Hermes

AO resolves your local hermes executable and reuses its authentication.

ao agent ls --refresh
ao spawn --project my-app --name hermes-task --agent hermes --mode chat

Hermes can run as its native Terminal UI or through its native ACP interface (hermes acp) in structured Chat. Chat sessions advertise Hermes' own model catalog and edit-approval modes, and AO retains the provider conversation identity for continuity.

AO launches Hermes sessions under Hermes' tool session source so worker sessions stay out of your personal Hermes session lists, and delivers standing instructions through HERMES_EPHEMERAL_SYSTEM_PROMPT so they are applied at inference time without being persisted into the transcript.

Terminal sessions have no activity signals: Hermes has no workspace-local hook surface, so AO installs no lifecycle hooks for it. Approval behavior in a terminal session follows Hermes' own configuration, with bypass permissions mapping to --yolo. Structured Chat sessions report activity, approvals, and diffs natively over ACP.

Hermes is not a shipped reviewer harness, and TUI-to-Chat or Chat-to-TUI handoff is not supported.