Hermes Bot Mode Is Here — Your AI Agents Just Got a Promotion

Hey everyone! Big news from Nous Research — Bot Mode is now officially bundled and default-on in Hermes Desktop v0.20.3. If you’ve been running Hermes Agent, this is the update you’ve been waiting for.

What Is Bot Mode?

Bot Mode transforms your isolated Hermes profiles into a roster of named, specialized AI bots — each with its own role, model, memory, skills, avatar, and even a personality. Instead of juggling a single-agent session list, you now get a full team of persistent bots that can collaborate, delegate, and hand off work to each other.

Think of it as building your own AI workforce. Each bot is just a Hermes profile under the hood (~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/) — isolated config, memory, skills, credentials, and chat history. No new storage layer, no proprietary magic. Just clean, composable primitives.

Key Features You Need to Know

One Bot = One Profile Every bot is a full Hermes profile with its own model pin, enabled skills, custom SOUL.md persona file, and routine schedules. Different bots can even run on different models side by side.

Bot-to-Bot Communication Bots pass work to each other via @mentions through a persistent Agent Inbox. Just type @researcher take a look at this and the handoff happens automatically via CLI.

** Group Chats (2–6 Bots)** This is where it gets wild. You can pull 2–6 bots into a shared group chat where they coordinate, discuss, and divide tasks among themselves. Your message triggers up to three serial rounds of member turns — mentioned bots respond, or everyone takes a turn if no one is mentioned. Each bot replies briefly or passes, and the room settles when a full round stays silent.

** Customization** Each bot gets cute geometric avatars (7 shapes × 10 colors with blinking eyes while working), plus options for uploaded images or AI-generated portraits. Right-click any bot to edit its profile, title, description, skills, or SOUL.md on the fly.

** Groups & Organization** Organize your roster into labeled groups that sync across machines. Ungrouped bots stay on top; groups follow alphabetically.

** Hidden Bots** Hide bots you don’t use — they stay out of the roster and Active-now strip but still resolve @mentions and run routines. An eye toggle reveals them when needed.

How to Get Started

  1. Update to Hermes Desktop v0.20.3 (or later)
  2. Bot Mode is on by default — no install needed
  3. Find it as a Bots tab next to Sessions in the left sidebar
  4. Hit New Agent in the roster — name, title, description, and your bot exists in seconds
  5. Advanced options let you clone from existing profiles, pin models, write custom SOUL.md, and toggle skills
  6. Right-click any bot to Edit, Duplicate, or Delete — full clone copies config, skills, SOUL, memory, and appearance

Real-World Examples

People are already doing crazy stuff with this:

  • One user split a game project across Qwen, Kimi, and GLM bots — Qwen assigned tasks, Kimi suggested roles, and GLM reviewed documentation before confirming with the user
  • Another tester ran a “slightly evil” experiment: three intentionally incomplete agents — one could research but couldn’t build, one could build but couldn’t approve its own work, one could test and challenge but couldn’t fix it — and watched them naturally hand off work when they hit their limits
  • Users report watching teams of bots split up large projects based entirely on their own experience and specialties with little human input

The Bottom Line

Bot Mode is MIT-licensed, costs nothing, and requires no cloud infrastructure. It started as a one-day public beta plugin by co-founder Teknium and is now fully baked into the main app.

This isn’t just a UI update — it’s a paradigm shift. Instead of one AI assistant, you now manage a team of specialized agents that can work together, delegate, and self-organize.

Get it now: Update Hermes Desktop to v0.20.3 and look for the Bots tab. The standalone repo is archived — development continues in-tree at apps/desktop/src/plugins/hermes-bots/.

Drop your experiences and experiments in the comments — I want to see what crazy bot teams you’re building!