazywriter1, @cresslank, @cruzanstx, @cyrkstudios, @danilofalcao,
@datachainsystems, @DatTheMaster, @davidb73-hub, @davidgut1982, @DavidMetcalfe, @davidrobertson,
@deacon-botdoctor, @DECK6, @deepujain, @derek2000139, @designnotdrum, @deusyu, @devatnull, @devorun,
@dexhunter, @dfein38347g, @Dhravya, @DictatorBacon, @digitalbase, @dlkakbs, @dmabry, @DNAlec, @dodo-reach,
@doncazper, @dorokuma, @doxe0x, @Drexuxux, @dschnurbusch, @Dusk1e, @EdderTalmor, @egilewski, @elashera,
@Elektrofussel, @eliteworkstation94-ai, @embwl0x, @emo-eth, @emozilla, @enzo-adami, @Epoxidex, @ErnestHysa,
@erosika, @esthonjr, @ethernet8023, @evefromwayback, @evelynburger, @F4TB0Yz, @falkoro, @fanyangCS, @firefly,
@fjlaowan1983, @flewe, @flo1t, @flow-digital-ny, @floze-the-genius, @frizikk, @Frowtek, @FuryMartin,
@fyzanshaik, @gauravsaxena1997, @geoffreybutler94, @georgedrury, @gigakun3030, @giggling-ginger,
@Git-on-my-level, @gitcommit90, @githubespresso407, @gnodet, @GottZ, @Gridzilla, @grimmjoww578, @gumclaw,
@Gutslabs, @HaiderSultanArc, @harjothkhara, @heathley, @hejuntt1014, @helix4u, @HeLLGURD, @hellno,
@herbalizer404, @HexLab98, @hmirin, @Hopfensaft, @Hotragn, @hsy5571616, @huanshan5195, @HumphreySun98,
@hwrdprkns, @hydracoco7, @hydraxman, @iamlukethedev, @iborazzi, @IgorGanapolsky, @iizotov, @ildunari,
@infinitycrew39, @IpastorSan, @irresi, @isfttr, @isheng-eqi, @itsflownium, @izumi0uu, @Jaaneek, @JacketPants,
@jaisup, @jakelongvu-bot, @jakepresent, @jaketracey, @JAlmanzarMint, @JasonFang1993, @jbbottoms, @jcjc81,
@JiaDe-Wu, @Jiahui-Gu, @Jigoooo, @jingsong-liu, @jneeee, @JoaoMarcos44, @joelbrilliant, @John-Lussier, @jplew,
@jtstothard, @juniperbevensee, @Jupiter363, @justinschille, @k4z4n0v4, @kaishi00, @karfly, @kartik-mem0,
@kavioavio, @KCAYAAI, @kenyonxu, @keslerm, @kevinrajaram, @knoal, @kocaemre, @kohoj, @konsisumer, @krowd3v,
@kshitijk4poor, @kuangmi-bit, @kubolko, @kyssta-exe, @Kyzcreig, @l0h1nth, @labsobsidian, @laurinaitis,
@LavyaTandel, @lawyer112, @lemonwan, @LeonSGP43, @lEWFkRAD, @linfeng961, @liuhao1024, @liuwei666888, @ljy-2000,
@loes5050, @logical-and, @LoicHmh, @loongfay, @lord-dubious, @lost9999, @lucasfdale, @lucaskvasirr,
@luxuguang-leo, @ly-wang19, @m0n5t3r, @m1qaweb, @M1racleShih, @MaartenDMT, @mahdiwafy, @MaheshBhushan,
@ManniBr, @marcelohildebrand, @marcolivierlavoie, @markoub, @MarkVLK, @Marxb85, @matantsevs,
@maxpetrusenkoagent, @mbac, @mdc2122, @mguttmann, @Mibayy, @michaelHMK, @mijanx, @minchang, @momomojo,
@MorAlekss, @morluto, @msh01, @mssteuer, @mvanhorn, @nanami7777777, @nankingjing, @necoweb3, @neo-claw-bot,
@neoguyverx, @nicha16, @nikshepsvn, @nima20002000, @nnnet, @NousResearch, @nullptr0807, @nv-kasikritc,
@okisdev, @OmarB97, @ooiuuii, @ooovenenoso, @oppih, @Osraka, @ostravajih, @otsune, @OutThisLife, @OYLFLMH,
@patrick-muller, @pdmartins, @pedrommaiaa, @Peterskaronis, @petrichor-op, @pgregg88, @pierrenode, @pixel4039,
@plcunha, @pnascimento9596, @Polyhistor, @PRATHAMESH75, @professorpalmer, @Punyko8, @Que0x, @Qwinty,
@r0gersm1th, @r266-tech, @rabadaki, @ragingbulld, @RainbowAndSun, @rainbowgore, @randimt, @rarf, @rasitakyol,
@rayjun, @raymondyan-zhijie, @re-ITRT, @RenoMG, @Rival, @RKelln, @rlaehddus302, @rob-maron, @rodboev,
@roryford, @rungmc357, @ruslanvasylev, @s0xn1ck, @s905060, @s96919, @sahibzada-allahyar, @sahil-shubham,
@Sahil-SS9, @SahilRakhaiya05, @sam7894604, @SAMBAS123, @samrusani, @sanidhyasin, @sasquatch9818, @sberan,
@ScotterMonk, @seagpt, @sebastianlutycz, @SemonCat, @setclock, @shannonsands, @sharziki, @shashwatgokhe,
@SHL0MS, @shuangxinniao, @SilentKnight87, @simplast, @simpolism, @SiteupAgencia, @sjiangtao2024, @sk-holmes,
@slow4cyl, @smtony, @soddy022, @Soju06, @solyanviktor-star, @SongotenU, @spiky02plateau, @sprmn24, @SquabbyZ,
@srojk34, @ssiweifnag, @stantheman0128, @StellarisW, @stephenschoettler, @suninrain086, @superposition,
@Supersynergy, @sweetcornna, @szafranski, @tanmayxchoudhary, @tarunravi, @tcconnally, @terry197913, @Thatgfsj,
@thegoodguysla, @thestudionorth, @TheTom, @TinkerOfThings, @tjboudreaux, @tjp2021, @Tortugasaur, @Tosko4,
@Tranquil-Flow, @trevorgordon981, @trismegistus-wanderer, @tt-a1i, @tuancookiez-hub, @TurgutKural, @Umi4Life,
@UnathiCodex, @unsupportedpastels, @uzaylisak, @valda, @vampyren, @veradim, @victor-kyriazakos, @virtualex-itv,
@vishal-dharm, @Vissirexa, @vizi0uz, @vkkong, @vKongv, @VolodymyrBg, @vortexopenclaw, @VrtxOmega, @WadydX,
@waroffchange, @waseemshahwan, @web3blind, @webtecnica, @wesleion, @wesleysimplicio, @williamumu,
@WilsonKinyua, @wxy-nlp, @wyuebei-cloud, @x7peeps, @x9x9x9x9x9x91, @xuezhaolan, @xxxigm, @ya-nsh, @yatesjalex,
@ygd58, @yingliang-zhang, @yinkev, @YLChen-007, @yu-xin-c, @yungchentang, @zapabob, @zccyman, @zeapsu,
@ziliangpeng, @zwcf5200, @zzpigpinggai

Also: bo.fu, Paulo Henrique, kyssta-exe 25470058+kyssta-exe.fu, Paulo Henrique, kyssta-exe 25470058+kyssta-exe.

Full Changelog: v2026.7.1...v2026.7.20

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.18.2 (v2026.7.7.2)

Release Date: July 7, 2026

Same-day patch on top of v0.18.1, picking up the WhatsApp Baileys dependency fix needed for tagged-release Docker builds.

What's in this patch

• fix(whatsapp): unpin Baileys from git commit, use published 7.0.0-rc13 (#60643) — the WhatsApp bridge dependency now installs from the published npm release instead of a pinned git commit, making installs and Docker image builds reliable.

Full curated release notes for the entire post-v0.18.0 window ship with v0.19.0.

Updating

• hermes update # existing installs
• pip install -U hermes-agent

Full Changelog: v2026.7.7...v2026.7.7.2

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.18.1 (v2026.7.7)

Release Date: July 7, 2026

Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~660 PRs merged since v0.18.0 (July 1) — bug fixes, hardening, and in-progress feature work — into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, PyPI installs).

