Session Temp Files No Longer Blow Up Your RAM Disk: terminal.temp_dir and 72-Hour Auto-Cleanup
Many Linux distros mount /tmp as a RAM-backed tmpfs, and heavy Hermes sessions fill it up. The fix merged on August 28 moves session temp files to real storage at ~/.hermes/cache/terminal by default, adds the terminal.temp_dir config key and TERMINAL_TEMP_DIR env var, and auto-prunes files older than 72 hours.
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A Quiet "Tool Diet": 6 Tool Definitions Slimmed Down, Saving 17%–44% Tokens Per Call
Every time Hermes calls a tool, the model must re-read that tool's JSON parameter definition (schema) along with the request — the bigger the definition, the higher the fixed per-turn overhead. Between August 27 and 28, the maintainers merged a wave of "schema diet" changes: process, todo, read_file, skill_manage, video_generate, and browser_exec all slimmed down, cutting 17%–44% of tokens per call with zero behavior change.
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Search Once, Ask Thrice: Multi-Query tool_search With Stemming
Hermes' tool_search just got a serious upgrade: it now takes an array of queries searched in parallel, returns results grouped per query with one shared tools map, and Snowball stemming matches 'browsing' to 'browser' and 'issues' to 'create_issue'. tool_describe batches names too, so one bad name no longer fails the whole call. Fewer round-trips, cheaper discovery, better recall.
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No More Keychain Nag: Opt-In OS-Keychain Encryption for Stored Secrets
Electron safeStorage used to park a per-app key in the macOS login keychain — and on machines with a locked or missing keychain, every Hermes Desktop launch turned into a blocking 'Keychain Not Found' password prompt. v0.20.6 makes keychain-backed encryption an explicit opt-in: the default path never touches safeStorage at all, a one-shot migration converts old encrypted blobs to plain 0600 files, and flipping the toggle re-encodes every stored secret in place.
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Browse as You: Real-Profile Browsing in Hermes Agent
Hermes' browser used to start every session logged out — a wall the moment a task needed your logins. Consent-gated real-profile browsing copies your default browser's active profile into a managed snapshot and drives it with Hermes' packaged Chromium: the agent browses as you, with your cookies and saved logins, always under explicit consent and off by default. Here's how it works, how to enable it, and the Windows caveats.
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Ship It With One Command: the publish-site Skill for Versioned Website Deploys
The new publish-site skill turns 'put this website online' into a disciplined five-step pipeline: build, preview locally (or via a shareable tunnel), version every deploy with a git tag, deploy through a provider ladder (GitHub Pages → Cloudflare Pages → Netlify), and verify the live URL returns HTTP 200 before reporting success. Rollback is one command away.
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Hermes v0.20.6: The Agent Learns to Browse as You, a 50+ Server MCP Catalog, and Secrets Without the Keychain Nag
v0.20.6 is a steady roll of substance: consent-gated real-profile browsing lets the agent use your real browser logins, the desktop Browser gets its own OS window plus a managed SSH remote-update engine, the remote MCP catalog passes 50 live-verified vendor servers, web_search/web_extract gain TTL result caching, lean-tail compression becomes the default, tool_search learns multi-query searches with stemming, and stored secrets can opt into OS-keychain encryption — no more per-launch Keychain prompts.
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The Hermes Context Diet: Slash Per-Turn Token Overhead the Official Way
Every turn re-sends your whole conversation to the model — and you pay for all of it. This practical guide walks the four layers Hermes offers to slim context: dual auto-compression, the v0.20 compaction overhaul (micro-compaction, N-user tail, ghost-skill defense, lean tail), per-model thresholds, and everyday hygiene with /context, /usage and /compress.
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Hermes Compaction Gets a Lean Default: Big-Window Models Stop Hoarding 170K-Token Tails
compression.tail_mode now defaults to lean: compaction keeps a clamped 2.5%-of-window verbatim tail (10K–25K tokens) instead of the legacy formula's 100K–240K hoard on big-window models.
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GLM-5.3-Flash Lands in Hermes: A 1M-Context Option in the Model Picker
z-ai/glm-5.3-flash joins Hermes model catalogs for OpenRouter (43 models) and Nous Portal (32 models): a 1,048,576-token context window at $0.075/M input and $0.25/M output — built for marathon sessions and big codebases.
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An MCP Install Could Write HERMES_YOLO_MODE: Catalog Credentials Now Follow a Closed Schema
Before the fix, the MCP catalog install endpoint accepted arbitrary environment variables and persisted them to .env — a malicious or malformed catalog entry could flip security switches like HERMES_YOLO_MODE. Catalog credentials now follow a closed schema; undeclared names get HTTP 400.
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hermes update Stops Sabotaging Your Work: Draining Gateways, Surviving Backends, Precise Windows Kills
Hermes' upgrade pipeline got a full overhaul: gateways drain gracefully over the control socket instead of being tree-killed, remote serve backends survive updates, the Windows updater only kills this install's hermes.exe, and image-managed installs refuse in-place updates.
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Browser snapshots capped at 15,000 chars? Hermes makes the budget configurable — and kills the hidden LLM-summary cost
Hermes adds browser.snapshot_threshold (default 15000 chars, min 1000), and browser snapshots no longer pay for auxiliary-LLM summaries — oversized snapshots truncate-and-store, with the full tree kept on disk for read_file paging.
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Running several Hermes Profiles means several Docker containers? One config key lets them share a single one
Hermes adds the terminal.docker_shared_container_key option: trusted profiles can opt into one shared persistent Docker container — set the same key and cut resource waste without merging environments.
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Need Canva, Dropbox, or GitLab but stuck on OAuth? Hermes now installs 44 official remote MCPs in one command
Hermes' MCP catalog just grew by 44 official remote MCPs — Canva, Dropbox, GitLab, Strava, Cloudflare and more — installable with a single hermes mcp install command, with every tool surface audited and debloated.
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Want Hermes to use a specific cloud sandbox as its terminal? Now you write a plugin — no waiting for core changes
Hermes makes terminal backends a pluggable subsystem: a third-party cloud sandbox can register itself as a terminal.backend value via a standalone plugin, no fork required.
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