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15 Hermes Agent Skills You NEED To Install Right Now

Oct 22, 2026

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15 Hermes Agent Skills You NEED To Install Right Now

Hermes agent ships with 58 built-in skills, but few are worth using. Here are the 15 best, from launch videos and phone-based coding to email triage and privacy cleanup

A fresh Hermes agent installation includes 58 skills. The official directory contains more than 200. The author, who builds apps with Hermes and reports more than $51,000 in revenue from customers in under 90 days, tested hundreds of skills on a server running since April. This article ranks the 15 most useful ones, from 15 to 1.

A skill is an instruction set that the agent stores and loads only when a task requires it. To view installed skills, type /skills in the Hermes chat.

Nous, the company behind Hermes, removes skills from the default install when they see little use. The author notes that skills included in earlier installations no longer appear in new ones.

Skills 15–12

15. /brag

The /brag skill generates a 15- to 25-second launch video for an app. The agent reads the project folder, selects an angle, writes a storyboard, and renders the video with music and sound effects. Users choose a tone: cinematic, App Store, deadpan, or YC parody.

The skill was added in October 2026. The original repository has been public since June and has more than 11,000 GitHub stars. Users can install it with a command or by pasting the repository link into Hermes.

14. ASCII Video

The ASCII Video skill rebuilds any clip as colored text characters. The skill runs on a standard computer without a graphics card or an API key. It can also synchronize the text with music. The author suggests it for short-form video, reels, and animated websites.

13. Dog Food

The skill name refers to "eating your own dog food," the practice of testing a product before customers do. The agent opens a link to an app and navigates it as a new user. It clicks every button, completes every form, and takes screenshots of any failures.

The agent returns a report that ranks bugs from critical to minor. Technium, a lead developer on Hermes at Nous, wrote the skill. To run it, send the agent the message "dog food my app" with the app link.

12. Find My

The Find My skill locates Apple devices through a Telegram message to the agent. Apple does not provide a command-line tool for Find My, so the agent opens the Find My app on the Mac, takes a screenshot, and reads the location from the map. The skill can also track an AirTag over time to show where an item has moved during the day.

The skill works only when Hermes runs on a Mac. On a virtual private server (VPS), the four Apple-only skills do not appear in the skill list.

Higher-Risk Skills 11–8

The author groups skills 11 to 8 as tools that perform actions with significant consequences.

11. Shop

Shop is the official Shopify skill, written by Joe Rinaldi Johnson, a senior product lead at Shopify. The agent can:

  • Search products across Shopify stores
  • Select a size and color
  • Retrieve shipping rates for a delivery address
  • Track orders
  • Start a return
  • Find products that match a photo

Before checkout, the agent must confirm the item, price, and address with the user. The agent can complete payments without confirmation only if the user sets a spending budget in the Shop app.

10. Telephony

The Telephony skill lets the agent purchase its own phone number through Twilio. The agent can send and read text messages and place calls with an AI voice provided by Bland or Vapi.

In January, Alex Finn received a call from an unknown number. The caller was his AI agent, Henry, which had obtained a phone number and a voice on its own. Finn said Henry "now won't stop calling me." Separately, a YouTuber named Vectro AI instructed his Hermes agent to create a voice and call his phone. The agent called him and delivered a joke.

Nous opened a ticket to make the capability an official skill on March 5. The skill was added nine days later. Twilio and the voice services charge for usage. The skill instructs the agent not to use the feature for unsolicited messages. The author suggests uses such as a text when an app breaks or a morning briefing call.

9. Unbroker

Data brokers publish personal information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and relatives' names, in searchable listings. Unbroker includes playbooks for 22 major sites, including Spokeo, WhitePages, and BeenVerified. The skill:

  1. Locates the user's listings on each site.
  2. Submits opt-out requests.
  3. Clicks the verification links in the user's email.
  4. Rescans the sites on a schedule, because listings can reappear.

The skill was written by the developer of the ASCII Video skill. Users describe it as a free alternative to DeleteMe, a paid privacy service. The author recommends it to US users who have searched for their own name and found unwanted results.

8. Computer Use

The Computer Use skill allows the agent to operate applications that lack an API. The agent reads the screen and clicks elements.

Unlike earlier computer-use tools, this skill runs in the background. It does not move the mouse, take control of the keyboard, or switch windows. A user can type an email while the agent fills a spreadsheet in another window, and the cursor does not move.

The skill was built with Francesco Bonacchi, whose company, Query, focuses on AI systems that use computers. The main GitHub repository has more than 26,000 stars. The skill works with any model that supports tool use.

To enable it, type Hermes tools, select Computer Use, and complete the installation.

Daily Drivers 7–4

The author describes skills 7 to 4 as tools that save time every week.