About this release

This is an infrastructure-driven patch tag rather than a fully curated release. Since v0.18.0 shipped six days ago, main has accumulated roughly 667 commits across ~990 files (+89.5k/−10.4k lines), including installer/updater self-healing on Windows, dashboard and gateway fixes, WhatsApp dashboard pairing, MCP and provider fixes, and a large volume of stability work.

Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.19.0, which will document everything from v0.18.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped; it's documented in the next minor release.

Updating

hermes update # existing installs
pip install -U hermes-agent

Full Changelog: v2026.7.1...v2026.7.7

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.18.0 (v2026.7.1)

Release Date: July 1, 2026

Since v0.17.0: ~1,720 commits · 998 merged PRs · 2,215 files changed · ~251,000 insertions · ~41,000 deletions · 949 issues closed · 370+ community contributors

The Judgment Release. Over the last week and a half the team put nearly all of its effort into one goal: resolve every P0 and P1 issue and PR in the entire Hermes Agent repo — and as of this release, 100% of them are closed. Zero open P0s. Zero open P1s. That's ~700 highest-priority items cleared as part of ~1,950 total issues and PRs closed this window. We intend to keep P0/P1 at zero from here on.

On top of that clean-sweep, v0.18.0 is about how well Hermes thinks and how it knows when its work is actually done. Mixture-of-Agents became a first-class citizen — named ensembles of models you can pick like any other model, with every reference model's reasoning shown to you and the aggregator's answer streamed live. The agent learned to verify its own work against evidence instead of vibes, /goal gained completion contracts, and /learn + /journey turned self-improvement into something you can see and steer. Underneath, the gateway became genuinely deployable-at-scale (scale-to-zero, drain coordination), the desktop grew first-class coding projects and a playable memory graph, and subagents can now fan out in the background.

🎯 The P0/P1 Clean Sweep — 100% resolved

This is the release headline. For a week and a half the team hammered the priority backlog day and night, and every single P0 and P1 across the whole repo is now closed:

Priority
Issues closed
PRs merged
P0 (critical)
3
8
P1 (high)
493
188
Total
496
196

That's ~692 highest-priority items resolved in twelve days — and at the moment the sweep completed, the open P0/P1 count hit 0 across the entire repo. The final cluster to fall was the interrupt-protected-compression sibling-fork bug (issue #56391) and its fix (#56416), closed on an all-nighter right before this release cut.

Special shoutout to @kshitijk4poor, who burned through the priority backlog day and night alongside the core team — the cron reliability wave, the compression-fork fix, the credential-exfil hardening, and a huge share of the P1 closures are his.

We're keeping P0/P1 at 0 from here forward. 🫡

✨ Highlights

Mixture-of-Agents is now a first-class model you can pick — MoA used to be a mode you toggled; now every named MoA preset shows up as a selectable model under a moa provider, right alongside Claude, GPT, and Grok in every model picker (CLI, TUI, desktop, gateway). Pick "my-council" the same way you'd pick any model, and Hermes routes your prompt through that ensemble automatically. An ensemble of frontier models deliberating on your hardest questions is now one selection away, on every surface. (#46081, #53548, #53561 — @teknium1)

See every model's reasoning, then watch the answer stream in — When a MoA ensemble runs, each reference model's full output now renders as its own labelled block — you can read what GPT-5 thought, what Claude thought, and what Grok thought, before the aggregator synthesizes them into one answer. And that final answer now streams to you live instead of appearing all at once after a long silence. This works in the CLI, the TUI, and the desktop app. You get to watch the committee deliberate, not just read the verdict. (#53793, #53855, #55625, #56101 — @teknium1)

The agent verifies its own work — "done" means proven, not claimed — Hermes now records verification evidence for coding work and can decide it's finished by actually running your project's checks, not by asserting success. /goal gained completion contracts: you state what "done" looks like, and the standing-goal loop judges completion against that evidence instead of stopping when the model feels like it. There's a pre_verify hook for wiring in custom checks and a one-time migration that tunes the defaults sensibly. The difference between "I think I fixed it" and "the tests pass, here's proof." (#50501, #52285, #55413, #53552 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

/learn — turn anything into a reusable skill by describing it — Run /learn <anything> and Hermes distills a reusable skill out of whatever you point it at — a directory, a URL, or just the workflow you walked it through five minutes ago. It writes the skill to the standards in your CONTRIBUTING.md automatically. The next time you need that workflow, it's already there. Teaching Hermes a new trick is now a single command, not a manual skill-authoring session. (#51506, #52372 — @teknium1)

/journey — a playable timeline of everything Hermes has learned about you — The CLI and TUI gained /journey, a learning timeline that shows the memories and skills Hermes has accumulated over time — and you can edit or delete any of them right from the view. Pair it with the desktop's new memory graph (a top-down, playable radial timeline of memories and skills) and for the first time you can actually see what your agent knows, watch it grow, and prune what's wrong. Your agent's memory stops being a black box. (#55555, #55859, #55226 — @OutThisLife)

Delegate a pile of work and keep going — background fan-out — delegate_task can now fan out multiple subagents that all run in the background: your chat is never blocked, and when every subagent finishes, their results come back as a single consolidated turn. Kick off "research these five competitors in parallel" or "audit these three modules," then carry on with something else while a small fleet works. When it's all done, you get one clean summary instead of babysitting each one. (#49734 — @teknium1)

First-class coding Projects in the desktop app — The desktop app gained real, per-profile Projects — a sidebar of your codebases, a coding rail, a review pane, git worktree management, and agent-facing project tools, all backed by a proper project → repo → lane model. Instead of scattered chat sessions, your coding work is organized into projects the agent understands and can act on. It's the desktop turning into an actual coding cockpit. (#49037, #54385, #54517 — @OutThisLife)

Run Hermes at scale — scale-to-zero and drain coordination — The gateway can now go dormant when idle and quiesce cleanly before a restart, migration, or auto-update — without dropping in-flight conversations. A hosted or relay-only Hermes can scale to zero when nobody's talking to it and wake back up on demand, and disruptive lifecycle actions coordinate an external drain so nobody gets cut off mid-turn. Running Hermes for a team or as a hosted service just got a lot more production-grade. (#52243, #52937, #54824 — @teknium1, @benbarclay)

Cheaper self-improvement — smarter background review — The post-turn self-improvement fork (the one that decides whether to save a memory or skill) now routes to an auxiliary model, digests context instead of replaying the whole conversation, and adapts its cadence — so the "learn from what just happened" loop that runs after your turns costs a fraction of what it used to. You keep the self-improvement, you stop paying full main-model price for it. (#49252 — @teknium1)

Compose your next prompt in your editor — /prompt — /prompt opens your $EDITOR so you can hand-write a long, multi-line prompt in real markdown instead of fighting a one-line input box. Draft a detailed spec, a structured question, or a big paste, save, and it's queued as your next message. Small thing, huge quality-of-life win for anyone who writes Hermes more than a sentence at a time. (#50509 — @teknium1)

Google Vertex AI — Gemini through your GCP service account, no static key — Vertex AI is now a first-class provider for Gemini models over Vertex's OpenAI-compatible endpoint. The reason a plain custom-provider setup always died mid-session is that Vertex has no static API key — every request needs a short-lived OAuth2 access token (~1h TTL) minted from a service-account JSON or Application Default Credentials. Hermes now mints and auto-refreshes those tokens for you, so if your org runs Gemini through Google Cloud, you point Hermes at your service account and it just works — no token-pasting, no mid-session expiry. (#56363 — @teknium1, @slawt)

Security round — This window hardened several surfaces: MCP-config persistence attack surface locked down, cron base_url overrides that could exfiltrate provider credentials blocked, a non-reusable sentinel for prefix secrets in file reads, Slack app-level (xapp-) token redaction, a browser cloud-metadata floor enforced on every backend, and an aiohttp CVE floor across the lazy messaging paths. Fewer ways for a prompt-injected or misconfigured session to leak a credential. (#50476, #56196, #54166, #56227, #52349, #56237 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor, @claudlos)

🧠 Mixture-of-Agents (MoA)

MoA graduated from a mode to a first-class part of the model system this window.

