Hermes Config Audit Gotchas

Hermes Config Audit Gotchas

Use when reviewing Hermes configuration after hermes config migrate, hermes setup, or when a prompt mentions new skill settings such as wiki.path.

What this skill is for

Hermes can prompt for skill-defined config keys during migration, but the displayed logical key (for example wiki.path) is not always the exact stored path in config, and migrated defaults may point at directories that do not exist.

Verified workflow

1. Load relevant config/documentation skills if available (hermes-agent, any skill declaring the config key).
2. Check live config with:
   • hermes config show
   • hermes config check
   • hermes config path
   • hermes config env-path
3. Do not assume hermes config list or hermes config get exist.
   • In the audited build, both are invalid subcommands.
4. Confirm the storage shape if needed by inspecting the config file with normal file tools.
5. Verify the configured filesystem path actually exists before recommending it.
6. If the prompted key is a skill key, remember Hermes stores it under skills.config.* even if the prompt shows only the logical key.

Key findings

• wiki.path from llm-wiki is stored as skills.config.wiki.path.
• hermes config show is the authoritative read command in the audited build.
• hermes config list and hermes config get are not supported in the audited build.
• A migrated default like ~/wiki can be stale. Verify the real wiki root before accepting it.
• On the audited machine, /home/vamsee/wiki was missing while /mnt/local-analysis/workspace-hub/knowledge/wikis existed and was the better candidate for the workspace-hub multi-wiki layout.

Recommended review pattern

For each prompted config item:

1. Identify which skill declared it.
2. Confirm how Hermes stores it in config.
3. Check whether the current configured value exists and is meaningful.
4. Propose the corrected hermes config set ... command using the stored key path, not just the displayed logical key.

Example

Prompted item:

• wiki.path — Path to the LLM Wiki knowledge base directory

Recommended command form:

hermes config set skills.config.wiki.path /mnt/local-analysis/workspace-hub/knowledge/wikis

Pitfalls

• Do not trust migrated defaults without a filesystem existence check.
• Do not rely on unsupported subcommands like list or get.
• Do not confuse the displayed logical key with the stored YAML key path.