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Hermes Agent v0.21.0 (v2026.8.31)

Release Date: August 31, 2026

Since v0.20.0: ~5,800 commits · ~2,475 merged PRs · ~5,680 files changed · ~869,000 insertions · ~135,000 deletions · ~2,100 issues closed · 760+ contributors

The Pantheon Release. v0.20.0 made Hermes the herald — he spoke, and he carried word to other agents. In v0.21.0 the gods assemble. Bot Mode ships built into the desktop app: a society of named agents with their own faces and group chats, where your bots talk to each other — and to you — like a team, not a toolbox. Around that spine: cron jobs gained memory and continuity so scheduled agents actually learn between runs, subagents can be steered live mid-flight, the MCP surface became a real command center, and the agent can now drive the desktop's own browser. This release rolls up everything from the v0.20.1–v0.20.6 infrastructure patch tags — those windows are fully documented here.

✨ Highlights

• 
  

  Bot Mode — your agents become a society, built in — Bot Mode is now a bundled, default-on part of the desktop app: every agent profile gets a name, a deterministic avatar face (with randomize/lock controls), and a place in a shared roster. Create Discord-style group chats where multiple bots and you talk in one room, @-mention any bot from the composer, and give rooms names and pictures. Before, "multi-agent" meant plumbing; now it looks like a chat app full of coworkers. (, — , , — , , — )

  
  


• 
  

  Steer your subagents while they run — delegate_task gained live orchestration: list running children, steer one mid-flight with a course correction, or stop it early and keep the partial result. Add optional JSON-schema validation on child outputs, per-delegation cost surfaced in results, and raised defaults (250 iterations, 10 concurrent children) — delegation went from fire-and-pray to actually managed parallel work. (, , )

  
  


• 
  

  The MCP command center — MCP servers and the catalog merged into one coherent desktop page with drag-in "paste anything" import, background health checks that nudge you to re-auth before a tool call fails, a fleet cost/usage overlay showing schema token estimates and 30-day usage per server, and hermes:// deep links that install an MCP server with explicit confirmation. Managing twenty MCP servers used to be config-file archaeology; now it's a dashboard. (, , )

  
  


• 
  

  A CLI power wave — Ctrl+P opens a fuzzy command palette, the /model picker filters as you type, /status shows reasoning mode, pending approvals, and context usage, and the status bar can display live cache-hit %, latency, and tokens/sec with per-field toggles. Plus: a global emergency stop, session pin/unpin, rotating task-oriented composer placeholders — and Ghostty-level terminal pets, because a companion should have a companion. (, , — , , , , , and community)

  
  


• 
  

  Security hardening across the board — Protected agent-instruction files (AGENTS.md, skills, memory stores) now always require write approval so a prompt-injected agent can't quietly rewrite its own standing orders. A deep redaction sweep closed secret-leak gaps across terminal errors, .env file reads, checkpoints, and ACP logs; the approval system learned Windows destructive commands; and macOS permission grants finally survive updates via a stable TCC signing identity. (, — , salvage of , salvage of ), Tencent TokenPlan (), and Ramp Router (, ), GLM-5.3-Flash across OpenRouter/Nous/z.ai/OpenCode (), MiniMax M3 + Inkling free SKUs (), Meta Muse Spark 1.2 ().



• Data-training-tier warnings — a unified selection-guard registry warns you across every picker surface when a model trains on your data (, salvage — ).


• Codex GPT context defaults back to the verified 272K, with explicit -900k picker variants for the large window ( — and siblings).


• Structured-output resilience — auxiliary calls translate response_format for Anthropic wires and retry when a provider rejects structured output ().


• Compression: lean tail mode + a compaction recall eval harness to measure what compression actually preserves ().


• clarify asks multiple independent questions in one call — one form instead of a chain of round-trips ().


• Verify subsystem (port from superagent-ai/grok-cli): run-recipe detection + environment manifest so "it works" claims are backed by detected build/test commands ( — — — ).