• Presets as selectable virtual models — each named MoA preset appears as a model under provider moa; pick it in any model picker and Hermes routes through the ensemble (#46081, #53561, #53775 — @teknium1)
• /moa is now one-shot sugar — runs a single prompt through the default preset and restores your model afterward; persistent switching goes through the model picker (#53548 — @teknium1)
• Reference-model output shown as labelled blocks in CLI, TUI, and desktop — read each model's reasoning before the aggregator's synthesis (#53793, #53855 — @teknium1)
• Aggregator response streams live instead of appearing whole after a silence (#55625 — @teknium1)
• References see full tool state and fire on every user/tool response; advisory references end on a user turn and get a reference-role system prompt (#54016, #54007 — @teknium1)
• Opt-in full-turn trace persistence to JSONL (moa.save_traces) for debugging and eval (#56101 — @teknium1)
• Reliability: reference + aggregator models called through their provider's real route; context window resolved from the aggregator (not the 256K default); auxiliary tasks resolve to the aggregator; virtual provider blocked as a reference/aggregator slot; tolerant of hand-edited preset config (#53580, #53780, #53827, #53281, #53275, #53556 — @teknium1)
• MoA slot provider-identity unified on the single call_llm chokepoint; HermesBench results documented (#55991, #53206 — @teknium1)

✅ Verification & Goals — the agent proves its work

• Completion contracts for /goal — state what "done" looks like; the standing-goal loop judges against evidence, not the model's say-so (#50501 — @teknium1)
• /goal wait <pid> — park the standing-goal loop on a background process instead of re-poking the agent (#50503 — @teknium1)
• Coding verification evidence ledger — profile-scoped record of canonical project checks detected by agent.coding_context; gateway exposes verification status (#52285, #52286 — @OutThisLife)
• pre_verify hook + coding guidance config; verification stop loop + ad-hoc verification scripts (#55413, #52296, #52297 — @OutThisLife)
• verify-on-stop defaults OFF with a one-time v32 migration; skips doc-only edits; surface-aware "auto" default restored; gated off for messaging surfaces (#53552, #54740, #55449, #52412 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife, @GodsBoy)

🎓 Self-Improvement (Learn / Journey)

• /learn <anything> — distill a reusable skill from a directory, URL, or a workflow you just walked through; honors CONTRIBUTING.md skill standards and mixed requirements (#51506, #52372, #55956 — @teknium1)
• /journey — CLI + TUI learning timeline of accumulated memories and skills, with in-place edit/delete (#55555, #55859 — @OutThisLife)
• Cheaper background review — aux-model routing + context digest + adaptive cadence for the post-turn self-improvement fork (#49252 — @teknium1)
• memory graph in the desktop — playable radial timeline of memories + skills over time (#55226 — @OutThisLife)

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

Coding cockpit

• First-class Projects — per-profile sidebar, coding rail, review pane, agent project tools (project → repo → lane); remote-gateway-aware folder picker + git cockpit (status, review, worktrees) (#49037, #54385 — @OutThisLife)
• Multi-terminal panel with read-only agent terminals; persist & restore terminal tabs + scrollback across relaunch (#54517, #54585 — @OutThisLife)
• PR-style file diffs in chat; in-app spot editor for the file preview pane; inline rich embeds, diagrams & alerts in assistant markdown (#50731, #52772, #52935 — @OutThisLife)

UX & surfaces

• Conversation timeline rail for long threads; context-usage breakdown popover; read-only spectator transcript for subagent watch windows; pop the composer into a draggable floating window (#51094, #54907, #55033, #49488 — @OutThisLife, @austinpickett)
• Read replies aloud (auto-TTS) composer toggle; remember window size/position/maximized across launches; redesigned clarify prompt; shared overlay Panel primitive for cron/profiles/agents (#55154, #52086, #52993, #54558 — @OutThisLife)
• Backup import/create/download from the web UI; add context-usage popover; flag already-installed themes in install pickers; config-driven Electron launch flags + GPU policy (#54611, #55410, #53991 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
• Pets — roaming pet (opt-in), calmer/realistic roam, Alt+wheel scaling never cropped, frame-perfect hatch flow + CPU-safe chroma, pop-out overlay + notifications (#55114, #55400, #52877, #47959, #52303 — @OutThisLife)

Refactor wave (composer / god-file de-entangle)

• Decomposed the composer into isolated engine hooks; extracted branch/esc/url/placeholder/popout engines; split thread.tsx, sidebar/index.tsx, onboarding overlay, and use-prompt-actions god files into focused modules; shared WebSocket layer decoupling desktop from dashboard (hermes serve) (#55500, #55842, #55451, #55453, #55807, #55504, #54568 — @OutThisLife)
• perf: bound tool-result rendering so big /learn runs don't freeze; fast session switching under load (#52273, #52620 — @OutThisLife)

📊 Web Dashboard

• Auto-initiate portal SSO redirect on unauthenticated load; interactive auth setup on no-provider non-loopback bind; confidential-client (client_secret) support in self-hosted OIDC (#54846, #50551, #55344 — @teknium1, @benbarclay)
• Catalogue all memory-provider API keys in OPTIONAL_ENV_VARS; list & add arbitrary custom .env keys on the Keys page; expose cron job execution fields; backup import/create/download (#54546, #54552, #53551, #54611 — @benbarclay, @teknium1)
• Offload PTY spawn/close off the event loop; exclude non-interactive providers from interactive login surfaces (#53227, #53239 — @IAvecilla)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Delegation & subagents

• Background fan-out — parallel subagents run in the background, one consolidated return when all finish; calm "will resume" affordance for background delegate_task (#49734, #52756 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)
• Track background subagents in the CLI + TUI status bar (#51441, #51485 — @teknium1)

Agent loop, tools & coding context

• One-shot LLM helper + llm.oneshot gateway RPC; expose coding-context project facts (project.facts RPC) (#51261, #51259 — @OutThisLife)
• web_extract truncate-and-store instead of LLM summarization; concurrent @-reference expansion (#54843, #55207 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
• Friendly human-phrased tool labels for built-in tools; /reasoning full (uncapped thinking); /timestamps + timestamps in /history; /prompt composes in $EDITOR (#55166, #50499, #50506, #50509 — @teknium1)
• Per-reasoning-model stale-timeout floor in stream + non-stream detectors; escalate SIGTERM→SIGKILL on host-pid termination after grace (#52845, #50489 — @teknium1)
• Multiple HERMES_WRITE_SAFE_ROOT dirs; opt-in HTTP/WS body capture to an isolated, share-excluded gui_bodies.log (#53292, #49044 — @kshitijk4poor)

Compression & sessions

• In-place compaction option (single session id); flip in_place default to True with a guard fix (#49739, #52658 — @teknium1)
• Backup includes projects.db and kanban boards in the pre-update snapshot (#52990 — @kshitijk4poor)

Providers & models

• Google Vertex AI first-class provider for Gemini over the OpenAI-compatible endpoint — auto-mints and refreshes short-lived OAuth2 tokens from a service-account JSON / ADC (no static key); salvages & modernizes #8427 by @slawt (#56363 — @teknium1, @slawt)
• Krea via managed Nous Subscription gateway; Z.AI endpoint picker (Global/China/Coding Plan); Ollama-cloud reasoning_effort wiring; remove google-gemini-cli + google-antigravity OAuth providers (#52647, #52364, #51494, #50492 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
• Honor NOUS_INFERENCE_BASE_URL env override for Nous OAuth; keep Nous auth fresh for idle dashboard/gateway agents (#52270, #50567 — @benbarclay, @teknium1)

🌐 Gateway, Fleet & Relay

Scale-to-zero & drain

• Scale-to-zero idle detection + dormant-quiesce (Phase 0); hardened dormancy guards; fixed arm-gate counting disabled placeholder platforms (#52243, #52359, #52831 — @teknium1, @benbarclay)
• External drain coordination (safe-shutdown Phase 2); suppress home-channel shutdown broadcast on flagged drains; persist in-flight transcript on restart/shutdown drain timeout; busy/idle readout for safe lifecycle actions (#52937, #54824, #50312, #50131 — @teknium1, @benbarclay, @kshitijk4poor)
• Default restart_drain_timeout to 0 to kill a systemd crash loop; self-heal a gateway stranded in draining/degraded (#54066, #55397 — @teknium1)

Relay (Phase 5 / 6)

