Hermes Agent v0.8.0 (v2026.4.8)

Release Date: April 8, 2026

The intelligence release — background task auto-notifications, free MiMo v2 Pro on Nous Portal, live model switching across all platforms, self-optimized GPT/Codex guidance, native Google AI Studio, smart inactivity timeouts, approval buttons, MCP OAuth 2.1, and 209 merged PRs with 82 resolved issues.

✨ Highlights

• Background Process Auto-Notifications (notify_on_complete) — Background tasks can now automatically notify the agent when they finish. Start a long-running process (AI model training, test suites, deployments, builds) and the agent gets notified on completion — no polling needed. The agent can keep working on other things and pick up results when they land. (#5779)

• Free Xiaomi MiMo v2 Pro on Nous Portal — Nous Portal now supports the free-tier Xiaomi MiMo v2 Pro model for auxiliary tasks (compression, vision, summarization), with free-tier model gating and pricing display in model selection. (#6018, #5880)

• Live Model Switching (/model Command) — Switch models and providers mid-session from CLI, Telegram, Discord, Slack, or any gateway platform. Aggregator-aware resolution keeps you on OpenRouter/Nous when possible, with automatic cross-provider fallback when needed. Interactive model pickers on Telegram and Discord with inline buttons. (#5181, #5742)

• Self-Optimized GPT/Codex Tool-Use Guidance — The agent diagnosed and patched 5 failure modes in GPT and Codex tool calling through automated behavioral benchmarking, dramatically improving reliability on OpenAI models. Includes execution discipline guidance and thinking-only prefill continuation for structured reasoning. (#6120, #5414, #5931)

• Google AI Studio (Gemini) Native Provider — Direct access to Gemini models through Google's AI Studio API. Includes automatic models.dev registry integration for real-time context length detection across any provider. (#5577)

• Inactivity-Based Agent Timeouts — Gateway and cron timeouts now track actual tool activity instead of wall-clock time. Long-running tasks that are actively working will never be killed — only truly idle agents time out. (#5389, #5440)

• Approval Buttons on Slack & Telegram — Dangerous command approval via native platform buttons instead of typing /approve. Slack gets thread context preservation; Telegram gets emoji reactions for approval status. (#5890, #5975)

• MCP OAuth 2.1 PKCE + OSV Malware Scanning — Full standards-compliant OAuth for MCP server authentication, plus automatic malware scanning of MCP extension packages via the OSV vulnerability database. (#5420, #5305)

• Centralized Logging & Config Validation — Structured logging to ~/.hermes/logs/ (agent.log + errors.log) with the hermes logs command for tailing and filtering. Config structure validation catches malformed YAML at startup before it causes cryptic failures. (#5430, #5426)

• Plugin System Expansion — Plugins can now register CLI subcommands, receive request-scoped API hooks with correlation IDs, prompt for required env vars during install, and hook into session lifecycle events (finalize/reset). (#5295, #5427, #5470, #6129)

• Matrix Tier 1 & Platform Hardening — Matrix gets reactions, read receipts, rich formatting, and room management. Discord adds channel controls and ignored channels. Signal gets full MEDIA: tag delivery. Mattermost gets file attachments. Comprehensive reliability fixes across all platforms. (#5275, #5975, #5602)

• Security Hardening Pass — Consolidated SSRF protections, timing attack mitigations, tar traversal prevention, credential leakage guards, cron path traversal hardening, and cross-session isolation. Terminal workdir sanitization across all backends. (#5944, #5613, #5629)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

