Hermes Agent changelog

Every release, translated out of commit-speak. Breaking changes first, because that is the only part that costs you an evening.

v0.20.0 August 3, 2026

The "Herald" release — Hermes gets a voice you can interrupt, talks to other agents over A2A v1.0, and cites its sources. Rolls up everything since v0.19.0, including the v0.19.1 patch window.

Added

  • Streaming conversational voice: Hermes speaks clause-by-clause as the reply generates, and you can cut in mid-sentence — it stops, listens, and the model is told you interrupted.
  • Open-vocabulary wake words detected on-device, so no audio leaves your machine while it waits. Different wake phrases can route to different profiles.
  • Voice notes in and TTS replies out across WhatsApp, Feishu, DingTalk, LINE, QQ, Photon and Weixin. Speech-to-text is now its own configurable `hermes tools` category.
  • Agent-to-agent messaging via A2A v1.0.
  • Signed outbound webhooks, so Hermes can announce events to your own systems.
  • Grounded research with verifiable citations and fact-checking.
  • Desktop app becomes a platform: artifacts with live preview, a plugin SDK, quick-entry from anywhere, and multiple windows.
  • New CLI commands: `!` shell mode, `/init`, `/diff`, `/context` and `/focus`.

Fixed

  • Tools now recover from their own failures instead of handing the model a dead end to guess around.
  • Gentler, smarter context compression.
  • Absorbs the entire v0.19.1 salvage window across gateway, voice, desktop and installer.

Official release notes →

v0.19.1 July 30, 2026

Patch release with no headline features — it exists to give Docker images, hosted deployments and fresh installs a stable tag covering the ~1,000 PRs merged since v0.19.0.

Added

  • Buzz/Nostr channel support.
  • FLUX3 video generation and delivery.

Fixed

  • Bug-fix waves across the gateway, the voice subsystem, the desktop app and the installer.
  • Telegram media reliability.
  • Voice-mode regressions introduced during the v0.19.0 window.

Official release notes →

v0.19.0 July 20, 2026

The "Quicksilver" release — first-turn time-to-first-token drops roughly 80% across every platform, plus password-manager secrets and smart approvals on by default.

Breaking

  • Smart approvals are now on by default. Automation that previously ran unattended may start waiting for a confirmation it never used to need — review your approval settings before assuming the agent has hung.

Added

  • Live reasoning streams, so you can watch the agent think instead of staring at a blank prompt.
  • Secrets can be pulled from Bitwarden and 1Password instead of sitting in plaintext env files.
  • Subscription management from the terminal.
  • Durable response delivery — replies survive a transient gateway disconnect rather than vanishing.

Fixed

  • Substantial desktop and TUI responsiveness work across the board.

Official release notes →

v0.18.2 July 8, 2026

Same-day patch on v0.18.1, picking up the WhatsApp Baileys dependency fix that tagged Docker builds needed.

Fixed

  • fix(whatsapp): unpin Baileys from git commit, use published 7.0.0-rc13

Official release notes →

v0.18.1 July 8, 2026

A patch tag cut so downstream consumers — Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs — had something stable on top of the v0.18.0 window.

Official release notes →

v0.18.0 July 1, 2026

The "Judgment" release — the team spent a week and a half closing every P0 and P1 in the repo. Roughly 700 highest-priority items, all of them shut.

Added

  • Mixture-of-Agents is now a first-class model you can pick
  • See every model's reasoning, then watch the answer stream in
  • The agent verifies its own work — "done" means proven, not claimed
  • /learn — turn anything into a reusable skill by describing it
  • /journey — a playable timeline of everything Hermes has learned about you
  • Delegate a pile of work and keep going — background fan-out
  • First-class coding Projects in the desktop app
  • Run Hermes at scale — scale-to-zero and drain coordination
  • Cheaper self-improvement — smarter background review
  • Compose your next prompt in your editor — /prompt
  • Google Vertex AI — Gemini through your GCP service account, no static key
  • Presets as selectable virtual models
  • /moa is now one-shot sugar

Fixed

  • Security round

Official release notes →

v0.17.0 June 19, 2026

The "Reach" release — v0.16.0 put Hermes on your desktop; this one is about how far that reach extends. iMessage, the Raft agent network, background subagents and team administration.