• Wake primitive (gateway side); going-idle / buffered-flip primitive; passthrough_forward over WS; multi-platform-per-agent identity + per-frame egress; forward stable instance id at self-provision; declare relevance policy to the connector (#51595, #51572, #50702, #52830, #50772, #51248 — @benbarclay)
• Authorize relay-delivered events by delivery, not source.platform; adopt scope_id wire key; purge platform-specific scope terminology (#52306, #55289, #56016 — @benbarclay)

Gateway core & rendering

• Typed send-error classification (SendResult.error_kind); per-platform typing_indicator toggle; per-category context breakdown in /usage (#50342, #55394, #55204 — @teknium1)
• API server: configurable concurrent-run cap to prevent DoS; scope run approvals by run id (#50007, #56129 — @teknium1)

📱 Messaging Platforms

• Cron continuations — continuable cron jobs (thread-preferred continuation with DM-mirror fallback); flat in-channel continuable cron delivery for Slack; warn when gateway not running on cron create/list (#52250, #56254, #51696 — @teknium1)
• Telegram: configurable command menu + raised default cap so skills stay visible; gate rich draft previews separately; drain general send pool on pool timeout before retry (#51716, #52088, #54121 — @teknium1, @helix4u)
• Slack: opt-in Block Kit rendering for agent messages; --no-assistant flag for manifest generation (#56102, #51487 — @teknium1)
• Discord: render reasoning as -# subtext via display.reasoning_style (#51168 — @teknium1)
• Native WhatsApp media delivery via the Baileys bridge; Teams native send_video/send_voice/send_document; photon sidecar upgraded to spectrum-ts v8 with tapback correlation; Raft gateway setup wizard (#53598, #49308, #53451, #56230 — @teknium1)
• Signal: AAC voice-note remux + shared markdown formatting (#49530 — @kshitijk4poor)
• Migrate slack/dingtalk/whatsapp/matrix/feishu/telegram/wecom/email/sms adapters to bundled (#49408 — @teknium1)

🔧 Tool System, Skills & MCP

• Blank Slate setup mode — minimal agent, opt in to everything (#36733 — @teknium1)
• MCP: config persistence attack surface hardened; block base_url exfil; keepalive for short-TTL sessions (see Security) — plus catalog & UX carried from v0.17.0
• Skills: /learn distillation (see Self-Improvement); cloudflare-temporary-deploy optional skill; creative-ideation v2.1.0 method library (#50849, #42402 — @teknium1)
• Kanban: task lifecycle plugin hooks (claimed/completed/blocked); typed block reasons + unblock-loop breaker; handoff freshness stamping (#50349, #52848, #53973 — @teknium1)
• Plugins: ctx.profile_name for session-agnostic profile access (#50346 — @teknium1)
• LSP: PowerShellEditorServices language server; mem0 v3 API + OSS mode + update/delete tools (#55930, #15624 — @teknium1, @kartik-mem0)

⚡ Performance

• Cold start: lazy-load gateway platform adapters; parse config + plugin manifests with libyaml CSafeLoader (#54448, #54486 — @teknium1)
• State: merge FTS5 segments + handoff_state index to curb write-lock contention; single-pass list_profiles alias map + skill-count cache + event-loop offload (#54752, #54770 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)

🔒 Security & Reliability

• Harden MCP-config persistence attack surface; block cron base_url overrides that exfiltrate provider credentials; non-reusable sentinel for prefix secrets in file reads (#50476, #56196, #54166 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)
• Redact Slack App-Level (xapp-) tokens; browser cloud-metadata floor on all backends (CDP non-local); re-check private-network guard after browser_back navigation; scope /resume and /sessions to caller origin (IDOR); aiohttp 3.14.1 CVE floor across lazy messaging paths + pin-drift guard (#56227, #52349, #56526, #56378, #56237 — @teknium1, @claudlos, @kshitijk4poor)
• Cron reliability wave: fail closed when an unpinned job's provider drifts; run missed-grace jobs once instead of deferring forever; keep the ticker alive on BaseException + heartbeat-aware status; layer enabled MCP servers onto per-job toolsets; guard cron model-tool path + auto-resume loop breaker (#51051, #50062, #50016, #50117, #56240 — @kshitijk4poor, @teknium1)
• Windows: suppress console flashes + harden gateway restarts; prefer cmd npm shim on PATH fallback; respawn gateway windowless after GUI update; prefer managed node for whatsapp/desktop (#52340, #50398, #52239 — @helix4u, @teknium1)

🔁 Reverts (in-window, for the record)

• cron job storage returned to per-profile (reverts #32117 + #50993); don't clone auth.json (duplicating OAuth grant causes sibling revocation); windows terminal-popup PRs rolled back; prompt_caching.enabled toggle backed out for re-evaluation (#51116, #51732, #53853, #56126 — @teknium1)

👥 Contributors

381 people contributed to this release (via commits, co-author trailers, and salvaged PRs). Thank you, all of you.

Core

@teknium1 — release lead; MoA first-class, verification/goals, /learn, background review, security round, providers, the P0/P1 clean-sweep

@OutThisLife — desktop app (projects, memory graph, /journey, multi-terminal, composer refactor wave, pets, verification UX)

Top community contributors

@kshitijk4poor — the P0/P1 backlog burn: cron reliability wave, state perf, security (cron credential-exfil), gateway/signal, TUI config — a huge share of the priority closures

@benbarclay — relay Phase 5/6, scale-to-zero / drain coordination, dashboard auth/keys, gateway hardening

@ethernet8023 — CI/docker (unified jobs, faster builds, timings report)

@helix4u — Windows hardening (console flashes, npm shim, gateway restarts)