Provider & Model Support

• Native Google AI Studio (Gemini) provider with models.dev integration for automatic context length detection (#5577)
• /model command — full provider+model system overhaul — live switching across CLI and all gateway platforms with aggregator-aware resolution (#5181)
• Interactive model picker for Telegram and Discord — inline button-based model selection (#5742)
• Nous Portal free-tier model gating with pricing display in model selection (#5880)
• Model pricing display for OpenRouter and Nous Portal providers (#5416)
• xAI (Grok) prompt caching via x-grok-conv-id header (#5604)
• Grok added to tool-use enforcement models for direct xAI usage (#5595)
• MiniMax TTS provider (speech-2.8) (#4963)
• Non-agentic model warning — warns users when loading Hermes LLM models not designed for tool use (#5378)
• Ollama Cloud auth, /model switch persistence, and alias tab completion (#5269)
• Preserve dots in OpenCode Go model names (minimax-m2.7, glm-4.5, kimi-k2.5) (#5597)
• MiniMax models 404 fix — strip /v1 from Anthropic base URL for OpenCode Go (#4918)
• Provider credential reset windows honored in pooled failover (#5188)
• OAuth token sync between credential pool and credentials file (#4981)
• Stale OAuth credentials no longer block OpenRouter users on auto-detect (#5746)
• Codex OAuth credential pool disconnect + expired token import fix (#5681)
• Codex pool entry sync from ~/.codex/auth.json on exhaustion — @GratefulDave (#5610)
• Auxiliary client payment fallback — retry with next provider on 402 (#5599)
• Auxiliary client resolves named custom providers and 'main' alias (#5978)
• Use mimo-v2-pro for non-vision auxiliary tasks on Nous free tier (#6018)
• Vision auto-detection tries main provider first (#6041)
• Provider re-ordering and Quick Install — @austinpickett (#4664)
• Nous OAuth access_token no longer used as inference API key — @SHL0MS (#5564)
• HERMES_PORTAL_BASE_URL env var respected during Nous login — @benbarclay (#5745)
• Env var overrides for Nous portal/inference URLs (#5419)
• Z.AI endpoint auto-detect via probe and cache (#5763)
• MiniMax context lengths, model catalog, thinking guard, aux model, and config base_url corrections (#6082)
• Community provider/model resolution fixes — salvaged 4 community PRs + MiniMax aux URL (#5983)

Agent Loop & Conversation

• Self-optimized GPT/Codex tool-use guidance via automated behavioral benchmarking — agent self-diagnosed and patched 5 failure modes (#6120)
• GPT/Codex execution discipline guidance in system prompts (#5414)
• Thinking-only prefill continuation for structured reasoning responses (#5931)
• Accept reasoning-only responses without retries — set content to "(empty)" instead of infinite retry (#5278)
• Jittered retry backoff — exponential backoff with jitter for API retries (#6048)
• Smart thinking block signature management — preserve and manage Anthropic thinking signatures across turns (#6112)
• Coerce tool call arguments to match JSON Schema types — fixes models that send strings instead of numbers/booleans (#5265)
• Save oversized tool results to file instead of destructive truncation (#5210)
• Sandbox-aware tool result persistence (#6085)
• Streaming fallback improved after edit failures (#6110)
• Codex empty-output gaps covered in fallback + normalizer + auxiliary client (#5724, #5730, #5734)
• Codex stream output backfill from output_item.done events (#5689)
• Stream consumer creates new message after tool boundaries (#5739)
• Codex validation aligned with normalization for empty stream output (#5940)
• Bridge tool-calls in copilot-acp adapter (#5460)
• Filter transcript-only roles from chat-completions payload (#4880)
• Context compaction failures fixed on temperature-restricted models — @MadKangYu (#5608)
• Sanitize tool_calls for all strict APIs (Fireworks, Mistral, etc.) — @lumethegreat (#5183)

Memory & Sessions

• Supermemory memory provider — new memory plugin with multi-container, search_mode, identity template, and env var override (#5737, #5933)
• Shared thread sessions by default — multi-user thread support across gateway platforms (#5391)
• Subagent sessions linked to parent and hidden from session list (#5309)
• Profile-scoped memory isolation and clone support (#4845)
• Thread gateway user_id to memory plugins for per-user scoping (#5895)
• Honcho plugin drift overhaul + plugin CLI registration system (#5295)
• Honcho holographic prompt and trust score rendering preserved (#4872)
• Honcho doctor fix — use recall_mode instead of memory_mode — @techguysimon (#5645)
• RetainDB — API routes, write queue, dialectic, agent model, file tools fixes (#5461)
• Hindsight memory plugin overhaul + memory setup wizard fixes (#5094)
• mem0 API v2 compat, prefetch context fencing, secret redaction (#5423)
• mem0 env vars merged with mem0.json instead of either/or (#4939)
• Clean user message used for all memory provider operations (#4940)
• Silent memory flush failure on /new and /resume fixed — @ryanautomated (#5640)
• OpenViking atexit safety net for session commit (#5664)
• OpenViking tenant-scoping headers for multi-tenant servers (#4936)
• ByteRover brv query runs synchronously before LLM call (#4831)

