Monday morning, the desktop app tells you a new version is available and it is marked stable. You open the release notes expecting the usual tour — and get two paragraphs plus a line saying the full curated write-up ships with v0.23.0. Now you have to decide: upgrade blind, or sit on an older build and wonder what you are missing.

v0.22.6 is that kind of release. Published on November 2, 2026, it exists to package the last two weeks into something you can actually install: the GitHub release (CLI and installers), the Microsoft Store app, Docker images, and Hermes Cloud. The official note is explicit that the curated documentation for this window lands with v0.23.0. So instead of rephrasing a release announcement, this post sorts the window by the question you actually care about: what will I touch this week?

First, the size of the window

The published measurements are exact, taken at commit f0d94882e89:

• 3,448 non-merge commits
• 4,316 changed files, +248,579 / −94,077 lines
• 776 merged PRs and 385 closed issues

This is not a quick patch. It is two weeks of the merge queue compressed into one version number you can tag, roll back, and put in a deploy manifest. The point of a release like this is not a single headline feature — it is that fixes you could only get by tracking main now have a version you can point at.

What the note skipped but the tag contains

The official note spends one paragraph listing the things it deliberately does not document. Read closely, they fall into four buckets. Every item below has real code in the v0.22.6 tag.

More ways in

• The webapp is served from the gateway’s own listener: hermes webapp opens a Desktop Web Access pane you can reach on your own network, or behind your own URL with Nous sign-in; desktop plugins can load in a browser tab too.
• Every profile gets its own section in the desktop sidebar, so multi-profile users stop guessing which account a session belongs to.
• Desktop group chat filled in the basics: rename, disband, mentions, and pasting attachments.

Automation with brakes

• hermes cron cancel stops the run that is currently executing instead of making you wait for a timeout (pause only affects future fires).
• Per-job “what happens when I miss a run” in the desktop cron editor (use the default, run once when back, skip), plus a Stop button in the job header.
• compression.prepare_ahead writes the next compaction summary in the background near the trigger, so compaction can use it (or wait for it) instead of making you watch a spinner.
• A pre_llm_call hook can block a whole turn before inference — return a block directive and no model request is made.

Trust boundaries

• Skills can be locked: a locked skill cannot be changed by the agent — in normal turns, cron jobs, subagents, the background self-improvement review, or the curator pass, even under --yolo. There is a switch in the desktop Capabilities pane.
• The vault key can live in the OS keychain (opt-in).
• The plugin catalog’s requires_hermes is enforced at install and update time instead of being metadata nobody reads.

Models, voice, migration

• /model reset clears a session’s model pin without losing history.
• /delegation choices are saved for the next session.
• text_to_speech lets the agent pick an ElevenLabs voice.
• hermes migrate and setup move Grok Bot and OpenBot users over.
• On the messaging side: Telegram video notes, Slack emoji reactions in thread context, and resumable downloads in the package manager.

Upgrading, by install type

There are four paths. Use the one that matches your install:

# CLI installs (pip or the installer one-liner)
hermes update

• Microsoft Store app: update through the Store.
• Desktop app installed from the installer (.exe / .dmg): unchanged in this release; it moves with the next bundled release.
• Docker / Hermes Cloud: pull nousresearch/hermes-agent:stable (or :latest).

There is no new required config key in this version; your existing config keeps working after the upgrade.

Should you upgrade now?

If you run several profiles on the desktop, depend on cron jobs, or have been bitten by compaction stalls, yes — this release collects a lot of long-standing friction in one place.

If you pin Docker images in production, smoke-test on a throwaway profile first: the stable tag rolls, so the same tag name can resolve to different content on different days. Pin by digest if you need reproducibility.

Nothing is actually missing because the curated notes wait for v0.23.0 — the implementation in this tag is complete, the write-up is just batched into the next release. For the shape of the previous patch, see our v0.22.5 release page, or browse the release list to follow the line.