Run on Hermes (preset)

Already running Hermes Agent (NousResearch)? One command wraps protoAgent around it:

protoagent hermes
protoagent up          # console: http://127.0.0.1:7870

Your Hermes — its identity, memory, skills, and model endpoint, everything in ~/.hermes — stays the brain, driving every turn over ACP. protoAgent becomes the shell around it: the operator console, an A2A endpoint other agents can call, the scheduler, goals with verifiers, knowledge, and fleet membership. Hermes's own self-improvement loop (memory, skill distillation, curator) keeps running untouched, because its state never moves.

This is the Hermes-flavored case of the ACP runtime (ADR 0033) — Hermes ships an in-tree ACP adapter (hermes-acp), so it slots into the same seam as the coding agents, but as a general personal agent rather than a coding specialist.

What the preset does

protoagent hermes (= protoagent runtime use hermes) is idempotent and never clobbers an explicit config on either side:

1. Installs hermes-acp if missing — uv tool install 'hermes-agent[acp]' --with mcp==1.26.0. The --with pin is load-bearing: the [acp] extra does not include the mcp SDK, and without it Hermes silently skips MCP registration — protoAgent's operator tools would never appear. A pre-existing install is checked and repaired.
2. Makes the model configs agree — Hermes wins. An OpenAI-compatible endpoint found in ~/.hermes/config.yaml is imported as this instance's model config (protoAgent's auxiliary calls — compaction, goal evaluation, fact extraction — need a model too). Only when Hermes has no model and this instance does is the seeding reversed.
3. Adopts ~/.hermes/SOUL.md as the persona — only while this instance's SOUL is still the shipped placeholder, and via soul history, so it's reviewable and revertible.
4. Sets agent_runtime: acp:hermes.

Skip everything except the runtime flip with --no-bootstrap.

What Hermes gets

The session mounts protoAgent's operator MCP server, so Hermes sees the full tool registry — tasks, memory_*, notes_*, set_goal, schedule_task, subagents, plugin tools — next to its own built-ins. The persona file protoAgent writes into the session cwd tells it to prefer the operator tools for anything that must persist. Restrict the set with operator_mcp.tools (ACP runtime guide).

Inbound A2A messages and scheduled jobs run on the Hermes brain too — protoAgent routes every streamed turn through the configured runtime.

Notes & limits

• State scoping: Hermes state stays in ~/.hermes (or HERMES_HOME, which the CLI honors). Multiple protoAgent instances therefore share one Hermes memory — point HERMES_HOME elsewhere per instance if you want isolation.
• First turn is slow: registering the operator MCP server into a fresh Hermes session takes a minute-plus; later turns are normal.
• OAuth providers don't import: if Hermes talks to its model via an OAuth login (Nous Portal etc.) there's no key to lift — configure this instance's model yourself (protoagent model use ...), or rely on the ACP-backed aux fallback.
• Like every non-native runtime: usage/cost telemetry is not metered (your Hermes provider bills you), and the goal continuation loop is native-only today.

See also

• Run on a coding agent (ACP runtime) — the general mechanism, config keys, and tool restriction.
• ADR 0033 — the runtime seam design.