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

Gateway Core

• Inactivity-based agent timeout — replaces wall-clock timeout with smart activity tracking; long-running active tasks never killed (#5389)
• Approval buttons for Slack & Telegram + Slack thread context preservation (#5890)
• Live-stream /update output + forward interactive prompts to user (#5180)
• Infinite timeout support + periodic notifications + actionable error messages (#4959)
• Duplicate message prevention — gateway dedup + partial stream guard (#4878)
• Webhook delivery_info persistence + full session id in /status (#5942)
• Tool preview truncation respects tool_preview_length in all/new progress modes (#5937)
• Short preview truncation restored for all/new tool progress modes (#4935)
• Update-pending state written atomically to prevent corruption (#4923)
• Approval session key isolated per turn (#4884)
• Active-session guard bypass for /approve, /deny, /stop, /new (#4926, #5765)
• Typing indicator paused during approval waits (#5893)
• Caption check uses exact line-by-line match instead of substring (all platforms) (#5939)
• MEDIA: tags stripped from streamed gateway messages (#5152)
• MEDIA: tags extracted from cron delivery before sending (#5598)
• Profile-aware service units + voice transcription cleanup (#5972)
• Thread-safe PairingStore with atomic writes — @CharlieKerfoot (#5656)
• Sanitize media URLs in base platform logs — @WAXLYY (#5631)
• Reduce Telegram fallback IP activation log noise — @MadKangYu (#5615)
• Cron static method wrappers to prevent self-binding (#5299)
• Stale 'hermes login' replaced with 'hermes auth' + credential removal re-seeding fix (#5670)

Telegram

• Group topics skill binding for supergroup forum topics (#4886)
• Emoji reactions for approval status and notifications (#5975)
• Duplicate message delivery prevented on send timeout (#5153)
• Command names sanitized to strip invalid characters (#5596)
• Per-platform disabled skills respected in Telegram menu and gateway dispatch (#4799)
• /approve and /deny routed through running-agent guard (#4798)

Discord

• Channel controls — ignored_channels and no_thread_channels config options (#5975)
• Skills registered as native slash commands via shared gateway logic (#5603)
• /approve, /deny, /queue, /background, /btw registered as native slash commands (#4800, #5477)
• Unnecessary members intent removed on startup + token lock leak fix (#5302)

Slack

• Thread engagement — auto-respond in bot-started and mentioned threads (#5897)
• mrkdwn in edit_message + thread replies without @mentions (#5733)

Matrix

• Tier 1 feature parity — reactions, read receipts, rich formatting, room management (#5275)
• MATRIX_REQUIRE_MENTION and MATRIX_AUTO_THREAD support (#5106)
• Comprehensive reliability — encrypted media, auth recovery, cron E2EE, Synapse compat (#5271)
• CJK input, E2EE, and reconnect fixes (#5665)

Signal

• Full MEDIA: tag delivery — send_image_file, send_voice, and send_video implemented (#5602)

Mattermost

• File attachments — set message type to DOCUMENT when post has file attachments — @nericervin (#5609)

Feishu

• Interactive card approval buttons (#6043)
• Reconnect and ACL fixes (#5665)

Webhooks

• {__raw__} template token and thread_id passthrough for forum topics (#5662)

🖥️ CLI & User Experience

Interactive CLI

• Defer response content until reasoning block completes (#5773)
• Ghost status-bar lines cleared on terminal resize (#4960)
• Normalise \r\n and \r line endings in pasted text (#4849)
• ChatConsole errors, curses scroll, skin-aware banner, git state banner fixes (#5974)
• Native Windows image paste support (#5917)
• --yolo and other flags no longer silently dropped when placed before 'chat' subcommand (#5145)