Added

  • Hermes reaches iMessage — Photon Spectrum, no Mac relay required
  • Raft — Hermes joins the Raft agent network as a gateway channel
  • A substantially more capable desktop app
  • Background / async subagents — delegate work and keep going
  • Edit images, not just generate them — image-to-image in image_generate
  • Automation Blueprints — schedule things without learning cron
  • Cursor's Composer model, through your xAI Grok subscription
  • Full profile builder in the dashboard
  • Skills Hub browser rehaul
  • The memory tool got a major upgrade — atomic batch operations
  • Secure dashboard login
  • Official WhatsApp Business Cloud API adapter
  • Rich text for Telegram — Bot API 10.1 rich messages
  • Curator cost optimization — no aux-model spend on routine runs

Official release notes →

v0.16.0 June 6, 2026

The "Surface" release — a real native desktop app for macOS, Linux and Windows, built across 100 PRs in a single week. Not a terminal wrapper.

Added

  • Hermes Desktop — a real native app, not a terminal wrapper
  • Run the desktop app against a remote Hermes — sign in with OAuth or username/password
  • The web dashboard is now a full admin panel — configure everything from the browser
  • Hermes Desktop speaks Simplified Chinese — full 简体中文 in the chat GUI
  • Leaner default skill set — Hermes ships only what you actually need
  • NVIDIA/skills is now a built-in trusted skills tap
  • Quick Setup via Nous Portal — from install to first message in seconds
  • Fuzzy model picker, everywhere — type a few letters, find your model
  • /undo [N] — take back the last N turns
  • Choose your default interface — cli or tui
  • Simplified Chinese (简体中文) translation

Fixed

  • CVE-2026-48710 (Starlette BadHost)

Official release notes →

v0.15.2 May 29, 2026

A second same-day patch tag following v0.15.1.

Official release notes →

v0.15.1 May 29, 2026

The "Patch" release — a same-day hotfix for v0.15.0, headlined by the dashboard infinite-reload loop that hit anyone running in loopback mode: Docker, hosted Hermes and fresh installs.

Fixed

  • Dashboard 401 reload loop fixed
  • Docker dashboard --insecure is now an explicit env opt-in, never derived from bind host
  • MCP bare command resolution under Docker
  • Kanban worker can be killed again
  • Full skills.sh catalog (858 → 19,932 entries)
  • /api/auth/me 401 no longer triggers reload loop
  • Skills page source pills + category sidebar restored
  • insecure is now explicit opt-in via env var
  • Dashboard test suite repaired
  • arm64 PR builds skip the GHA cache
  • Bare npx/npm/node resolve against /usr/local/bin
  • Worker SIGTERM actually terminates the process
  • Workers receive images referenced in task bodies

Official release notes →

v0.15.0 May 28, 2026

The "Velocity" release — the 16,083-line run_agent.py collapses to 3,821 across 14 modules, and Kanban grows into a real multi-agent platform over 104 PRs.

Added

  • The Big Refactor — run_agent.py is no longer 16,000 lines
  • Kanban grew into a real multi-agent platform — 104 PRs end to end
  • Cold-start perf wave keeps going — another second saved, 47% fewer per-turn function calls
  • session_search rebuilt — no LLM, no cost, 4,500× faster
  • Promptware defense — Brainworm-class attacks blocked at three chokepoints
  • Bitwarden Secrets Manager — one bootstrap token replaces every per-provider API key
  • ntfy as the 23rd messaging platform — push notifications without an account
  • Skill bundles — /<name> loads multiple skills at once
  • TUI session orchestrator — multiple live sessions in one TUI window
  • Two new image_gen providers — Krea 2 Medium + Large, FAL ported to plugin
  • Nous-approved MCP catalog with interactive picker
  • OpenHands orchestration skill

Fixed

  • Deep xAI integration round — Web Search plugin, OAuth proxy upstream, May 15 retirement detection, natural TTS, security hardening

Official release notes →

v0.14.0 May 16, 2026

Hermes becomes pip-installable, so you no longer have to pipe a shell script into your machine to try it.

