# Hermes Bot Mode

> **📦 ARCHIVED — Bot Mode now ships built into Hermes Desktop.**
> As of hermes-agent [#87886](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/pull/87886), Bot Mode is a bundled, default-on Desktop plugin (toggle in Settings → Plugins) with the multi-source roster included — bots from every connection registered in Settings → Connections. Development continues in-tree at [`apps/desktop/src/plugins/hermes-bots/`](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/tree/main/apps/desktop/src/plugins/hermes-bots). File issues and PRs against [NousResearch/hermes-agent](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent). No manual install is needed on current Desktop builds.

A **desktop-app plugin** for [Hermes Agent](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent) (installs where the desktop app runs — see Install) that turns your agent profiles into a roster of named bots — each with its own chat, avatar, personality, and schedule.

![Hermes Agent desktop plugin](https://img.shields.io/badge/hermes-desktop%20plugin-8b5cf6) ![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-green)

<img width="2525" height="1814" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/63c1e177-d098-42c4-999e-64cfaa493024" />

## What you get

- **Bots pane** — a left-side roster with one row per agent profile: avatar, latest-message preview, and timestamp. Click a bot to land in its chat, or use **Sessions** from its context menu to browse and filter its 200 most recent stored conversations.
- **Active now** — a presence strip above the roster shows every bot currently working (the gateway-busy profile plus any bot that wrote within the last 90s), each chip opening its canonical chat. It never reorders the roster and disappears when the fleet is idle.
- **New Agent** — create a bot in seconds: name, title, description. An **Advanced** disclosure opens the full profile config: clone from an existing profile, pin a provider/model, write a custom SOUL.md, skip bundled skills.
- **Edit Profile** (right-click a bot) — change the avatar, title, and description any time; its own Advanced section edits the live profile: per-skill and per-toolset enablement, model pin, and the full SOUL.md.
- **Groups** (right-click → Move to group) — organize the roster into labeled sections with separators: pick an existing group or create one inline. Ungrouped bots stay on top; groups follow alphabetically and sync to every machine. A group disappears when its last member leaves.
- **Group chats** — hit **Open chat** on any group header (2-6 bots) for a shared room where the whole group coordinates. Your message triggers up to three serial rounds of member turns: @mentioned bots respond (everyone when nobody is mentioned), each bot replies briefly or passes, and the room settles when a full round stays silent. Bots pull each other in with @name, escalate real judgment calls with @user (the group header shows a **needs you** badge), and hard caps (10 messages per turn, 3 rounds) keep rooms from spinning. Each bot keeps its own persistent `Group: <name>` session, so room context survives like any other conversation.
- **Duplicate** (right-click) — full clone of a bot: config, skills, SOUL.md, memory, and its look.
- **Delete Profile** (right-click) — permanently remove a bot after the same destructive confirmation used by Hermes Desktop's profile menu. The default profile cannot be deleted.
- **Avatars** — cute geometric faces (7 shapes × 10 colors with blinking eyes that scan while the bot works), an uploaded image, an AI-generated portrait (when an image backend is configured), or a pixel **pet** companion that bounces beside the avatar while the bot is busy.
- **Routines pane** — recurring tasks per bot, backed by Hermes cron. "Summarize my inbox every morning" lives next to the bot that does it. Runs land in the bot's own chat history.
- **Bot-to-bot messaging** — every bot has a persistent **Bot Chat** conversation. Bots message each other with attribution (`Message from 🤖 researcher (@researcher): ...`), and their SOUL.md teaches them the protocol, including how to reply.
- **@mentions** — type `@researcher have a look at this` in any chat and the active bot hands the message off, waits for the reply, and reports back.

## How it works

A bot **is** a Hermes profile — isolated config, memory, skills, credentials, and chat history under `~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/`. This plugin is a UI over that primitive:

- Chats and stored-session rows open through profile-aware session navigation. The optional Sessions view filters a selected profile's 200 most recent stored conversations without changing the primary click-to-chat flow.
- Creation/editing rides the `profiles.*` gateway RPCs (`list`, `create`, `describe`, `configure`).
- Avatar generation uses the `image.generate` RPC and works over both local and remote gateways (results return as data URLs).
- Routines are plain Hermes cron jobs namespaced `[bot:<name>] <routine>` — they also show up in `hermes cron list` and the core Cron page.
- Bot-to-bot messages are real CLI handoffs: `hermes -p <bot> chat --in ~ -c "Bot Chat" -Q -q "Message from 🤖 <sender> (@<sender>): ..."`.

No core patches, no background daemons, no extra storage: everything is standard Hermes surface.

## Screenshots

| New Agent 

<img width="745" height="999" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a1fc78bf-d8f8-4591-87c9-3f9ef06ac365" />

| PetDex avatars 

<img width="955" height="783" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2a686fd2-45c5-44c0-86b5-7e2a4f7acd49" />

| Agent 2 Agent Communications

<img width="1313" height="612" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c45b1e96-4362-4462-a049-ba8c44b87bed" />

## Install

> **This is a desktop plugin** — it must be installed on the machine running the **Hermes desktop app**, not on the gateway. Desktop plugins load from the app-side `~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/` directory; if you use a remote/SSH gateway, installing on the gateway box does nothing. (Example: gateway on your homelab, desktop app on your MacBook → install on the MacBook.)

```bash
git clone https://github.com/NousResearch/Hermes-Bot-Mode ~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/hermes-bots
```

(or download `plugin.js` into `~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/hermes-bots/`)

Then reload plugins in the Hermes desktop app (Ctrl+K → "Reload desktop plugins") or restart the app. A **Bots** tab appears next to Sessions, and a **Routines** tile docks beside the conversation.

### Requirements

- Hermes desktop app with the plugin SDK (any recent build)
- Profile session browsing requires a Desktop build with `host.openSession(id, { profile })`.
- The `profiles.*` / `image.generate` gateway RPCs ship in hermes-agent ≥ mid-2026 builds (`hermes update`). The plugin feature-detects older gateways and degrades gracefully — the roster works everywhere; Advanced editing and avatar generation light up when the RPCs exist.

## Notes

- Bot-to-bot delivery is per-invocation (the receiving bot sees the message in its inbox when it next runs); live interrupt of a mid-conversation bot is upstream future work.
- Avatar/pet customizations are stored in plugin storage; the profile itself stays clean.

## License

MIT © Nous Research