All contributors

@0xbyt4, @0xDevNinja, @0xsir0000, @1RB, @595650661, @aaronlab, @abchiaravalle, @adammatski1972, @AetherAgents,
@Afnath-max, @agt-user, @ahmadashfq, @AhmetArif0, @AIalliAI, @aieng-abdullah, @ailang323, @ailthrim, @aj-nt,
@alelpoan, @alloevil, @amathxbt, @ambition0802, @anderskev, @andressommerhoff, @angelos, @annguyenNous,
@Antimatter543, @arminanton, @arthurzhang, @asimons81, @austinpickett, @baolingao, @Bartok9, @basilalshukaili,
@BBCrypto-web, @bbopen, @Beandon13, @beardthelion, @benbarclay, @benbenlijie, @binhnt92, @bitcryptic-gw,
@Blaryxoff, @bogerman1, @bradhallett, @brett539, @briandevans, @buihongduc132, @bykim0119, @catapreta,
@chaithanyak42, @charleneleong-ai, @CharlieKerfoot, @chazmaniandinkle, @chrispersico, @Christopher-Schulze,
@chriswesley4, @claudlos, @clovericbot, @cmcejas, @codexGW, @Cossackx, @counterposition, @coygeek, @CRWuTJ,
@cyb0rgk1tty, @cyb3rwr3n, @cypctlinux, @cypres0099, @dalenguyen, @Danamove, @DanAsBjorn, @DataAdvisory,
@davidgut1982, @DavidMetcalfe, @davidvv, @de1tydev, @denisqq, @devorun, @devsart95, @DhivinX, @DiamondEyesFox,
@difujia, @Disaster-Terminator, @djimit, @djstunami, @dodo-reach, @donovan-yohan, @Dr1985, @DrZM007, @Dusk1e,
@egilewski, @ehz0ah, @Eji4h, @EloquentBrush0x, @Elshayib, @emozilla, @entropy-0x, @erosika, @EtherAura,
@etherman-os, @ethernet8023, @f-trycua, @fayenix, @fesalfayed, @firefly, @flamiinngo, @flobo3, @francescomucio,
@franksong2702, @friendshipisover, @fsaad1984, @fyzanshaik, @GauravPatil2515, @gdeyoung, @georgex8001,
@GodsBoy, @graphanov, @Gromykoss, @gustavosmendes, @Gutslabs, @H2KFORGIVEN, @haileymarshall, @hakanpak,
@happy5318, @haran2001, @harjothkhara, @heathley, @hehehe0803, @helix4u, @herbalizer404, @HexLab98,
@HiddenPuppy, @Hinotoi-agent, @HODLCLONE, @houko, @huangsen365, @huangxudong663-sys, @huangxun375-stack,
@HwangJohn, @iaji, @iamlukethedev, @IamSanchoPanza, @IAvecilla, @Icather, @iizotov, @indigokarasu,
@infinitycrew39, @ipriyaaanshu, @isair, @islam666, @itenev, @itsflownium, @izumi0uu, @Jaaneek, @JabberELF,
@jackjin1997, @jackroofan, @janrenz, @jasnoorgill, @jasonQin6, @jcjc81, @jearnest11, @jeeves-assistant,
@Jeffgithub0029, @jeffrobodie-glitch, @JezzaHehn, @jimmyjohansson84, @jmmaloney4, @jnibarger01, @JoaoMarcos44,
@jplew, @Junass1, @justemu, @justin-cyhuang, @JustinOhms, @jvradahellys24-art, @Kailigithub, @kaishi00,
@kangsoo-bit, @kartik-mem0, @keiravoss94, @kenyonxu, @kernel-t1, @Kewe63, @KeyArgo, @KiruyaMomochi, @kn8-codes,
@Kolektori, @konsisumer, @kshitijk4poor, @kyssta-exe, @Kyzcreig, @Lazymonter, @LehaoLin, @LeonSGP43, @lEWFkRAD,
@libre-7, @LIC99, @LifeJiggy, @linyubin, @liuhao1024, @lkevincc0, @lkz-de, @loes5050, @londo161, @lubosxyz,
@m24927605, @MaheshtheDev, @manus-use, @marco0158, @MarioYounger, @martinramos002-bot, @MattKotsenas,
@max-chen, @MaxFreedomPollard, @maxmilian, @maxpetrusenko, @memosr, @Mibayy, @Minksgo, @mintybasil, @mkslzk,
@mohamedorigami-jpg, @MorAlekss, @mrparker0980, @ms-alan, @namredips, @nankingjing, @natehale, @necoweb3,
@neo-2026, @Nickperillo, @nightq, @nikshepsvn, @nnnet, @nocturnum91, @nodejun, @NousResearch, @nycomar,
@OmarB97, @orbisai0security, @oreoluwa, @outsourc-e, @OutThisLife, @p-andhika, @panghuer023, @Paperclip,
@peetwan, @pefontana, @petrichor-op, @pinguarmy, @PINKIIILQWQ, @pmos69, @PolyphonyRequiem, @pprism13,
@PRATHAMESH75, @professorpalmer, @pyxl-dev, @Que0x, @qWaitCrypto, @r266-tech, @RafaelMiMi, @Railway9784,
@randomuser2026x, @rayjun, @rc-int, @rebel0789, @redactdeveloper, @riyas22, @rlaope, @rob-maron, @rodboev,
@rodrigoeqnit, @rratmansky, @rrevenanttt, @ruangraung, @Ruzzgar, @ryo-solo, @s010mn, @Sahil-SS9,
@SahilRakhaiya05, @SandroHub013, @Sanjays2402, @sasquatch9818, @ScotterMonk, @season179, @sgabel, @sgaofen,
@sgtworkman, @shandian64, @shannonsands, @shashwatgokhe, @shawchanshek, @sherman-yang, @SHL0MS, @SidUParis,
@SimoKiihamaki, @simpolism, @sjh9714, @skabartem, @skyc1e, @slawt, @soynchux, @spiky02plateau, @spjoes,
@sprmn24, @srojk34, @stepanov1975, @steveonjava, @Subway2023, @sweetcornna, @swissly, @Sworntech-dev,
@syahidfrd, @synapsesx, @szzhoujiarui-sketch, @talmax1124, @telos-oc, @testingbuddies24, @texhy, @tgmerritt,
@theAgenticBuilder, @thestral123, @tkwong, @Tortugasaur, @Tranquil-Flow, @trevorgordon981, @truenorth-lj,
@tt-a1i, @tuancookiez-hub, @TutkuEroglu, @tymrtn, @udatny, @UgwujaGeorge, @underthestars-zhy, @uperLu,
@uzunkuyruk, @valenteff, @valentt, @vanthinh6886, @Versun, @victor-kyriazakos, @virtuadex, @vKongv,
@w31rdm4ch1nZ, @weidzhou, @wgu9, @whoislikemiha, @wnuuee1, @woaini30050, @WuKongAI-CMU, @WuTianyi123, @WXBR,
@x7peeps, @x9x9x9x9x9x91, @Xowiek, @xxchan, @xxxigm, @xydigit-zt, @yapsrubricsz0, @yashiels, @yeyitech, @ygd58,
@YLChen-007, @yong2bba, @yoniebans, @ypwcharles, @yu-xin-c, @yungchentang, @yusekiotacode, @YuShu, @yyzquwu,
@zapabob, @zccyman, @zeapsu, @zmlgit, @znding04, @Zyxxx-xxxyZ

Also: Lucas Nicolas.

Full Changelog: v2026.6.19...v2026.7.1

Original source

Hermes Agent v0.17.0 (v2026.6.19)

Release Date: June 19, 2026

Since v0.16.0: ~1,475 commits · ~800 merged PRs · 1,693 files changed · 235,390 insertions · 50,730 deletions · 300+ issues closed · 245 community contributors

The Reach Release. v0.16.0 put Hermes on your desktop. v0.17.0 is about how far that reach extends — across new places to talk to it, deeper into the tools you already use, and out to the people running Hermes for a team. Hermes reached two new channels (iMessage via Photon, and the Raft agent network), the desktop app gained substantial new capability, subagents can now run in the background, image generation learned to edit, and Cursor's Composer model is reachable through an xAI Grok subscription. The dashboard got a full profile builder and secure login, the Skills Hub browser was rehauled, the memory tool got a major upgrade, and the curator stopped spending aux-model budget on every routine run. 300+ issues closed ride along, plus a security round.

✨ Highlights

Hermes reaches iMessage — Photon Spectrum, no Mac relay required — There's now an iMessage platform plugin built on Photon's managed line pool. Run hermes photon login, authenticate with a device code, and Hermes can send and receive iMessage — no Mac sitting in a closet running a relay, no BlueBubbles bridge to babysit. It's positioned as the successor to BlueBubbles: free to start, nothing to self-host. If your friends and family live in the blue bubbles, Hermes lives there now too. (#32348, #42582, #44713 — @teknium1)

Raft — Hermes joins the Raft agent network as a gateway channel — A new bundled Raft platform adapter lets Hermes connect to Raft as an external agent through a wake-channel bridge. Set RAFT_PROFILE, run the bridge, and Raft can wake Hermes to handle messages — with a privacy-by-contract design where wake payloads carry only metadata (event IDs, timestamps), never message bodies. Another surface where Hermes can show up and do work. (#48210 — @xxchan, @teknium1)

A substantially more capable desktop app — v0.16.0 shipped the desktop app; v0.17.0 deepened it across dozens of PRs. Rebindable keyboard shortcuts, native OS notifications with per-type toggles, live subagent watch-windows that stream a delegated agent's activity into its own pane, a composer model selector with per-model presets, automatic RTL/bidi text direction, a resizable VS Code-themed terminal pane, per-thread composer drafts, and the ability to install any VS Code Marketplace theme directly into the app. The desktop is now a serious daily driver, not a preview. (#45866, #40660, #47060, #46959, #43292, #44596 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Background / async subagents — delegate work and keep going — delegate_task(background=true) now dispatches a subagent that runs in the background and returns a handle immediately. You and the model keep working while it churns, and the full result re-enters the conversation as a new turn the moment it finishes. Kick off a long research dive or a multi-step build, then carry on with something else instead of sitting blocked waiting on it. (#40946, #46968 — @teknium1)

Edit images, not just generate them — image-to-image in image_generate — image_generate can now edit and transform a source image, not only create one from scratch. Pass an existing image and a prompt and it routes to the backend's edit endpoint (same tool, same pattern as video_generate), across every supported image provider. "Make this logo blue," "remove the background," "turn this sketch into a render" — all from the tool you already use. (#48705 — @teknium1)

Automation Blueprints — schedule things without learning cron — Pick an automation by name and Hermes asks you for what it needs — no cron syntax, no slot=value typing. One blueprint definition renders natively on every surface: a form in the dashboard, a slash command in the CLI/TUI/messenger, a conversation with the agent, an entry in the docs catalog. "Daily news briefing at 8am" becomes a thing you set up by answering questions, not by memorizing 0 8 * * *. (#41309 — @teknium1)

