Creating skills for Hermes Agent

Hermes is a personal AI agent that gets better at your workflows over time — and it's configured with markdown skill files, the same shape AI Project Scoper hands you. This guide shows how to turn your scaffold into a working Hermes skill, step by step.

What a "skill" is in Hermes

A skill is a markdown file (SKILL.md) with YAML frontmatter and a few structured sections — no code required. The agent loads a skill when the task matches its description, then follows the steps in the body. Hermes can also auto-generate a skill after it completes a complex task (5+ tool calls), capturing the procedure so it's faster next time.

Same markdown shape as the scaffold AI Project Scoper gives you — so your project files are a strong starting point.

Where skills live

• ~/.hermes/skills/<category>/<skill-name>/SKILL.md — often nested under a category like devops/ or research/.
• SKILL.md is required at the leaf; everything else is optional:
  • references/ — long tables or vendor docs
  • templates/ — output skeletons
  • scripts/ — deterministic helpers
  • assets/ — static files the agent shouldn't re-fetch

The two memory files (separate from skills)

Hermes keeps a small, always-loaded fact layer apart from skills:

• MEMORY.md — stable facts the agent should know every session.
• USER.md — your profile / preferences.

Skills load on demand; these stay in the prompt. Put durable project facts in MEMORY.md.

Minimal SKILL.md

---
name: deploy-checklist
description: Use when shipping a release to staging or production.
---

## When to Use
Shipping a build to staging or prod.

## Quick Reference
- Staging URL: <fill in>
- Prod URL: <fill in>

## Procedure
1. Run the test suite; stop if anything fails.
2. Deploy to staging and smoke-test the happy path.
3. Promote to prod; confirm the health check is green.

## Pitfalls
- Never deploy with a red test run.

## Verification
- Prod health check returns 200 and the version matches the release.

Hermes's standard sections are When to Use, Quick Reference, Procedure, Pitfalls, Verification.

From your scaffold to a skill

1. Pick the one workflow you want the agent to own.
2. Make ~/.hermes/skills/<category>/<name>/SKILL.md.
3. Fill the five sections from your project's brief and docs/ files.
4. Move durable project facts into MEMORY.md so they're always available.
5. Let Hermes run it; refine the skill as it learns.

Tips

• One skill = one workflow. Lean on MEMORY.md for facts, skills for procedures.
• Because Hermes self-generates skills, you can also let it draft one, then edit the SKILL.md it produces.