Added

  • `pip install hermes-agent` as a first-class install path alongside the curl installer.

Fixed

  • Assorted installer reliability fixes around dependency detection.

Official release notes →

v0.13.0 May 7, 2026

Multi-agent Kanban arrives, the agent stops forgetting what you asked it to do, and it learns to watch video and clone a voice.

Added

  • Multi-agent Kanban — delegate to an AI team that actually finishes
  • /goal — the agent doesn't forget what you asked it to do
  • Show it a video
  • Clone a voice
  • Hermes speaks your language
  • Google Chat — the 20th messaging platform
  • Sessions survive restarts
  • Checkpoints v2
  • The agent lints its own writes
  • no_agent cron mode — script-only watchdog
  • Platform allowlists everywhere
  • Providers are now plugins
  • API server — long-term memory per session

Fixed

  • Security wave — 8 P0 closures

Official release notes →

v0.12.0 April 30, 2026

The Autonomous Curator lands and the self-improvement loop gets a substantial upgrade, alongside a wave of new inference providers and messaging platforms.

Added

  • Autonomous Curator
  • Self-improvement loop — substantially upgraded
  • Skill integrations — major expansion
  • LM Studio — first-class provider
  • Four more new inference providers
  • Pluggable gateway platforms + Microsoft Teams
  • Tencent 元宝 (Yuanbao) — 18th messaging platform
  • Spotify — native tools + bundled skill + wizard
  • Google Meet plugin
  • hermes -z one-shot mode + hermes update --check
  • Models dashboard tab + in-browser model config
  • Remote model catalog manifest
  • Native multimodal image routing
  • Gateway media parity

Official release notes →

v0.11.0 April 23, 2026

A rebuilt Ink-based TUI, native AWS Bedrock, five new inference paths, and /steer for nudging the agent mid-run.

Added

  • New Ink-based TUI
  • Transport ABC + Native AWS Bedrock
  • Five new inference paths
  • GPT-5.5 over Codex OAuth
  • QQBot — 17th supported platform
  • Plugin surface expanded
  • /steer — mid-run agent nudges
  • Shell hooks
  • Webhook direct-delivery mode
  • Smarter delegation
  • Auxiliary models — configurable UI + main-model-first
  • Dashboard plugin system + live theme switching
  • Dashboard polish

Official release notes →

v0.10.0 April 16, 2026

A small release centred on the Nous Tool Gateway.

Added

  • Nous Tool Gateway

Official release notes →

v0.9.0 April 13, 2026

The local web dashboard arrives, along with Fast Mode, Android support via Termux, and a comprehensive security hardening pass.

Added

  • Local Web Dashboard
  • Fast Mode (/fast)
  • iMessage via BlueBubbles
  • WeChat (Weixin) & WeCom Callback Mode
  • Termux / Android Support
  • Background Process Monitoring (watch_patterns)
  • Native xAI & Xiaomi MiMo Providers
  • Pluggable Context Engine
  • Unified Proxy Support
  • hermes backup & hermes import
  • 16 Supported Platforms
  • /debug & hermes debug share
  • Native xAI (Grok) provider

Fixed

  • Comprehensive Security Hardening

Official release notes →

v0.8.0 April 8, 2026

Background processes learn to notify you when they finish, models become switchable live with /model, and Gemini gets a native provider.

Added

  • Background Process Auto-Notifications (notify_on_complete)
  • Free Xiaomi MiMo v2 Pro on Nous Portal
  • Live Model Switching (/model Command)
  • Self-Optimized GPT/Codex Tool-Use Guidance
  • Google AI Studio (Gemini) Native Provider
  • Inactivity-Based Agent Timeouts
  • Approval Buttons on Slack & Telegram
  • MCP OAuth 2.1 PKCE + OSV Malware Scanning
  • Centralized Logging & Config Validation
  • Plugin System Expansion
  • Matrix Tier 1 & Platform Hardening
  • Native Google AI Studio (Gemini) provider
  • /model command — full provider+model system overhaul

Fixed

  • Security Hardening Pass

Official release notes →

v0.7.0 April 3, 2026

Memory becomes a pluggable interface, providers gain credential pools, and the agent starts actively blocking secret exfiltration.