Setup & Configuration

• Config structure validation — detect malformed YAML at startup with actionable error messages (#5426)
• Centralized logging to ~/.hermes/logs/ — agent.log (INFO+), errors.log (WARNING+) with hermes logs command (#5430)
• Docs links added to setup wizard sections (#5283)
• Doctor diagnostics — sync provider checks, config migration, WAL and mem0 diagnostics (#5077)
• Timeout debug logging and user-facing diagnostics improved (#5370)
• Reasoning effort unified to config.yaml only (#6118)
• Permanent command allowlist loaded on startup (#5076)
• hermes auth remove now clears env-seeded credentials permanently (#5285)
• Bundled skills synced to all profiles during update (#5795)
• hermes update no longer kills freshly-restarted gateway service (#5448)
• Subprocess.run() timeouts added to all gateway CLI commands (#5424)
• Actionable error message when Codex refresh token is reused — @tymrtn (#5612)
• Google-workspace skill scripts can now run directly — @xinbenlv (#5624)

Cron System

• Inactivity-based cron timeout — replaces wall-clock; active tasks run indefinitely (#5440)
• Pre-run script injection for data collection and change detection (#5082)
• Delivery failure tracking in job status (#6042)
• Delivery guidance in cron prompts — stops send_message thrashing (#5444)
• MEDIA files delivered as native platform attachments (#5921)
• [SILENT] suppression works anywhere in response — @auspic7 (#5654)
• Cron path traversal hardening (#5147)

🔧 Tool System

Terminal & Execution

• Execute_code on remote backends — code execution now works on Docker, SSH, Modal, and other remote terminal backends (#5088)
• Exit code context for common CLI tools in terminal results — helps agent understand what went wrong (#5144)
• Progressive subdirectory hint discovery — agent learns project structure as it navigates (#5291)
• notify_on_complete for background processes — get notified when long-running tasks finish (#5779)
• Docker env config — explicit container environment variables via docker_env config (#4738)
• Approval metadata included in terminal tool results (#5141)
• Workdir parameter sanitized in terminal tool across all backends (#5629)
• Detached process crash recovery state corrected (#6101)
• Agent-browser paths with spaces preserved — @Vasanthdev2004 (#6077)
• Portable base64 encoding for image reading on macOS — @CharlieKerfoot (#5657)

Browser

• Switch managed browser provider from Browserbase to Browser Use — @benbarclay (#5750)
• Firecrawl cloud browser provider — @alt-glitch (#5628)
• JS evaluation via browser_console expression parameter (#5303)
• Windows browser fixes (#5665)

MCP

• MCP OAuth 2.1 PKCE — full standards-compliant OAuth client support (#5420)
• OSV malware check for MCP extension packages (#5305)
• Prefer structuredContent over text + no_mcp sentinel (#5979)
• Unknown toolsets warning suppressed for MCP server names (#5279)

Web & Files

• .zip document support + auto-mount cache dirs into remote backends (#4846)
• Redact query secrets in send_message errors — @WAXLYY (#5650)

Delegation

• Credential pool sharing + workspace path hints for subagents (#5748)

ACP (VS Code / Zed / JetBrains)

• Aggregate ACP improvements — auth compat, protocol fixes, command ads, delegation, SSE events (#5292)

🧩 Skills Ecosystem

Skills System

• Skill config interface — skills can declare required config.yaml settings, prompted during setup, injected at load time (#5635)
• Plugin CLI registration system — plugins register their own CLI subcommands without touching main.py (#5295)
• Request-scoped API hooks with tool call correlation IDs for plugins (#5427)
• Session lifecycle hooks — on_session_finalize and on_session_reset for CLI + gateway (#6129)
• Prompt for required env vars during plugin install — @kshitijk4poor (#5470)
• Plugin name validation — reject names that resolve to plugins root (#5368)
• pre_llm_call plugin context moved to user message to preserve prompt cache (#5146)