Cursor's Composer model, through your xAI Grok subscription — grok-composer-2.5-fast is now in the xAI OAuth model picker, with its context window reconciled to the full 200k. Composer is the fast coding model behind Cursor — and if you have an xAI Grok subscription, you can now point Hermes at it directly over OAuth, no separate API key. Your Grok plan, Hermes's agent loop, Composer's coding speed. (#47908, #6f89e17 — @teknium1)

Full profile builder in the dashboard — Build a complete Hermes profile from the browser — pick its model, choose its skills, attach its MCP servers — without hand-editing config.yaml. The dashboard also unified multi-profile management into one machine-wide view with a global profile switcher, so you manage every profile from a single place. (#39084, #44007 — @teknium1)

Skills Hub browser rehaul — The dashboard's Skills Hub got a ground-up rework: connected hubs, a Featured section, full skill previews before you install, and a security scan on each skill. Browsing and installing skills from the trusted taps (OpenAI, Anthropic, HuggingFace, NVIDIA) is now a real browsing experience, not a flat list. (#40384, #43398 — @teknium1)

The memory tool got a major upgrade — atomic batch operations — The memory tool gained an operations array that applies a batch of add/replace/remove edits atomically against the final character budget. The model can free up space and add new entries in a single call — even when an add alone would overflow the budget — collapsing what used to be a fragile multi-turn dance into one reliable operation. Memory updates are now faster and far less likely to fail mid-edit. (#48507 — @teknium1)

Secure dashboard login — The dashboard's authentication was hardened: every token-required endpoint now correctly returns 401 behind the OAuth gate, websocket auth uses the served dashboard token, and a warning fires when a public_url override is silently rejected. Exposing your dashboard to the network is safer by default. (#42578, #42578 — @benbarclay, @teknium1)

Official WhatsApp Business Cloud API adapter — Alongside the existing Baileys bridge, Hermes now speaks the official WhatsApp Business Cloud API — Meta's first-party, hosted, no-bridge-process path. Point it at your Business API credentials and Hermes talks WhatsApp through the supported channel, with no QR-scanning bridge process to keep alive. (#44331, #43921 — @jquesnelle, @teknium1)

Rich text for Telegram — Bot API 10.1 rich messages — Telegram replies now render as proper rich messages via Bot API 10.1: better formatting, cleaner long-message handling, native markup instead of flattened text. It's on by default with an opt-out, so your Telegram conversations look the way they should without any configuration. (#44829, #45584, #45953 — @teknium1)

Curator cost optimization — no aux-model spend on routine runs — The skill curator now prunes stale skills by default but no longer runs its LLM-powered consolidation pass unless you opt in (curator.consolidate: true or hermes curator run --consolidate). The deterministic inactivity sweep keeps running for free; the opinionated, aux-model-spending "build umbrella skills" fork is now off by default. Routine background curation costs you zero tokens. (#47840 — @teknium1)

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

New surfaces & UX

Rebindable keyboard shortcuts panel; native OS notifications with per-type toggles; curated turn-completion cue + dismissable error banners (#40660, #45866, #42480, #47985 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Live subagent watch-windows — stream a delegated agent's activity into its own pane; composer status stack + editable prompts; open any chat in its own window; new-session-in-compact-window hotkey (#47060, #44630, #43219, #46951 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Composer model selector + per-model presets + external-provider disconnect; surface every provider/model from hermes model in the GUI; unify provider list to one source; warn when a main-model switch leaves auxiliary tasks pinned elsewhere (#46959, #40563, #49080, #40286 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Install any VS Code Marketplace theme; assignable themes per profile; window translucency slider; unified overlay design system + BrandMark + onboarding redesign (#43292, #42286, #45086, #40708 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Resizable VS Code-themed terminal pane + palette polish; auto-detect RTL/bidi text direction in chat; Mac-style session switcher (^Tab / ^1-9); worktree-aware sidebar grouping; hover-reveal collapsed sidebars; messaging source folders in sidebar (#42521, #44596, #43111, #45273, #41670, #41751 — @OutThisLife)

Arrow-key history + queue editing in composer; expand full command inline from the approval bar; follow-streaming-at-bottom + jump-to-bottom button; first-class cron jobs in the sidebar + dashboard scheduler (#40234, #44864, #45263, #40684 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Desktop pets — pop-out overlay + notifications (#47938 — @teknium1)

Full tool-backend config (pickers + per-backend settings) in Settings; run tool-backend post-setup installs from the GUI; uninstall the Chat GUI without removing the agent; Shift+click status-bar zap to toggle YOLO globally; /browser connect on a local gateway (#41232, #40559, #40355, #41666, #47245 — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

Japanese + Traditional Chinese language switching (#40114)

"Restart gateway" action (renamed from "Restart messaging") surfaced in the statusbar + on messaging save/toggle toasts; rendered logs are selectable/copyable (#49094 — @OutThisLife)

Remote-gateway & multi-profile

Remote media relay — attach images/PDFs and display agent-written images over the network for the first time; remote-gateway file attachments via file.attach (#41336, #42634 — @teknium1)

Client + backend version buttons + remote-backend update flow; browse remote backend files; route global-remote profile REST calls; recover chat after sleep/wake by revalidating a stale remote backend (#42181, #44326, #47011, #41350 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Multi-profile fallout cleanup — WS auth + cross-profile session reads; release profile backends before delete; scope session list/model switch/timer per session (#44529, #42613, #41103, #41120, #41182 — @OutThisLife, @teknium1)

Stream subagent activity into watch windows; keep streaming painting in unfocused secondary chat windows; recover stranded session windows (#47060, #47919, #47655 — @OutThisLife)

📊 Web Dashboard

Full-featured profile builder (model + skills + MCPs); unify multi-profile management — one machine dashboard + global profile switcher; profile-scoped skills & toolsets; session switcher panel on the Chat tab (#39084, #44007, #43808, #49077 — @teknium1)

Skills hub browser rehaul — connected hubs, featured, preview + security scan; SKILL.md editor on Skills page + attach-skill selector in cron modals; full per-MCP catalog detail; full tool-backend config in the GUI (#40384, #44231, #48520, #40418 — @teknium1)

Enable webhooks from the Webhooks page; idempotent hermes dashboard register; auto-restart gateway after Telegram QR onboarding; file browser; change UI font from the theme picker; reasoning-effort picker in the chat sidebar (#44021, #42455, #43424, #43512, #41145, #49141 — @teknium1)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

God-file refactor wave (run_agent.py / cli.py / gateway/run.py)

cli.py main() 3297 → 954 lines — extracted 28 subcommand parsers into hermes_cli/subcommands/, then promoted 9 closure handlers; 32 slash-command handlers → CLICommandsMixin; 18 model-flow wizard functions → model_setup_flows; agent-construction cluster → CLIAgentSetupMixin (#41798, #41835, #41942, #42174, #42153 — @teknium1)

gateway/run.py 19157 → 15870 lines — 42 slash-command handlers → GatewaySlashCommandsMixin; authorization cluster → GatewayAuthorizationMixin; kanban watcher loops → GatewayKanbanWatchersMixin (#41886, #42159, #41849 — @teknium1)

run_agent.py turn loop — extracted prologue into TurnContext, post-loop tail into finalize_turn, consolidated inner-retry-loop recovery flags into TurnRetryState (#41778, #42169, #41828 — @teknium1)

Agent loop, prompt & tools

memory batch operations — atomic add/replace/remove array against the final char budget, so a single call can free space and add entries (#48507 — @teknium1)

search_files lossless densification — headroom evaluation report + the one densification improvement worth shipping (fewer tokens per result, same matches) (#47866 — @teknium1)

Removed the agent-callable send_message tool; coding-context posture across CLI/TUI/desktop/ACP; read_file extracts .ipynb/.docx/.xlsx to text (#47856, #43316, #37082 — @teknium1)

Context-file handling: configurable truncation limit + warnings; scale context-file cap to model window + point agent at the truncated file (#47251, #47846 — @teknium1)

Compression: temporal anchoring in compaction summaries; raise compaction trigger to 85% for gpt-5.5 on Codex OAuth (#41102, #40957 — @teknium1)

Adaptive middleware (consumed by NeMo-Relay observer telemetry); usable mid-turn steer — desktop affordance + trusted injection (#29724, #40240 — @teknium1)