Added

  • Pluggable Memory Provider Interface
  • Same-Provider Credential Pools
  • Camofox Anti-Detection Browser Backend
  • Inline Diff Previews
  • API Server Session Continuity & Tool Streaming
  • ACP: Client-Provided MCP Servers
  • Gateway Hardening
  • Security: Secret Exfiltration Blocking
  • Credential pool preserved through smart routing
  • Per-turn primary runtime restoration
  • developer role for GPT-5 and Codex models
  • Google model operational guidance
  • Anthropic long-context tier 429 handling

Official release notes →

v0.6.0 March 30, 2026

Profiles let you run multiple independent Hermes instances, plus MCP server mode, an official Docker container, and an ordered fallback provider chain.

Added

  • Profiles — Multi-Instance Hermes
  • MCP Server Mode
  • Docker Container
  • Ordered Fallback Provider Chain
  • Feishu/Lark Platform Support
  • WeCom (Enterprise WeChat) Platform Support
  • Slack Multi-Workspace OAuth
  • Telegram Webhook Mode & Group Controls
  • Exa Search Backend
  • Skills & Credentials on Remote Backends
  • Fix api_mode on provider switch
  • Stop silent OpenRouter fallback
  • Gemini 3.1 preview models

Official release notes →

v0.5.0 March 28, 2026

Nous Portal opens up to 400+ models and Hugging Face becomes a first-class inference provider, with supply-chain hardening alongside.

Added

  • Nous Portal now supports 400+ models
  • Hugging Face as a first-class inference provider
  • Telegram Private Chat Topics
  • Native Modal SDK backend
  • Plugin lifecycle hooks activated
  • Improved OpenAI Model Reliability
  • Nix flake
  • Supply chain hardening
  • Anthropic output limits fix
  • Surface lifecycle events
  • Thinking-budget exhaustion detection
  • Persist reasoning across gateway session turns

Official release notes →

v0.4.0 March 24, 2026

An OpenAI-compatible API server, six new messaging platforms, @ context references, and streaming on by default.

Added

  • OpenAI-compatible API server
  • 6 new messaging platform adapters
  • 4 new inference providers
  • MCP server management CLI
  • Gateway prompt caching
  • Context compression overhaul
  • Streaming enabled by default
  • /statusbar
  • /queue
  • /permission
  • /browser
  • /cost

Official release notes →

v0.3.0 March 17, 2026

Unified streaming infrastructure, a first-class plugin architecture, a native Anthropic provider, and the first voice mode.

Added

  • Unified Streaming Infrastructure
  • First-Class Plugin Architecture
  • Native Anthropic Provider
  • Smart Approvals + /stop Command
  • Honcho Memory Integration
  • Voice Mode
  • Concurrent Tool Execution
  • PII Redaction
  • /browser connect via CDP
  • Vercel AI Gateway Provider
  • Centralized Provider Router
  • ACP Server (IDE Integration)
  • Persistent Shell Mode
  • Agentic On-Policy Distillation (OPD)

Official release notes →

v0.2.0 March 12, 2026

The multi-platform messaging gateway, the MCP client and the skills ecosystem all land — the release where Hermes becomes reachable from everywhere.

Added

  • Multi-Platform Messaging Gateway
  • MCP (Model Context Protocol) Client
  • Skills Ecosystem
  • Centralized Provider Router
  • ACP Server
  • CLI Skin/Theme Engine
  • Git Worktree Isolation
  • Filesystem Checkpoints & Rollback
  • 3,289 Tests
  • ASCII Art
  • ASCII Video
  • DuckDuckGo Search
  • Solana Blockchain
  • AgentMail

Official release notes →