New & Updated Skills

• popular-web-designs — 54 production website design systems (#5194)
• p5js creative coding — @SHL0MS (#5600)
• manim-video — mathematical and technical animations — @SHL0MS (#4930)
• llm-wiki — Karpathy's LLM Wiki skill (#5635)
• gitnexus-explorer — codebase indexing and knowledge serving (#5208)
• research-paper-writing — AI-Scientist & GPT-Researcher patterns — @SHL0MS (#5421)
• blogwatcher updated to JulienTant's fork (#5759)
• claude-code skill comprehensive rewrite v2.0 + v2.2 (#5155, #5158)
• Code verification skills consolidated into one (#4854)
• Manim CE reference docs expanded — geometry, animations, LaTeX — @leotrs (#5791)
• Manim-video references — design thinking, updaters, paper explainer, decorations, production quality — @SHL0MS (#5588, #5408)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Security Hardening

• Consolidated security — SSRF protections, timing attack mitigations, tar traversal prevention, credential leakage guards (#5944)
• Cross-session isolation + cron path traversal hardening (#5613)
• Workdir parameter sanitized in terminal tool across all backends (#5629)
• Approval 'once' session escalation prevented + cron delivery platform validation (#5280)
• Profile-scoped Google Workspace OAuth tokens protected (#4910)

Reliability

• Aggressive worktree and branch cleanup to prevent accumulation (#6134)
• O(n²) catastrophic backtracking in redact regex fixed — 100x improvement on large outputs (#4962)
• Runtime stability fixes across core, web, delegate, and browser tools (#4843)
• API server streaming fix + conversation history support (#5977)
• OpenViking API endpoint paths and response parsing corrected (#5078)

🐛 Notable Bug Fixes

• 9 community bugfixes salvaged — gateway, cron, deps, macOS launchd in one batch (#5288)
• Batch core bug fixes — model config, session reset, alias fallback, launchctl, delegation, atomic writes (#5630)
• Batch gateway/platform fixes — matrix E2EE, CJK input, Windows browser, Feishu reconnect + ACL (#5665)
• Stale test skips removed, regex backtracking, file search bug, and test flakiness (#4969)
• Nix flake — read version, regen uv.lock, add hermes_logging — @alt-glitch (#5651)
• Lowercase variable redaction regression tests (#5185)

🧪 Testing

• 57 failing CI tests repaired across 14 files (#5823)
• Test suite re-architecture + CI failure fixes — @alt-glitch (#5946)
• Codebase-wide lint cleanup — unused imports, dead code, and inefficient patterns (#5821)
• browser_close tool removed — auto-cleanup handles it (#5792)

📚 Documentation

• Comprehensive documentation audit — fix stale info, expand thin pages, add depth (#5393)
• 40+ discrepancies fixed between documentation and codebase (#5818)
• 13 features documented from last week's PRs (#5815)
• Guides section overhaul — fix existing + add 3 new tutorials (#5735)
• Salvaged 4 docs PRs — docker setup, post-update validation, local LLM guide, signal-cli install (#5727)
• Discord configuration reference (#5386)
• Community FAQ entries for common workflows and troubleshooting (#4797)
• WSL2 networking guide for local model servers (#5616)
• Honcho CLI reference + plugin CLI registration docs (#5308)
• Obsidian Headless setup for servers in llm-wiki (#5660)
• Hermes Mod visual skin editor added to skins page (#6095)

👥 Contributors

Core

• @teknium1 — 179 PRs

Top Community Contributors

• @SHL0MS (7 PRs) — p5js creative coding skill, manim-video skill + 5 reference expansions, research-paper-writing, Nous OAuth fix, manim font fix
• @alt-glitch (3 PRs) — Firecrawl cloud browser provider, test re-architecture + CI fixes, Nix flake fixes
• @benbarclay (2 PRs) — Browser Use managed provider switch, Nous portal base URL fix
• @CharlieKerfoot (2 PRs) — macOS portable base64 encoding, thread-safe PairingStore
• @WAXLYY (2 PRs) — send_message secret redaction, gateway media URL sanitization
• @MadKangYu (2 PRs) — Telegram log noise reduction, context compaction fix for temperature-restricted models

All Contributors

@alt-glitch, @austinpickett, @auspic7, @benbarclay, @CharlieKerfoot, @GratefulDave, @kshitijk4poor, @leotrs, @lumethegreat, @MadKangYu, @nericervin, @ryanautomated, @SHL0MS, @techguysimon, @tymrtn, @Vasanthdev2004, @WAXLYY, @xinbenlv

Full Changelog: v2026.4.3...v2026.4.8