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

• Slack native live cards — real streaming replies via chat.startStream plus opt-in plan/task cards for tool progress ( — , bypassing Telegram's command-menu cap ( — — ), voice-note STT restored over the relay lane (), transport dedupe/fail-fast fixes (, ), per-profile MCP lifecycle RPCs (), concise background-process notifications by default (), with loop-watchdog tuning knobs wired end-to-end ( — ).

🖥️ Desktop App

• Bot Mode built in — see Highlights. Full sub-catalog: attributed agent-to-agent message cards (), paint-first hydration for instant wakes (), Routines pane ( — — ).


• Detached update hand-off on every OS — quit → update → reopen with a single shim window; Windows desktop updates no longer park on "Updating Hermes" (, ), paste into the composer without focusing it (), readable macOS window translucency (), Linux keychain auto-detection ().


• Send Diagnostics — error cards can upload a redacted debug bundle with a support handoff ( — — ).


• Session titles in status bars ().


• Ctrl+C fixed — stopped pushing the Kitty keyboard protocol that broke interrupts ( et al.).


• Interrupted commands no longer poison cwd — the terminal won't adopt a stale working directory after an interrupt ().


• Windows rename contention recovery (); colon-bearing session IDs no longer break sandbox mounts ( — — proposals): document-to-action-items, meeting-action-items, email-inbox-triage, github-issue-to-pr, weekly-review-planning, competitor-news-monitor, product-price-monitor, social-media-content-calendar (, , , ).


• HAR-derived API clients — watch a website once, then call its hidden API directly with no browser (); session-librarian for prompt-driven session management (); merge-reconciler for neutral multi-agent conflict resolution (); ast-grep codemods (, ).


• Advisory SKILL.md linter on create ().

⏰ Cron, Delegation & Multi-Agent

• Cron memory + continuity — see Highlights ().


• Monitor-mode jobs with hash-suppressed change detection (); pre-dispatch config validation (); per-job reasoning-effort pinning ( — — ); structured-output schemas on delegate_task (); truncation markers on capped children (), split-brain decision-ownership contract (), notify/wake delivery modes (, ), with lifecycle ops bounded so a wedged pipeline can never block the agent ().

🔒 Security & Reliability

• Protected instruction files — writes to AGENTS.md/skills/memory always require approval (); .env reads redacted via file-read detection (, ).


• Windows approval coverage — destructive Windows commands and paths now trip the approval system (); plugin installs get Tier-1 security scanning ().


• PKCE cookie fix — SameSite=None over HTTPS with a matching clear path ().

🏗️ Infrastructure, CI & Packaging

• Real-OS CI — macOS and Windows CI lanes with tests gated by real host OS (); work lanes on 32-core runners ().


• Bootstrap installer no longer waits on pipe EOF ().

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

• Desktop session races (Stop→edit/resend, submit ownership) fixed as a cluster (); assistant-ui boundary recovery ( — — — — ); desktop binary attachments delivered into sandbox backends ( — ).


• …and roughly two thousand more closed issues' worth — this window averaged ~85 merged PRs per day.

↩️ Reverted in this window (not shipping)

• Model Council mode (/council) — landed then reverted; not in this release.


• DCP context engine — landed then reverted; not in this release.


• WS-only gateway server (); FastAPI remains on the desktop boot path. The seq-stamped event replay ( — release direction, Bot Mode, MCP command center, cron memory, and ~1,340 merged PRs.

Top Community Contributors (preliminary, by merged PR count)

• (209 PRs) — desktop architecture, Bot Mode UI, in-app browser, update hand-off


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  ---

  
  

  Full Changelog: v2026.8.3...v2026.8.31

  
  

  This release rolls up and fully documents the v0.20.1, v0.20.2, v0.20.3, v0.20.5, and v0.20.6 patch-tag windows (Aug 13–27), whose notes were deferred to this minor per the rollup-release policy.

  Vollständiger Original-Bericht

  Ausführliche Details, Code-Beispiele & Hersteller-Stellungnahme auf github.com.

  ↗ Original-Artikel auf github.com lesen