7. Popular Web Designs

This skill contains 54 design systems, including Stripe, Linear, and Vercel. Each system includes exact colors, fonts, spacing, and components that the agent can copy. The skill comes from the awesome design repository of Vault Agent, which has almost 118,000 GitHub stars. Nous included the full collection in Hermes.

Instead of requesting "a modern design," the author recommends naming a brand that the user likes.

6. Blocked Page Recovery

Research agents often stop when a page returns a 403 error, a Cloudflare challenge, or a paywall. This skill provides a five-step fallback sequence:

  1. Wayback Machine
  2. archive.today
  3. Gena, a reader service
  4. The site's own API
  5. A real browser, used only if the first four steps fail

Nous rewrote the skill description in August so that agents would use the skill when needed. The author reports that the skill recovered pricing data he needed for a comparison video.

5. LLM Wiki

Andrej Karpathy, who co-founded OpenAI and led the AI team behind Tesla Autopilot, published a note describing how he uses AI to organize research. That note is the basis for the LLM Wiki skill, which has almost 250,000 GitHub stars.

Standard agents reread source documents for each query. LLM Wiki reads the documents once and builds a wiki with a linked page for each person, idea, and topic. The wiki updates as the user adds material. The output consists of markdown files, which can be opened in Obsidian.

Users can add podcasts, transcripts, PDFs, and meeting notes, then ask the agent where the sources disagree.

4. Product Price Monitor

The user specifies an exact product, such as a pair of shoes or a flight, and a target price. The agent records the current price and creates a cron job, a scheduled task, that checks the price every six hours. The agent sends a message only when the price reaches the target.

The author monitors return flights from Sydney to Nepal and receives a Telegram alert when the fare drops below $1,500.

Ben Barclay, a contributor, wrote the skill. Barclay also wrote Hermes' official GitHub skill.

Top Three

3. /learn

The /learn command is a tool that creates skills. It reads a website, folder, PDF, or book and generates a new skill from the content.

The command can also convert a demonstration into a skill. The user performs a task with the agent, then types /learn how I just did that. The agent saves the process as a skill it can repeat.

The author used this method to document his script-writing process, linked the agent to his YouTube channel for reference, and generated the script for this article's source video with Hermes. He edits the output rather than writing drafts from scratch.

The command was released in June. Derek Chung, a YouTuber with nearly 500,000 subscribers, called it one of the most underrated Hermes commands.

Skill Index Costs

Nous documentation states that skills consume no tokens until used. The author quotes a Nous code comment: "Every session pays the index."

The index consists of the name and one-line description of each installed skill. The index is sent with every message. In August, Hermes reduced its default skills from 82 to 58. The index size dropped from about 1,900 tokens to about 1,400.

To manage context usage:

  • Run hermes prompt size to measure the current context consumption.
  • Run hermes skills config to disable unused skills.

2. Email Inbox Triage

The Email Inbox Triage skill reads 20 to 50 emails the user has sent. It learns the user's openings, sign-offs, typical length, and how the user declines requests. It then drafts replies in the user's voice.

The skill sorts the inbox into four groups: urgent, needs a reply, waiting on someone, and noise. It drafts replies for the highest-priority messages.

The skill does not send messages by default. Its instructions state: "Handle my inbox does not mean permission to send." The user reviews and approves each draft.

The author previously used a Gmail manager that deleted junk mail and sent a daily digest. This skill extends that setup. The author ran it on the last 48 hours of his inbox, and the agent drafted a reply to every message that required one. He still sends each reply manually.

To use it, send the agent: "Triage my inbox and draft replies in my voice. Don't send anything."

1. Claude Code and Codex

This skill turns Hermes into a manager that delegates coding tasks to Claude Code or Codex. The user sends a request from Telegram. Hermes opens Claude Code on the server, assigns the task, monitors progress, and sends a message when the work is complete.

The skill is about 35,000 characters long, nearly twice the length of the script for the source video. It exceeds the size guideline that Nous sets for skills.

The author used the skill to fix a bug in which the stop button did not work. From his phone, he sent a request to Hermes. Claude Code identified the bug, fixed it, and opened a pull request. The author reviewed the pull request on his phone.

The skill requires a Claude or Codex subscription. The author uses the $200 Claude plan, which covers the usage.

Honorable Mentions

  • Pokémon Player: Nous built a skill that lets the agent play Pokémon. The agent reads the game's memory for HP and position and captures screenshots of the map.
  • Draw Your Font: The user photographs handwriting, and the skill converts it into an installable font.
  • Mouse: The skill finds places, directions, and nearby locations using OpenStreetMap, without an API key. In Telegram, a user can send a location pin and request the best open coffee shop within 500 meters.
  • Competitor News Monitor: The user provides a list of companies. Every Monday, the skill sends a digest of changes with links to the sources. The author monitors the official documentation for Claude, Codex, and Kimmy.

