Hermes Skills Hub

Hermes Skills Hub

The "Skills Hub" is primarily a local CLI subsystem (not the MCP iknowkungfu registry), with a docs web front-end at https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/skills that renders the same index. Know which one the user means (see below).

The correction that matters

When the user says "search the skills hub" / "Hermes skills hub" / "find a skill for X", they mean:

hermes skills search <term>

NOT the MCP iknowkungfu registry (mcp__iknowkungfu__search) — that is a separate small registry (9 skills by samuelgudi).

There IS a web front-end: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/skills renders the same hub index (filter-counts bar + built-in catalog by category). When the user says "the skills that are here" / "the Hermes Skill Hub" / "Nous portal / Nous Research documents", they often mean THAT page, not hermes skills browse (verified 2026-08-03: user pointed at the URL after I gave the CLI rundown). Page anatomy in references/docs-skills-page.md. Division of authority: CLI = what's installable, docs page = what's built-in/optional per source.

Command surface

hermes skills search <term>          # query skills.sh + clawhub + GitHub registries
hermes skills inspect <id>           # preview a skill (SKILL.md + files) before installing
hermes skills install <id>           # install into the ACTIVE profile (see targeting below)
hermes skills browse                 # paginated browse of all available skills
hermes skills list                   # installed skills
hermes skills check / update         # update installed hub skills
hermes skills audit                  # re-scan installed hub skills
hermes skills uninstall <id>

Search output columns: Name, Description, Source (skills.sh / clawhub / github), Trust (community), Identifier (e.g. skills-sh/steipete/clawdis/discord, clawhub/discord-communities). Use the Identifier with install / inspect.

Ambiguous short names

search / inspect / install by short name can hit "Multiple skills named X found" (e.g. comfyui, imagegen, peer-review, midjourney each have 2-3). Resolve with the full Identifier from the search table; clawhub entries often resolve with a clawhub/<short> prefix (e.g. clawhub/comfyui). Short-name inspect may also resolve to a different source than intended — confirm the Source column in the ambiguity table before installing.

Installing into a specific (non-active) profile

hermes skills install always targets the ACTIVE profile — HERMES_PROFILE=<name> does NOT retarget it (verified 2026-07-28: install with HERMES_PROFILE=finance landed in senna). To install into another profile, point HERMES_HOME at the profile dir:

HERMES_HOME=~/.hermes/profiles/<name> hermes skills install <id> -y

The skill lands at <profile>/skills/<category>/<skill>/ — verify with find, and check the same install didn't also pollute the active profile (clean up if it did). Note a hub skill may turn out to be already bundled in the target profile (e.g. axolotl ships under mlops/training/) — "already installed" is a pass, not a failure.

⚠️ Framework-specific caveat (install discipline)

Most hub results are community-authored for other agent frameworks — Clawdbot, OpenClaw, Claude Code, etc. They reference those frameworks' slash-command / API idioms, which do not match Hermes's native tool/action model (e.g. Hermes uses the hermes-discord toolset + discord_admin actions, not another bot's DSL).

Rule: always hermes skills inspect <id> before installing into a Hermes profile. If the skill's body assumes a non-Hermes framework, either skip it or adapt its steps to Hermes-native tools. Installing a framework-specific skill blindly can inject conflicting instructions into the profile's SOUL/context.

CLI quirks (learned 2026-08-03)

• Tables truncate. browse/search truncate Name and Identifier (~13 chars) regardless of terminal width; COLUMNS=240 helps but some names still end in …. Get full names from hermes skills search <term> rows, or inspect directly.
• awk parsing. Row shape is │ 1 │ name │ desc ... so with -F'│' the NAME is field $3 — field $2 is the row number. Strip trailing … before matching. (First attempt grabbed the numbers column — wrong column, wrong diff.)
• Per-source browse-header counts are misleading (page-count shaped: "611 skills loaded, page 1/611"). Authoritative per-source totals live on the docs page count bar at https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/skills — see references/docs-skills-page.md for observed values.
• --source official and --source well-known resolve to the SAME set — the 111 Nous first-party optional skills. Don't browse both expecting different content.
• Official identifier quirk: browse/search may print a shortened identifier (e.g. official/mlops/stable-diffusion) that inspect REJECTS. Use the full skill name in the identifier (official/mlops/stable-diffusion-image-generation). If inspect fails, search the full name and try the name spelled out.

When to use the hub vs built-in skills

• Built-in / profile-authored skills (e.g. discord-server-management) are purpose-built for Hermes — prefer those first.
• Use the hub to discover capabilities not already in your skill library (e.g. discord-communities for guild management, discord-channel-auditor for auto-maintaining an info channel).

References

• references/discord-skills-search.md — condensed results of hermes skills search discord (25 hits) with the relevant ones flagged and the framework caveat applied.
• references/docs-skills-page.md — anatomy of the docs web front-end (/docs/skills): counts bar, built-in catalog by category, plus framework-caveat evaluation notes for creative-writing and image-generation hub searches.
• references/hub-install-recipes.md — working install recipe for skills-sh/... identifiers (they don't fetch directly; resolve SKILL.md path via GitHub tree API, install the raw URL) + hub-skill vetting checklist before fleet rollout.