How to install and use Hermes skills? The answer is simple: skills are on-demand knowledge documents that are placed in ~/.hermes/skills/ and then called when needed. You can use hermes skills search to find skills, use hermes skills install to install skills, or enter the skill name directly into the conversation to let Hermes load automatically.
skills
Skills is not a regular prompt patch, but a repetitive task that is made into a reusable module. For example, GitHub workflows, research processes, deployment steps, and image processing instructions can all be written as skills. Hermes' official design is "progressive disclosure": it usually doesn't take up too many tokens, and it expands when needed, so it's cheaper than shoehorning a long list of instructions into a system prompt.
Common ways to install and call
- Search:
hermes skills search kubernetes - Installation:
hermes skills install openai/skills/k8s - Call: Directly enter the skill name such as
/github-pr-workflowor/excalidrawin the CLI or messaging platform - Update: Hermes can also create, modify, and delete skills himself with
skill_manage
If you do the same kind of work regularly, skills are valuable; If you're only chatting occasionally, skills may not be as important. The most practical judgment is whether you can turn a repetitive step into a reusable skill. If you can, you are suitable for skills.
Who is it not suitable for? If your tasks are completely different each time, the benefits of skills will be limited.
