Skills Overview

What this page covers

Skills are reusable, on-demand knowledge documents that Hermes loads when a task needs a specific workflow. They reduce repeated prompting and let Hermes improve over time by saving procedures, pitfalls, and verification steps.

Hermes changes quickly, so treat the official documentation as the source of truth and use the built-in CLI to inspect the local install before editing config by hand.

Fast path

hermes skills list

hermes skills browse

hermes skills search github

hermes skills install <skill-id>

hermes skills inspect <skill-id>

hermes chat --toolsets skills -q "What skills are installed?"

Practical checklist

• Skills live in the active profile under ~/.hermes/skills/ unless external skill directories are configured.
• Use skills_list/skill_view in-agent or hermes skills list/inspect at the CLI to avoid loading unnecessary content.
• Create or patch skills after repeatable workflows, user corrections, or hard-won debugging lessons.
• Skill frontmatter should include a concise name, description, version, and relevant tags/platforms where useful.
• Use support files under references/, templates/, scripts/, or assets/ for longer reusable material.

Common pitfalls

• Writing huge one-off session notes as a skill instead of a reusable procedure.
• Forgetting profile isolation; a skill in one profile may not exist in another.
• Deleting skills without merging useful content or noting what absorbed them.

Verification checklist

• hermes skills list shows the expected skill.
• A slash command or explicit skill load works in a fresh session.
• The skill has clear trigger conditions, steps, pitfalls, and verification.

Official reference

https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/features/skills/