Ccc Hermes

$ccc-hermes — Hermes ↔ Claude Code Bridge

Turns Claude Code into a Hermes frontend and Hermes into a Claude Code extension. Messages flow both ways: a Telegram DM can wake a Claude Code session, and a long-running Opus task can stream progress back to your Discord. Only loads if the OpenClaw Gateway (Hermes) is running locally on port 18789.

What it does

Two-way MCP bridge between Claude Code (single-session deep reasoning) and Hermes / OpenClaw Gateway (multi-channel, multi-agent fleet across Discord, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, BlueBubbles, WebChat). Inbound: Hermes routes a channel message to a Claude Code session and returns the reply to the originating channel. Outbound: Claude Code calls Hermes-exposed actions (send-to-Discord, query-agent, dispatch-paperclip-task) as MCP tools. Includes auto-escalation — when a Hermes agent (typically GPT-5.5 or Sonnet) hits a hard problem, it forwards the task to Claude Code Opus and streams the answer back.

Activation triggers

• "connect to hermes" / "bridge to openclaw"
• "I want to use my Telegram with Claude Code"
• "send progress to my Discord while you build"
• "let Hermes hand off hard tasks to me"
• "wire up the gateway"

Detection logic

Always probe before activating. Bail gracefully if Hermes is not present — this skill is opt-in by environment, not by config.

# Single non-blocking probe (2s timeout)
curl -fsS --max-time 2 http://localhost:18789/health 2>/dev/null \
  | jq -e '.status == "ok"' >/dev/null && echo "hermes:up" || echo "hermes:down"

Decision table:

Never restart the gateway from this skill. Restarts are Kevin-approved only (see ~/clawd/CLAUDE.md Critical Rules).

Architecture

                       ┌──────────────────────┐
   Discord  ─────┐     │                      │     ┌─── Claude Code
   Slack    ─────┤     │   Hermes Gateway     │     │    (Opus 5)
   Telegram ─────┼─────│   :18789             │─────┤
   WhatsApp ─────┤     │                      │     │    .mcp.json
   WebChat  ─────┘     │   • 36 agents        │     │    └── ccc-hermes
                       │   • channel router   │           bridge MCP
                       │   • model routing    │
                       │   • Paperclip queue  │
                       └──────────┬───────────┘
                                  │
                          MCP bridge (stdio)
                                  │
                       ┌──────────▼───────────┐
                       │ Auto-escalator       │
                       │ score(task) > 0.7?   │
                       │   → Claude Code Opus │
                       │ else                 │
                       │   → Hermes agent     │
                       └──────────────────────┘

Inbound flow: User → Discord channel → Hermes binds channel→agent → MCP forwards to Claude Code session → reply → Hermes posts to Discord.

Outbound flow: Claude Code calls hermes.send(channel, msg) → Hermes posts → user sees update in their channel.

Setup

Prerequisites

• OpenClaw installed globally: npm i -g openclaw
• Gateway running: openclaw gateway status shows green
• Hermes secret set: op item get "Hermes Bridge Token" --vault Alfred --field token (or HERMES_BRIDGE_TOKEN env var)

Wire up the MCP server

Add to your project .mcp.json (or ~/.claude/mcp.json for user-scope):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hermes-bridge": {
      "command": "openclaw",
      "args": ["bridge", "--mode", "mcp", "--port", "18789"],
      "env": {
        "HERMES_BRIDGE_TOKEN": "${HERMES_BRIDGE_TOKEN}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Reload Claude Code. The bridge surfaces these MCP tools: hermes.send, hermes.list_channels, hermes.escalate, hermes.subscribe.

Verify

openclaw gateway status              # gateway green
claude mcp list | grep hermes-bridge # MCP connected

Usage examples

1. Stream progress to Discord while Claude Code builds

"While you scaffold the Stripe integration, send progress updates to my #builds Discord channel."

Bridge calls hermes.send(channel="#builds", msg=...) after each completed step. Channel is bound to the Alfred agent in openclaw.json, but Claude Code's posts are tagged via=ccc-hermes.

2. Telegram → Claude Code Opus for deep reasoning

User DMs the Hermes Telegram bot: "Refactor the auth flow in apps/api/src/auth.ts to use JWT cookies." Hermes scores complexity (multi-file, security boundary, irreversible) → routes to Claude Code Opus via the bridge → Opus replies → Hermes posts back to Telegram.

3. Auto-escalation: GPT-5.5 → Claude Code

Hermes worker (Tank, Sentinel, Codex) hits a hard architectural decision. It calls hermes.escalate({ task, context, complexity_score }). The bridge wakes a Claude Code session, runs the task on Opus, and streams the resolution back to the originating channel.

Auto-escalation logic

Complexity scoring (0.0–1.0). Anything ≥ 0.7 escalates to Claude Code Opus by default.

Override per-task via hermes.escalate({ force: "opus" | "hermes" }).

Tools used

• Bash — curl health probe, openclaw gateway status, op vault reads
• Read — inspect .mcp.json, ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (read-only — never edit)
• Edit/Write — only against project .mcp.json (never ~/.openclaw/*)
• MCP tools (when bridge active) — hermes.send, hermes.list_channels, hermes.escalate, hermes.subscribe

When NOT to use

• Single-machine workflow with no chat surface — adds latency for nothing
• Cloud Claude Code on a remote box — Hermes is local-loopback only
• Cross-org collaboration — Hermes is a personal AI platform, not multi-tenant
• High-frequency event streams (>10 req/sec) — use Paperclip task queue instead

Limitations

• Loopback only: Hermes binds 127.0.0.1:18789. To reach it from elsewhere on your network, terminate TLS via the Caddy reverse proxy (see ~/clawd/tools/caddy/Caddyfile). Never expose :18789 publicly.
• Session correlation: Each Claude Code session needs a unique ID propagated via the X-CC-Session header. The bridge generates one if absent, but cross-session memory requires the same ID.
• Auth model: Single shared bridge token. No per-user scoping yet — anyone with the token has full agent access.
• Anthropic MAX disabled-billing edge case: If the MAX account is disabled_billing, escalations to Opus fall back per ClaudeSwap chains. The bridge surfaces a degraded status but continues.
• Restart blast radius: Restarting the gateway drops all in-flight bridge calls. Do not restart without Kevin's explicit approval.
• Codex sandbox: Codex exec is read-only by default. If Hermes routes a write task to a Codex worker, either pass -s workspace-write (inside an isolated worktree only) or escalate to Claude Code. There is no third-party fallback — Commander routes to Anthropic models and the Codex CLI only.

See ~/clawd/CLAUDE.md and ~/clawd/shared/INTER-AGENT-PROTOCOL.md for the full Hermes architecture and channel-to-agent binding table.

⚙️ Fable contract: plan before build · verifier ≠ worker · prove before alarm · loops need gates · leave durable state — rules/fable-method.md