v0.10.0

Hermes Agent v0.10.0 — The Tool Gateway Release

Overview

v0.10.0 — The Tool Gateway Release. Released April 16, 2026. 180+ commits · 1 merged PR (#11206) · 1 community contributor (@jquesnelle).

This is the release that removes the biggest friction point in AI agent adoption: API key management. Before v0.10.0, enabling web search, image generation, text-to-speech, or browser automation in Hermes Agent meant obtaining and managing separate API keys for each service. The Nous Tool Gateway changes that — paid Nous Portal subscribers get all four tools through their existing subscription with zero additional setup.

This release came just 3 days after v0.9.0 (April 13) and shipped only the Tool Gateway as a focused, high-impact feature. The 180+ commits of bug fixes, platform improvements, and reliability enhancements from this window were deferred and fully documented in the v0.11.0 changelog.

However, at this point in the project’s evolution, Hermes Agent already bundled a mature ecosystem: 118 skills, a Closed Learning Loop for autonomous skill generation, a Messaging Gateway spanning 16+ platforms, and the SOUL.md personality system. These capabilities formed the foundation that made the Tool Gateway so impactful — users could now access all of them through a single subscription.

Major Feature

Nous Tool Gateway — One Subscription, Four Tools

The Tool Gateway is a managed proxy layer between Hermes Agent and external service providers. When a paid Nous Portal subscriber enables tool access, the Gateway handles authentication, rate limiting, and request routing transparently — the agent never touches individual API keys.

Available tools through the Gateway:

Tool Provider What it does
Web Search Firecrawl Real-time web information retrieval
Image Generation FAL / FLUX 2 Pro High-quality AI image synthesis
Text-to-Speech OpenAI TTS Voice output generation
Browser Automation Browser Use Automated web browser control

How to enable:

# Step 1: Select Nous Portal as your model provider
hermes model
# → Pick "Nous Portal" in the interactive picker

# Step 2: Choose which tools to enable through the Gateway
hermes tools
# → Select "Nous Subscription" to set use_gateway: true per tool

# Step 3: Verify everything is connected
hermes status
# → Shows gateway connection state and enabled tools

This generates the following configuration in ~/.hermes/config.yml:

model:
  provider: nous_portal
  model: <your-selected-model>
tools:
  web_search:
    use_gateway: true    # routed through Firecrawl
  image_generation:
    use_gateway: true    # routed through FAL / FLUX 2 Pro
  tts:
    use_gateway: true    # routed through OpenAI TTS
  browser:
    use_gateway: true    # routed through Browser Use

Design decisions that matter:

  • Per-tool opt-in — You choose exactly which tools go through the Gateway. If you already have a direct Firecrawl API key and prefer to use it, leave use_gateway: false for web search while enabling the Gateway for image generation.
  • Gateway takes priority — When both a direct API key and use_gateway: true exist for the same tool, the runtime prefers the Gateway. This prevents accidental billing on both paths.
  • Clean subscription detection — The old hidden HERMES_ENABLE_NOUS_MANAGED_TOOLS environment variable is gone. Detection is now automatic based on your Nous Portal subscription status.
  • Self-hosted Gateway support — For organizations that want to run their own Gateway instance, environment variables provide endpoint control:
# ~/.hermes/.env
TOOL_GATEWAY_DOMAIN=your-gateway.example.com
TOOL_GATEWAY_SCHEME=https
TOOL_GATEWAY_USER_TOKEN=your-token

The Ecosystem at v0.10.0

While v0.10.0’s official changelog focuses narrowly on the Tool Gateway, the broader Hermes Agent ecosystem at this release included several mature systems that are worth understanding in context.

118 Bundled Skills + Closed Learning Loop

Hermes Agent shipped with 118 pre-built skills organized into categories including MLOps, GitHub operations, research & information gathering, web scraping, code execution & testing, and data analysis. Skills are plain Markdown files — readable, versionable, and compatible with agentskills.io for community sharing.

The Closed Learning Loop is what makes these skills compound. After any task involving 5+ tool calls, Hermes automatically generates a skill document capturing:

  1. Procedure — the steps taken to complete the task
  2. Pitfalls — edge cases and issues encountered
  3. Verification — how to confirm the task is done correctly

On the next similar task, FTS5 full-text search retrieves the relevant skill, and the agent starts from experience instead of from scratch. Benchmarks reported agents with 20+ self-created skills completing research tasks 40% faster than a fresh instance.

# Explore available skills
hermes skills list

# View a specific skill
hermes skills show <skill-name>

# Import a community skill
hermes skills import <path-to-skill.md>

Messaging Gateway — 16+ Platforms, One Deployment

A single hermes gateway deployment exposes the agent across all supported messaging platforms simultaneously. Each platform shares the same agent context, so a conversation started in Telegram continues seamlessly in Discord or Slack.

Platform Use case
Telegram Mobile-first interaction
Discord Team and community servers
Slack Enterprise team chat
WhatsApp Mobile and business messaging
Signal Privacy-focused communication
Matrix Self-hosted federated chat
Mattermost Open-source enterprise chat
Email / SMS Async communication
DingTalk / Feishu Asia-Pacific enterprise
CLI Terminal-native interaction 
# Start the messaging gateway
hermes gateway

# Interactive setup wizard
hermes gateway setup
# → Configure API tokens, bot IDs, channel mappings, and allowlists

SOUL.md — Agent Identity as Markdown

The SOUL.md file defines the agent’s core identity — how it speaks, what it values, and what constraints it must follow. It’s placed at the beginning of every system prompt.

# ~/.hermes/SOUL.md

You are an infrastructure management specialist.
- Always confirm before making changes
- When uncertain, state your uncertainty explicitly — never guess
- Log every operation
- Security is the highest priority

Session-level overrides are available through the /personality slash command:

/personality teacher   # Educational, explanatory mode
/personality creative  # Brainstorming and ideation mode
/personality analyst   # Data analysis and investigation mode

This design keeps a stable default identity in SOUL.md while allowing per-task behavioral shifts.

Why the Changelog Is Short

The official v0.10.0 changelog is deliberately minimal — it describes exactly one feature shipped in this tag. The release window (v0.9.0 → v0.10.0) lasted only 3 days, and the Nous team chose to ship the Tool Gateway as a focused, standalone release rather than holding it for a larger bundle.

The 180+ commits of fixes and improvements from this window — spanning the agent core, gateway infrastructure, CLI, and tool system — were deferred to the v0.11.0 (The Interface Release) changelog, which arrived just one week later with ~1,556 commits and 761 merged PRs.

This release strategy — ship one high-impact feature fast, document the rest later — reflects the project’s rapid iteration cadence at this stage of development.

Upgrade

# Existing installs
hermes update

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

# Manual Python install
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
cd hermes-agent
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[all]"
hermes

Contributors

  • @jquesnelle (emozilla) — Original Tool Gateway implementation (#10799), salvaged and shipped in this release

Full Changelog: v2026.4.13…v2026.4.16

← Hermes Agent Changelog