Extending Hermes Agent with Custom Skills: A Practical Guide

Hermes Agent ships with a set of built-in capabilities, but its real power comes from skills — reusable packages that encapsulate specialized workflows.

What a Skill Contains

Every skill lives in its own directory with a standard structure:

skills/
  security-audit/
    SKILL.md          # Instructions the agent follows
    scripts/
      audit.sh        # Executable automation scripts
    templates/
      report.md       # Output templates
    references/
      patterns.md     # Reference material

The SKILL.md is the heart of the system. It tells the agent exactly when to use the skill, what steps to follow, and what pitfalls to avoid:

---
name: security-audit
description: "Audit a codebase for security vulnerabilities"
---

# Security Audit Skill
1. Scan for hardcoded secrets using scripts/audit.sh
2. Check dependency tree for known CVEs
3. Review auth middleware for common bypass patterns
4. Generate report using templates/report.md

Why Skills Matter

Without skills, every complex task requires the agent to figure out the approach from scratch. With skills, the agent loads proven workflows — battle-tested sequences that produce consistent results. This is especially powerful for onboarding (new team members get instant access to established workflows), compliance (audit steps are documented and repeatable), and sharing (skills can be published across projects).

Installing and Using Skills

Skills can come from local directories, git repos, or community registries:

hermes skill install ./skills/code-review
hermes skill install code-review --from registry
hermes skills list
hermes skill view security-audit

When a matching task comes in, Hermes automatically detects which skill to use based on the skill’s description and the task context. No manual activation needed.

Writing Your First Skill

1. Create skills/my-skill/SKILL.md with frontmatter (name, description, trigger phrases)
2. Add scripts, templates, and references as needed
3. Package with zip -r my-skill.zip my-skill/
4. Install with hermes skill install my-skill.zip

Skills bridge the gap between a general-purpose assistant and a specialized tool that knows your team’s exact workflows.