YouTip

Skills are the procedural memory of Hermes Agent. Skills allow agents to create reusable workflows from experience and reuse them in future sessions. The Skills system is the core differentiating feature of Hermes Agent — it is the only agent with a built-in learning loop that can create skills, improve them through use, and retain knowledge across sessions. * * * ## What are Skills? Skills are a set of instructions and tools that define agent behavior, which can: * **Automate workflows** — Encapsulate common task patterns * **Learn across sessions** — Save and reuse successful solutions * **Share with the community** — Publish and install skills created by others * **Self-improve** — Continuously refine through use > For more information, refer to the Skills tutorial: [ * * * ## Built-in Skills Hermes comes with a series of built-in Skills that can be activated via slash commands: | Command | Function | | --- | --- | | `/help` | Display command help | | `/model` | Switch models | | `/tools` | List available tools | | `/skills` | Skill management | | `/personality` | Personality settings | | `/voice` | Voice mode | * * * ## Browse and Install Skills ### Search for skills # Search for skills hermes skills search kubernetes hermes skills search react --source skills-sh # Discover skills from documentation sites hermes skills search https://mintlify.com/docs --source well-known ### Install skills # Install from GitHub hermes skills install openai/skills/k8s # Install from official directory hermes skills install official/security/1password # Force install (use with caution) hermes skills install skills-sh/vercel-labs/json-render/json-render-react --force ### Use skills in chat Installed skills are automatically registered as slash commands: /gif-search funny cats /axolotl help me fine-tune Llama 3 on my dataset /github-pr-workflow create a PR for the auth refactor # Just entering the skill name loads it and lets the agent ask what you need: /excalidraw * * * ## Create Custom Skills Skills are stored in the `~/.hermes/skills/` directory. Each skill is a directory containing `skill.md`: ~/.hermes/skills/ └── my-custom-skill/ └── skill.md ### Skill Format --- name: my-custom-skill description: A useful skill description version: 1.0.0 author: your-username tags: [utility, example] --- # Skill Instructions You are a professional , proficient in ... ## Core Capabilities 1. Capability A 2. Capability B 3. Capability C ## Usage Examples ### Example 1 ### Example 2 ### Skill Metadata | Field | Description | Required | | --- | --- | --- | | name | Skill name (unique identifier) | Yes | | description | Skill description | Yes | | version | Semantic version | No | | author | Skill author | No | | tags | Array of category tags | No | * * * ## Skill Lifecycle ### Create Agents can create skills during sessions: ❯ Remember this workflow: every time I ask you to analyze Python code, use the following steps... Hermes will save this skill for future use. ### Improve Skills can be automatically improved through use. When the agent discovers a better method, it will: * Record successful patterns * Update skill instructions * Apply improvements in future sessions ### Recall Use FTS5 full-text search to recall skills across sessions: hermes ❯ Where is the Python analysis skill I created before? * * * ## Skills and AGENTS.md Skills work together with project-level `AGENTS.md`: * **AGENTS.md** — Project-level context and guidelines * **Skills** — Reusable workflows and patterns Both enhance agent capabilities through dynamic context injection. * * * ## Skill Command Reference | Command | Description | | --- | --- | | `hermes skills list` | List all installed skills | | `hermes skills search ` | Search for available skills | | `hermes skills install ` | Install a skill | | `hermes skills uninstall ` | Uninstall a skill | | `hermes skills create ` | Create a new skill | | `hermes skills update ` | Update a skill | > **Tip:** Skills are compatible with agentskills.io — skills are portable, shareable, and community-contributed.