Hermes Agent Release Notes

Patch release: ~656 PRs and 1,444 commits since v0.20.0. Messaging platforms grow to 18, Windows setup stops hanging, Anthropic prompt caching returns, state.db fully self-heals, native live cards on Slack.

Real-time conversational voice with barge-in. On-device wake words, hands-free control. Voice on every platform — WhatsApp, Feishu, DingTalk, LINE, QQ, WeChat. Trusted research with grounded citations and fact-checking. Agent-to-Agent protocol A2A v1.0. Signed outbound webhooks. Desktop platform wave — Artifacts, plugin SDK, quick-entry, multi-window. CLI power commands: !shell, /init, /diff, /context, /focus. Tool self-recovery. Smarter context compression. Cold start ~1.8s. 650+ contributors.

Cold-start latency cut by 80% to 0.9s. Reasoning streaming live by default. Smart approvals with LLM-based command review. Bitwarden & 1Password secret sources. Live subagent transcripts with durable background delegation. Delivery-obligation ledger for crash-proof responses. Profile-based message routing. GPT-5.6, grok-4.5, kimi-k3, claude-sonnet-5 support. Desktop 20+ PR speed overhaul. Terminal billing via /subscription and /topup.

100% P0/P1 resolved (496 issues + 196 PRs). Mixture-of-Agents as a first-class pickable model with live-streamed reasoning per reference model. Agent self-verification with /goal completion contracts and pre_verify hooks. /learn skill distillation, /journey memory timeline, background fan-out subagents, desktop coding Projects, scale-to-zero gateway with drain coordination, Google Vertex AI native OAuth2 support, and 10 messaging platform updates.

iMessage via Photon Spectrum with no Mac relay. Background/async subagents. Image-to-image editing. Automation Blueprints without cron syntax. Desktop app with rebindable shortcuts, subagent watch windows, VS Code themes. Official WhatsApp Business Cloud API. Cursor Composer model via xAI Grok. Full profile builder + Skills Hub rehaul. Memory batch atomic operations. God-file refactor: cli.py 3297→954 lines, gateway/run.py 19157→15870 lines.

A brand-new native desktop app for macOS/Linux/Windows with drag-and-drop, in-app updates, and multi-profile remote gateway connections. Full web dashboard administration panel, Simplified Chinese translation, NVIDIA/skills trusted tap, leaner default skill set, fuzzy model picker everywhere, /undo command, Quick Setup via Nous Portal, and 399 issues closed (2 P0, 62 P1).

The biggest internal refactor in Hermes history: run_agent.py collapses from 16,083 to 3,821 lines (-76%). Kanban grows into a real multi-agent platform with swarm topology, per-task model overrides, and scheduled tasks. session_search rebuilt — 4,500× faster and zero cost. Promptware defense blocks Brainworm-class attacks. Bitwarden Secrets Manager replaces plaintext API keys. Skill bundles, Krea image generation, ntfy push notifications, and a deep xAI integration round. 1,302 commits, 747 merged PRs, 560+ issues closed.

808 commits, 633 merged PRs, 215 contributors. pip install hermes-agent lands on PyPI. xAI Grok OAuth with 1M context. OpenAI-compatible local proxy. x_search, Microsoft Teams end-to-end, debloating wave, 180x faster browser, ~19s cold-start improvement, LINE + SimpleX Chat (22 platforms), /handoff, LSP diagnostics, and 12 P0 + 50 P1 closures.

Multi-agent Kanban with durability guarantees, persistent /goal tracking across turns, Checkpoints v2 with real pruning, 8 P0 security closures, 20 messaging platforms (Google Chat added), providers become a pluggable surface, 7 i18n locales, video_analyze tool, voice cloning via xAI Custom Voices, and session auto-resume after gateway restarts.

Autonomous Curator agent maintains your skill library on a 7-day cycle. Self-improvement loop rewritten with rubric-based grading. 4 new inference providers, 19 messaging platforms (Yuanbao + Teams). ComfyUI v5 and TouchDesigner-MCP bundled by default. Native Spotify + Google Meet integrations. TUI cold start cut ~57%. 1,096 commits from 213 contributors.