Introduction and What Skills Are

The creator introduces Hermes agent's built-in skills, claims 58 are installed by default and over 200 exist in the official directory, and says he tested them all to pick the best 15. He explains that a skill is an instruction manual the agent loads only when needed, viewable with slash skills.

  • A fresh Hermes install comes with 58 unique skills already on the machine.
  • The official directory contains over 200 skills.
  • The creator, Duby, says he builds apps daily with Hermes, has made over $51,000 in less than 90 days from real users, and has run Hermes on a server since April.
  • Typing slash skills in the Hermes chat lists all available skills.
  • Nous, the creators of Hermes, remove rarely used skills; in Nous's words, a skill that sees no regular use is removed from new installs.

Skills 15 to 12: Launch Videos, ASCII Video, Dog Food QA, Find My

Skills 15 to 12 cover app launch videos, ASCII video conversion, bug testing with a virtual new user, and locating lost AirPods via Find My.

  • Skill 15, slash brag, was released this month and reads your project folder, picks an angle, writes a storyboard, and renders a 15-to-25-second launch video with music and sound effects. Tones include cinematic, App Store, deadpan, and YC parody.
  • The original slash brag repo has been public since June and has passed 11,000 GitHub stars.
  • Skill 14, ASCII video, rebuilds any clip you send as colored text characters, runs without a graphics card or API key, and can make text react to music.
  • Skill 13, dog food, is named after eating your own dog food, meaning testing your product before customers do. It clicks every button, fills forms, screenshots breakages, and reports bugs from critical to minor. It was written by Technium, a lead dev on Hermes at Nous.
  • Skill 12, Find My, locates AirPods via Telegram messages. Since Apple offers no command line tool, the agent opens Find My on a Mac, takes a screenshot, and reads the map. It can also track an AirTag over time. It only works when Hermes runs on a Mac; on a VPS, the four Apple-only skills are hidden.

Skill 11: Shop (Shopify)

The 'slightly scary tier' begins with Shopify's official shopping skill, which lets the agent search products, check sizes and shipping, track orders, and start returns, while requiring user confirmation before any purchase.

  • Skill 11, shop, is the official Shopify shopping app skill written by Joe Rinaldi Johnson, a senior product lead at Shopify.
  • The agent can search Shopify stores, find exact size and color, pull shipping rates, track orders, start returns, and find shops for a photo of an item.
  • The agent must confirm the item, price, and address with the user before checkout.
  • It can pay on its own only if a spending budget is set in the Shop app.

Skill 10: Telephony

Skill 10, telephony, lets the agent buy its own phone number through Twilio, text and call the user with an AI voice via Bland or Vapi, and it costs money. The creator cites real incidents of agents calling users, and notes the skill tells the agent not to spam people.

  • Skill 10, telephony, sets up an agent-owned phone number through Twilio.
  • The agent can text the user, read incoming texts, and call with an AI voice through Bland or Vapi.
  • Alex Finn woke up in January to a call from his AI agent Henry, which had acquired a phone number and a voice; Alex said it now won't stop calling him.
  • A YouTuber called Vectro AI told his Hermes to make its own voice and call his phone.
  • Nous opened a ticket on March 5th to make this an official skill, and it was added 9 days later.
  • The service costs real money because Twilio and the voice services charge fees.
  • The skill itself tells the agent not to use it for spamming random people.

Skill 9: Unbroker

Skill 9, Unbroker, removes personal listings from data broker sites using playbooks for 22 major sites, sending opt-out requests and rescanning on a schedule. It is pitched as a free alternative to the paid service DeleteMe.

  • Skill 9 is Unbroker, which targets data brokers listing names, addresses, phone numbers, and relatives.
  • It has playbooks for 22 major sites, including Spokeo, WhitePages, and BeenVerified.
  • It finds listings, sends opt-out requests, clicks verification links in email, and rescans on a schedule.
  • It was made by the same person behind the ASCII video skill.
  • It is described as a free replacement for DeleteMe, a paid privacy service.
  • The creator recommends it for US users.

Skill 8: Computer Use

Skill 8, computer use, lets the agent operate apps without APIs by looking at the screen and clicking, in the background without moving the cursor or stealing focus. It must be enabled with Hermes tools.

  • Skill 8 is computer use, which operates apps lacking an API by viewing the screen and clicking.
  • It runs in the background: it does not move the mouse, take the keyboard, or switch windows.
  • It was built with Francesco Bonacchi, whose company Query focuses on AI using computers.
  • The main GitHub repo has over 26,000 stars.
  • It works with any model that can use tools.
  • To enable it, type Hermes tools, pick computer use, and let it install.

Skills 7 to 5: Web Designs, Blocked Page Recovery, LLM Wiki

The 'daily drivers' start with popular web designs, which provides 54 real system designs such as Stripe, Linear, and Vercel. Then blocked page recovery provides a five-step fallback for pages that block the agent, and LLM Wiki builds a linked personal wiki from your documents.