Provider & model support

New models: z-ai/glm-5.2 (verified 1M context, OpenRouter + Nous), anthropic/claude-fable-5, laguna-m.1 + nemotron-3-ultra, xAI Composer 2.5 in the OAuth picker; default xAI to grok-build-0.1 (#47391, #45695, #42979, #42629, #47908, #47371 — @teknium1)

Model picker: Refresh-Models control to bust stale cache; persist Nous recommended-models to disk + fall back on Portal failure; seed catalog disk cache from checkout on update; MiniMax-M3 reports true 1M context (#48691, #42628, #42614, #43338 — @teknium1)

Anthropic adaptive models: default to modern thinking contract; never send reasoning field; route reasoning_effort to verbosity; require confirmation for very expensive selections (#42991, #43012, #43436, #43391 — @teknium1)

Auth: auto-detect OpenRouter credential from the pool; keep Codex OAuth pool accounts distinct on add/re-auth; resolve xAI OAuth across profiles + write rotated tokens back to root; honor model.default_headers for custom OpenAI-compatible providers (#42263, #42316, #46614, #41096 — @teknium1)

Bedrock falls back to non-streaming InvokeModel when IAM denies the streaming variant; Ollama default max_tokens=65536; surface model refusals as content_filter (#44293, #41694, #46013 — @teknium1)

Sessions, state & multi-agent

Optional max session cap; drop empty sessions on CLI exit and rotation; ACP session-provenance metadata for compression rotation (#42389, #43855, #41724 — @teknium1)

Delegation: resolve custom-endpoint subagent pools by endpoint identity; remove the default subagent wall-clock timeout; stop subagent completion lines leaking into parent CLI display (#41730, #45149, #44223 — @teknium1)

Kanban: config-gated auto-subscribe on kanban_create; machine-global singleton lock for the embedded dispatcher; pin assigned profile toolsets for workers; hold reclaim while worker still alive (#48635, #49068, #45590, #49064 — @teknium1)

Memory: configurable Hindsight retain observation scopes; OpenViking setup UX; Honcho gateway-gated identity tree; Supermemory session-level ingest (#46611, #48262, #44431, #38756 — @teknium1, @alt-glitch)

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

New channels

iMessage via Photon Spectrum — hermes photon login (device-code OAuth), gRPC-native channel (no webhook), markdown rendering, emoji reactions, outbound media via spectrum-ts (#32348, #42582, #44713, #42397 — @teknium1)

WhatsApp Business Cloud API adapter (official, no bridge process) (#44331, #43921 — @jquesnelle, @teknium1)

SimpleX — groups, native attachments, text batching, auto-accept; Raft bundled platform plugin with activity hooks (#42584, #48210 — @teknium1)

Gateway core & rendering

Render terminal tool calls as native bash code blocks on markdown platforms; bare fenced code blocks in chat; optional message timestamps for LLM context; configurable tool_progress_grouping (#41215, #42576, #47253, #47228 — @teknium1)

Telegram: Bot API 10.1 rich messages (now always-on with opt-out); opt-in Online/Offline bot status indicator; stop cutting long streamed responses; MarkdownV2 on progress edits; gate oversized voice/audio before download (#44829, #45584, #49134, #43761, #44245 — @teknium1)

Discord: propagate role_authorized so DISCORD_ALLOWED_ROLES works end-to-end; recover from runtime gateway task exits; cancel _bot_task on connect failure; stop typing after replies (#43327, #44383, #44432, #44836 — @teknium1)

Slack: scope top-level channel messages when reply_in_thread=false; thread approval UX (block-size overflow + typed-prefix); make video attachments available to agents; register_slack_action_handler plugin API (#41703, #43444, #45512, #44664 — @teknium1)

Replied-to media attachments included; document attachments classified as DOCUMENT on Signal/Email/SimpleX/Teams; WhatsApp restarts stale bridge processes; Matrix room-context isolation; QQbot CPU-spin fix; Weixin rate-limit circuit breaker (#46107, #44695, #44205, #18505, #40574, #41718 — @teknium1, @banditburai)

🖥️ CLI, TUI & Setup

/version slash command; /billing interactive terminal billing (TUI + CLI); show time since last final agent response on the status bar; persist resolved approval/clarify prompts in scrollback (#40214, #45449, #44265, #44702 — @teknium1)

Lock hermes worktrees so concurrent processes can't clobber them; display custom profile alias names in list/show; clone profiles from any source (#48699, #40371, #45630 — @teknium1)

Opt-in structured profile-build path on first contact; configurable per-platform system-prompt hints; configurable background memory/skill notifications (#41114, #48630, #47226 — @teknium1)

TUI: interactive Plugins Hub enable/disable overlay; session name in the terminal titlebar; paint approval/clarify/sudo/secret modals directly (not via throttle); wrap long approval commands instead of truncating (#42965, #43188, #41155, #44691 — @teknium1)

TTS: Gemini persona prompts + audio tags; xAI auto speech tags + speed/streaming knobs; Piper speaker_id; OGG for Telegram auto-TTS (#43442, #49061, #49062, #49060, #41644 — @teknium1)

🔧 Tool System, Skills & MCP

image-to-image / editing in image_generate across all backends; shrink images to provider dimension limit (#48705, #45979 — @teknium1)

MCP: official Unreal Engine 5.8 MCP server in the catalog; elicitation handler so MCP servers can prompt for mid-tool-call confirmation (payment/OAuth) on whichever surface owns the session — CLI/TUI/Telegram/Slack; expose late-connecting MCP tools to the agent between turns (cache-safe); keepalive ping for short-TTL HTTP sessions; block exfil-shaped / suspicious stdio configs before probe; capability-gate tools/list so prompt-only servers connect; preserve stdio argv passthrough + Windows env vars (#48397, #49203, #49208, #49221, #46083, #44550, #44324 — @teknium1, @lgalabru)

Skills: simplify-code skill (parallel 3-agent code review & cleanup) + risk-tiered application with Chesterton's Fence; find & diff user-modified bundled skills; optional payments skills (Stripe Link, MPP, Projects); CLI-based shop skill; live per-source browse progress (#41691, #49070, #48286, #31343, #47309, #43398 — @teknium1, @colinwren-stripe)

Curator: make skill consolidation opt-in (prune stays default-on) (#47840 — @teknium1)

Plugins: install from a subdirectory within a repo; accept browser-pasted GitHub URLs in hermes plugins install; session:compress lifecycle event + thread_id/chat_type in agent:start/end context (#42963, #33539, #47252, #41672 — @teknium1)

Memory/skill write approval gate (default off) — boolean write_approval replaces the tri-state write_mode (#38199, #43354 — @teknium1)

🌐 Fleet, Relay & Automation

Managed scope — administrator-pinned, user-immutable config & secrets from a root-owned /etc/hermes (#49098 — @teknium1)

Multiplex all profiles over one gateway process (opt-in) (#48273 — @benbarclay)

Pluggable CronScheduler + Chronos managed-cron provider (scale-to-zero) (#48275 — @benbarclay)

Automation Blueprints — parameterized automation templates across every surface (#41309 — @teknium1)

Gateway-Gateway relay (phases 0-3): relay adapter + capability descriptor, connector⇄gateway channel auth + signed-HTTP inbound + enroll CLI, WS-only inbound, managed-boot self-provision client (#48078, #48147, #48294, #48242 — @teknium1)

🐳 Docker, Nix & Installer

s6: detect supervisor directly for gateway restart; register profile gateways without auto-starting; persist desired state; clear stale log locks (#46290, #46266, #46292, #46289 — @teknium1)

Docker: optimize image size (.dockerignore, drop dev deps, split layers); pre-install matrix deps; supervised gateway uses --replace; harden hosted install tree against self-modification (#38749, #42413, #47555, #47490 — @teknium1)

Nix: cold npm build fixes + auto-fix-lockfiles workflow; hashless npm deps via importNpmLock; refresh npmDepsHash after Electron 40.10.2 pin (#41867, #48883, #48457 — @teknium1)

Installer: clear unmerged git index before autostash; scope install-method stamp to the code tree (#45515, #48188 — @teknium1)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Fail closed on own-policy gateway adapters; fail closed for approval-button auth on Slack/Feishu/Discord when no allowlist is set (#45634, #41226 — @teknium1)

