Hermes Update Review

Hermes Update Review

Investigate what a Hermes update actually added — especially topic digests ("what's new for creativity / video / image gen"). This recurs after every hermes update.

When to use

• User says "find what's new regarding X in the latest update" or "look at the recent commits for me"
• User wants to know if a capability (video gen, image model, skill) exists in their current install
• Auditing whether the local install matches the latest release

Steps

1. Local version & install state — hermes --version. Gives version (e.g. v0.20.0 (2026.8.3)), install directory, Python version, and Up to date status.
2. Checkout state — cd <installdir> && git describe --tags shows how far the checkout is past the nearest tag (e.g. v2026.7.20-5082-g03fa32c92). Git-installed Hermes updates pull latest main, which can be AHEAD of the latest tagged release — commits after the tag ARE in the user's install even though the release notes never mention them.
3. Release notes — fetch the GitHub releases list (https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases) AND the full tag page for the latest version (https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases/tag/v<version>). Tag pages carry the full curated notes; the releases-list page truncates them.
4. Keyword grep the local git log (authoritative — catches post-tag commits):

   git log --format="%h %ad %s" --date=short -5000 | grep -iE "video|flux|image|creative|media"
   

   Then git show <sha> --stat for the shape of a commit and git show <sha> for what it actually added (model lists, endpoints, caveats).
5. Cross-reference sources: official tag notes > local git log > community mirrors (hermes-ai.net is an UNOFFICIAL community guide — GitHub is authoritative). Patch tags (e.g. v2026.7.30) sometimes summarize a window and defer full notes to the next minor ("Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.20.0") — treat them as pointers, not the full story.

Pitfalls

• web_extract truncates long pages — the full text is saved to a cache file whose path is in the result footer (e.g. ~/.hermes/profiles/<profile>/cache/web/...). Grep that file with search_files instead of re-fetching or reading 100K+ chars.
• Release notes are not the whole story — notes end at the tag date; fresh feature commits on main land in the install but never make the notes. Always grep the local git log for the topic.
• The hermes-agent skill may be absent in some profiles (skill_view returns "not found"). The docs at https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs are the authoritative reference for Hermes itself.
• Release pages use emoji section headers (🎬 🎨 🏗️) — grep for topic keywords, not section names.

Session-specific detail

• references/creative-video-whatsnew-2026-08.md — worked example: v0.20.0 creative/video commit SHAs, FAL model families, portal caveats.