  • Skill 7 is popular web designs, containing 54 real design systems, including Stripe, Linear, and Vercel, with exact colors, fonts, spacing, and components.
  • It comes from the Vault Agent awesome design repo, which has almost 118,000 GitHub stars; Nous shipped it in Hermes.
  • The creator advises replacing 'make it modern' with naming a brand you like.
  • Skill 6 is blocked page recovery, a five-step escape plan for 403 errors, Cloudflare walls, or paywalls: Wayback Machine, archive.today, the reader service Gena, the site's own API, and finally a real browser.
  • Nous rewrote this skill's description in August so the agent would remember to use it.
  • Skill 5 is LLM Wiki, inspired by a note from Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI who ran the AI team at Tesla Autopilot, on organizing research with AI.
  • LLM Wiki reads documents once and writes a wiki with pages for each person, idea, and topic, linked together and kept updated.
  • You can dump in podcasts, transcripts, PDFs, and meeting notes, ask where they disagree, and open the markdown files in Obsidian. The repo has almost 250,000 GitHub stars.

Skill 4: Product Price Monitor

Skill 4, product price monitor, tracks a specific item's price with a cron job every 6 hours and messages only when the target price is met. The creator uses it to watch Sydney to Nepal return flights.

  • Skill 4 is product price monitor, which sets a target price and checks every 6 hours via a cron job.
  • It messages the user only when the price hits the target, avoiding repeated alerts.
  • The creator watches return flights from Sydney to Nepal and gets a Telegram ping if the price drops under $1,500.
  • It was written by contributor Ben Barclay, who also wrote Hermes' official GitHub skill.

Skill 3: Slash Learn

Skill 3, slash learn, creates new skills from a website, folder, PDF, or book, and can record a process the user demonstrates. The creator used it to build a script-writing skill, and it came out in June.

  • Skill 3 is the slash learn command, which makes skills from a website, folder, PDF, or book.
  • Typing slash learn how I just did that turns a walked-through process into a repeatable skill.
  • The creator generated this video's script with Hermes after teaching it his script-writing process, linked to his YouTube channel.
  • Derek Chung, who has almost half a million subscribers, called it one of the most underrated Hermes commands.
  • It was released in June.

Token Cost Warning and Skill 2: Email Inbox Triage

The creator warns that skills cost tokens through the index, a name and one-line description sent with every message. Hermes reduced default skills from 82 to 58 in August, cutting the index from about 1,900 to 1,400 tokens. He recommends checking context size and disabling unused skills. Skill 2 is email inbox triage, which drafts replies in the user's voice and never sends without approval.

  • Nous docs say skills don't cost tokens until used, but Nous code notes say every session pays the index.
  • The index is the name and one-line description of every skill, sent with every message.
  • In August, Hermes default skills dropped from 82 to 58, reducing the index from roughly 1,900 tokens to around 1,400.
  • Run Hermes prompt size to check context usage and Hermes skills config to disable unused skills.
  • Skill 2 is email inbox triage. Before drafting, it reads 20 to 50 emails the user sent to learn their openings, sign-offs, length, and how they decline.
  • It sorts the inbox into urgent, needs a reply, waiting on someone, or noise, and drafts replies for the most important.
  • The skill states: Handle my inbox does not mean permission to send.
  • The creator ran it on the last 48 hours of his inbox; every reply was drafted by the agent, and he still sends them himself.
  • It upgrades his earlier Gmail manager setup, which deleted junk and sent a morning digest.

Honorable Mentions and Skill 1: Claude Code and Codex

Honorable mentions are Pokémon player, draw your font, Mouse for free OpenStreetMap-based location search, and Competitor News Monitor for weekly digests. The number one skill is the Claude Code and Codex skill, which lets Hermes manage coding jobs from Telegram.

  • Honorable mention Pokémon player reads game memory for HP and position and screenshots the map to navigate.
  • Draw your font turns a photo of handwriting into an installable font.
  • Mouse finds places, directions, and nearby spots using OpenStreetMap, with no API key; users can drop a Telegram pin and ask for the best coffee within 500 m that is open now.
  • Competitor News Monitor sends a weekly Monday digest of changes from listed companies; the creator tracks the official docs for Claude, Codex, and Kimmy.
  • Skill 1 is the Claude Code and Codex skill, which turns Hermes into a manager that hands coding jobs to Claude Code, opens it on the server, and messages back when done.
  • The skill is about 35,000 characters, nearly twice the length of the video script, and breaks Nous's own size rule for skills.
  • The creator fixed a stop-button bug from his phone with it, and Hermes opened a pull request he reviewed.
  • It uses the user's Claude or Codex plan; the creator is on the $200 plan.