Redact secrets in request debug dumps; withhold host metadata from public status; block exfil-shaped / suspicious MCP stdio configs before probe (#46637, #45642, #46083 — @teknium1)

Close shell-escape denylist bypass + fail-closed on missing approval module; scrub operator environment before launching cua-driver MCP; sanitize env for cron job-script subprocesses; bound TodoStore content length/count; scan REST cron prompts for parity with the agent tool (#40591, #48423, #49207, #41648, #41335 — @teknium1, @kshitijk4poor)

Bump urllib3 and PyJWT to clear CVEs; Langfuse redacts base64 data URIs instead of truncating into invalid base64 (#40179, #43322 — @teknium1)

🪟 Windows

Dashboard /chat tab via ConPTY (win_pty_bridge) + tests; resolve PowerShell host instead of bare powershell for uv install; resolve powershell.exe by absolute path so Desktop install doesn't stall (#42251, #48341, #40927 — @teknium1)

Repair stale winget registration + refresh/merge PATH; kill hermes before recreating venv to release _bcrypt.pyd lock; read HERMES_HOME from the registry when env is stale; quarantine running hermes.exe during update repair (#44084, #45120, #46772, #40409 — @teknium1)

JOB-breakaway watcher reliability + status --deep probes; handle Windows PTY stdin + detached WS frames; decode subprocess output as UTF-8; confirm-modal on native Windows (#40909, #41953, #44328, #42419 — @teknium1)

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

Percent-encode non-ascii URL components; sanitize : in FTS5 queries so colon searches don't silently return empty (#41430, #40653 — @teknium1)

Preserve multimodal user content through crash-resilience persist; flatten multimodal content before provider sync; strip MEDIA directives from compressor input (#47907, #44738, #44708 — @teknium1)

Re-enter retry loop on genuine Nous 429 so the fallback guard runs; scope Nous tags to Nous auxiliary calls; suppress "Credit access paused" notice on free models (#45136, #45801, #43669 — @teknium1)

Cron: don't strict-scan script-injected output in no-skills jobs; resolve per-job provider "custom" to providers.custom instead of codex; repair cron ownership on container restart (#42323, #43505, #41976 — @teknium1)

(300+ issues closed this window; full per-area fix list is exhaustive — these are the highest-impact.)

↩️ Reverted in this window (not shipping)

html-artifact skill + sketch/architecture-diagram/concept-diagrams fold (#48899) — reverted (#49053); absent on main.

Cron per-job profile support reverted (#43956); a nix patchPhase workaround reverted (#42151).

👥 Contributors

A huge thank-you to everyone who contributed to this release — 245 contributors across commits, co-author trailers, and salvaged PRs.

Core

@teknium1

Top community contributors (by merged PRs)

@OutThisLife — 92 PRs (desktop app maturity (shortcuts, notifications, watch-windows, themes))

@kshitijk4poor — 60 PRs (onboarding, model picker, cron env sanitization)

@xxxigm — 27 PRs (desktop & gateway fixes)

@benbarclay — 23 PRs (gateway multiplex, Chronos cron, dashboard auth)

@helix4u — 21 PRs (gateway & installer reliability)

@austinpickett — 19 PRs (dashboard & desktop UX)

@alt-glitch — 14 PRs (usage-aware credits, Supermemory)

@ethernet8023 — 14 PRs (desktop build pipeline & Linux/Windows)

@liuhao1024 — 5 PRs (session lifecycle fixes)

All contributors (alphabetical)

@0z1-ghb, @0xdany, @0xneobyte, @0xyg3n, @1960697431, @895252509, @achaljhawar, @Adolanium, @AhmetArif0, @AIalliAI,
@aimable100, @AJ, @ak2k, @alarcritty, @AlchemistChaos, @aldoeliacim, @alelpoan, @AlexanderBFoley,
@alfred-smith-0, @ali-nld, @alt-glitch, @am423, @AMEOBIUS, @AMIK-coorporations, @annguyenNous, @ArcanePivot,
@ARegalado1, @asdlem, @ashishpatel26, @austinpickett, @banditburai, @barronlroth, @Bartok9, @basilalshukaili,
@bbednarski9, @bcsmith528, @benbarclay, @benegessarit, @benfrank241, @bionicbutterfly13, @BlackishGreen33,
@blut-agent, @bmoore210, @bpasquini, @briandevans, @BROCCOLO1D, @capt-marbles, @ccook1963, @Cdddo, @channkim,
@ChasLui, @chimpera, @chromalinx, @CiarasClaws, @claytonchew, @cnfi, @colinwren-stripe, @cresslank,
@cyb0rgk1tty, @dangelo352, @davidgut1982, @deaneeth, @definitelynotguru, @Diyoncrz18, @draix, @dschnurbusch,
@Dusk1e, @dusterbloom, @ehz0ah, @emozilla, @enesilhaydin, @erosika, @ethernet8023, @Evisolpxe, @firefly,
@flooryyyy, @flyinhigh, @foras910521-lab, @Frowtek, @ft-ioxcs, @fyzanshaik, @Ganesh0690, @gauravsaxena1997,
@giladbau, @glesperance, @GodsBoy, @goku94123, @H-Ali13381, @HaozheZhang6, @haran2001, @harshitAgr, @hbentel,
@helix4u, @HeLLGURD, @Hermes, @huangxun375-stack, @iamlukethedev, @ianculling, @IAvecilla, @iborazzi,
@infinitycrew39, @islam666, @ITheEqualizer, @itsflownium, @Jaaneek, @james47kjv, @jeeves-assistant,
@jeffrobodie-glitch, @JezzaHehn, @jiangkoumo, @jimjsong, @JimLiu, @JimStenstrom, @jmsunseri, @JoaoMarcos44,
@joel611, @JoelJJohnson, @joerj123, @johnjacobkenny, @jooray, @joshuadow, @jplew, @justinbao19, @Justlrnal4,
@Kailigithub, @kamonspecial, @kdunn926, @Kenmege, @Kewe63, @kmccammon, @konsisumer, @kristianvast,
@kshitijk4poor, @kyssta-exe, @l37525778-coder, @LaPhilosophie, @leo4226, @LeonSGP43, @liuhao1024, @Llugaes,
@loongfay, @LoongZhao, @lsaether, @m4dni5, @manishbyatroy, @MaxFreedomPollard, @maxmilian, @maxtrigify,
@mnajafian-nv, @mohamedorigami-jpg, @mollusk, @MrDiamondBallz, @mssteuer, @mvanhorn, @naqerl, @Nea74,
@necoweb3, @nepenth, @nicoloboschi, @NormallyGaussian, @OmarB97, @omegazheng, @OndrejDrapalik, @OutThisLife,
@oxngon, @OYLFLMH, @paperclip, @paulb26, @pengyuyanITYU, @PhilipAD, @pinguarmy, @plcunha, @ProgramCaiCai,
@psionic73, @qin-ctx, @qingshan89, @Que0x, @qWaitCrypto, @r266-tech, @randomsnowflake, @rbrtbn, @rewbs,
@rio-jeong, @Rivuza, @rob-maron, @rodboev, @ruangraung, @RyTsYdUp, @Sahil-SS9, @salesondemandio, @sanidhyasin,
@sarvesh1327, @sdyckjq-lab, @shannonsands, @SHL0MS, @simpolism, @sitkarev, @skyc1e, @skylarbpayne, @SNooZyy2,
@Spaceman-Spiffy, @srojk34, @sweetcornna, @synapsesx, @Tamaz-sujashvili, @tangtaizong666, @temalo, @tfournet,
@thedavidweng, @TheGardenGallery, @tim404x, @tomekpanek, @Tranquil-Flow, @tt-a1i, @tuancookiez-hub,
@underthestars-zhy, @Veritas-7, @victor-kyriazakos, @wesleysimplicio, @WolframRavenwolf, @WompaJango, @x1erra,
@xiaoxinova, @xtymac, @xushibo, @XVVH, @xxchan, @xxxigm, @xy200303, @y0shua1ee, @yanxue06, @yatesjalex,
@YLChen-007, @yoniebans, @youjunxiaji, @yubingz, @zakame, @zapabob, @zccyman, @zimigit2020, @ziwon, @zwcf5200,
@zxcasongs.

Full Changelog: v2026.6.5...v2026.6.19

Original source

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).

✨ 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)

🖥️ 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)

Build 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)

👥 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

Original source