getting started
A skill is a document an agent can load. A profile is the agent itself: identity, skills, scheduled jobs, and tool connections, pinned to a git ref.
Skill hubs such as ClawHub, skills.sh, and the Hermes Skills Hub list SKILL.md files. This directory lists whole Hermes bots. Come here to install someone, not a paragraph.
Installing one takes a single command.
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
Profiles are code. A profile can schedule jobs that run unattended, spawn local processes through MCP servers, and execute shell hooks on every turn. Nothing listed here is vetted, scanned for behaviour, or sandboxed. Every listing links to its source at the exact ref it describes. Read it.
01 INSTALL HERMES
You need the Hermes CLI before any of this works. Confirm you have it and check which version, since profiles can declare a minimum.
hermes --version02 INSTALL A PROFILE
Resolve a listing by slug. The CLI prints the privileged summary, asks you to confirm, then runs the pinned install.
npx profiles-for-bots install <slug>That command runs the underlying Hermes install at an exact git ref. Pinning means what you install today is byte-for-byte what the listing described, even if the author changes the repository tomorrow.
hermes profile install github.com/owner/repo#v0.1.0Hermes prints the manifest and asks you to confirm before writing anything. Read that preview. It is your last checkpoint before someone else's code runs on your machine.
03 SUPPLY ITS ENVIRONMENT
Most profiles need credentials. Every listing shows exactly which variables under env in its trust panel. Put them in the profile's own .env, which is yours and never travels with the distribution.
echo 'OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...' >> ~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/.env04 RUN IT
hermes profile use <name>
hermes chatInspect what you installed at any time with hermes profile info <name>, which prints the distribution manifest, its version, and where it came from.
05 UPDATE SAFELY
Updating re-pulls the distribution and replaces only the files the distribution owns: SOUL.md, skills/, cron/, mcp.json. Your config.yaml edits are preserved unless you pass --force-config.
hermes profile update <name>06 WHAT IS NEVER TOUCHED
Your data stays yours across install and update. Hermes never overwrites .env, auth.json, memories/, sessions/, logs/, state.db, workspace/, or anything under local/.