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. (, )

  
  


• 
  

  Raft — Hermes joins the Raft agent network as a gateway channel — A new bundled Raft platform adapter lets Hermes connect to — )

  
  


• 
  

  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. (, , — )

  
  


• 
  

  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. ( — — — , )

  
  


• 
  

  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. ( — , )

  
  


• 
  

  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. ()

  
  


• 
  

  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. ( — )

  
  


• 
  

  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. ( — )

  
  


• 
  

  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. (, )

  
  


• 
  

  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. ()

  
  

🖥️ Hermes Desktop App

New surfaces & UX

• Rebindable keyboard shortcuts panel; native OS notifications with per-type toggles; curated turn-completion cue + dismissable error banners (, — )


• 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 (, — )


• 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 (, — )


• Install any VS Code Marketplace theme; assignable themes per profile; window translucency slider; unified overlay design system + BrandMark + onboarding redesign (, — )


• 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 (, , — , , , — , , — )


• Japanese + Traditional Chinese language switching ( — , )


• 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 (, — )


• Multi-profile fallout cleanup — WS auth + cross-profile session reads; release profile backends before delete; scope session list/model switch/timer per session (, , , , — , , )


• 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 (, — , , , )

🏗️ 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 (, , )


• gateway/run.py 19157 → 15870 lines — 42 slash-command handlers → GatewaySlashCommandsMixin; authorization cluster → GatewayAuthorizationMixin; kanban watcher loops → GatewayKanbanWatchersMixin (, )


• run_agent.py turn loop — extracted prologue into TurnContext, post-loop tail into finalize_turn, consolidated inner-retry-loop recovery flags into TurnRetryState (, )

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 ()


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


• Removed the agent-callable send_message tool; coding-context posture across CLI/TUI/desktop/ACP; read_file extracts .ipynb/.docx/.xlsx to text (, )


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


• Adaptive middleware (consumed by NeMo-Relay observer telemetry); usable mid-turn steer — desktop affordance + trusted injection ( — , , , )


• 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 (, — , , )


• 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 (, — , — , — , — , , )


• Memory: configurable Hindsight retain observation scopes; OpenViking setup UX; Honcho gateway-gated identity tree; Supermemory session-level ingest (, — )

📱 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 (, — , , , )

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 (, — , , — , , )


• 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 (, — , , , , , , )


• Lock hermes worktrees so concurrent processes can't clobber them; display custom profile alias names in list/show; clone profiles from any source (, )


• Opt-in structured profile-build path on first contact; configurable per-platform system-prompt hints; configurable background memory/skill notifications (, )


• 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 (, — , , — , )


• 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 (, , , , , , , , — , , )


• Memory/skill write approval gate (default off) — boolean write_approval replaces the tri-state write_mode ( — — — — — , , )

🐳 Docker, Nix & Installer

• s6: detect supervisor directly for gateway restart; register profile gateways without auto-starting; persist desired state; clear stale log locks (, — , , )


• Nix: cold npm build fixes + auto-fix-lockfiles workflow; hashless npm deps via importNpmLock; refresh npmDepsHash after Electron 40.10.2 pin (, )


• Installer: clear unmerged git index before autostash; scope install-method stamp to the code tree ( — , )


• Redact secrets in request debug dumps; withhold host metadata from public status; block exfil-shaped / suspicious MCP stdio configs before probe (, )


• 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 (, , , , )

🪟 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 (, )


• 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 (, — , , )

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

• Percent-encode non-ascii URL components; sanitize : in FTS5 queries so colon searches don't silently return empty ( — , — , — , — ) — reverted (); a nix patchPhase workaround reverted (
  
  

  Top community contributors (by merged PRs)

  
  
  
  
  • — 60 PRs (onboarding, model picker, cron env sanitization)
  
  
  • — 23 PRs (gateway multiplex, Chronos cron, dashboard auth)
  
  
  • — 19 PRs (dashboard & desktop UX)
  
  
  • — 14 PRs (desktop build pipeline & Linux/Windows)
  
  
  • , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    
    , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    
    , , , ,
    
    , , , , , , , , , @islam666, , , , , , , , , , , ,
    
    , , , ,
    
    , , , ,
    
    , , , ,
    
    , , , ,
    
    , , , ,
    
    , , , , , , , , ,
    
    , , , , , , ,
    Vollständiger Original-Artikel

    Den kompletten Beitrag mit allen Details direkt auf github.com lesen.

    ↗ Original-Artikel auf github.com lesen