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Hermes Agent v0.4.0 (v2026.3.23)

Release Date: March 23, 2026

The platform expansion release — OpenAI-compatible API server, 6 new messaging adapters, 4 new inference providers, MCP server management with OAuth 2.1, @ context references, gateway prompt caching, streaming enabled by default, and a sweeping reliability pass with 200+ bug fixes.

✨ Highlights

  • OpenAI-compatible API server — Expose Hermes as an /v1/chat/completions endpoint with a new /api/jobs REST API for cron job management, hardened with input limits, field whitelists, SQLite-backed response persistence, and CORS origin protection (#1756, #2450, #2456, #2451, #2472)

  • 6 new messaging platform adapters — Signal, DingTalk, SMS (Twilio), Mattermost, Matrix, and Webhook adapters join Telegram, Discord, and WhatsApp. Gateway auto-reconnects failed platforms with exponential backoff (#2206, #1685, #1688, #1683, #2166, #2584)

  • @ context references — Claude Code-style @file and @url context injection with tab completions in the CLI (#2343, #2482)

  • 4 new inference providers — GitHub Copilot (OAuth + token validation), Alibaba Cloud / DashScope, Kilo Code, and OpenCode Zen/Go (#1924, #1879 by @mchzimm, #1673, #1666, #1650)

  • MCP server management CLI — hermes mcp commands for installing, configuring, and authenticating MCP servers with full OAuth 2.1 PKCE flow (#2465)

  • Gateway prompt caching — Cache AIAgent instances per session, preserving Anthropic prompt cache across turns for dramatic cost reduction on long conversations (#2282, #2284, #2361)

  • Context compression overhaul — Structured summaries with iterative updates, token-budget tail protection, configurable summary endpoint, and fallback model support (#2323, #1727, #2224)

  • Streaming enabled by default — CLI streaming on by default with proper spinner/tool progress display during streaming mode, plus extensive linebreak and concatenation fixes (#2340, #2161, #2258)

🖥️ CLI & User Experience

New Commands & Interactions

  • @ context completions — Tab-completable @file/@url references that inject file content or web pages into the conversation (#2482, #2343)
  • /statusbar — Toggle a persistent config bar showing model + provider info in the prompt (#2240, #1917)
  • /queue — Queue prompts for the agent without interrupting the current run (#2191, #2469)
  • /permission — Switch approval mode dynamically during a session (#2207)
  • /browser — Interactive browser sessions from the CLI (#2273, #1814)
  • /cost — Live pricing and usage tracking in gateway mode (#2180)
  • /approve and /deny — Replaced bare text approval in gateway with explicit commands (#2002)

Streaming & Display

  • Streaming enabled by default in CLI (#2340)
  • Show spinners and tool progress during streaming mode (#2161)
  • Show reasoning/thinking blocks when show_reasoning enabled (#2118)
  • Context pressure warnings for CLI and gateway (#2159)
  • Fix: streaming chunks concatenated without whitespace (#2258)
  • Fix: iteration boundary linebreak prevents stream concatenation (#2413)
  • Fix: defer streaming linebreak to prevent blank line stacking (#2473)
  • Fix: suppress spinner animation in non-TTY environments (#2216)
  • Fix: display provider and endpoint in API error messages (#2266)
  • Fix: resolve garbled ANSI escape codes in status printouts (#2448)
  • Fix: update gold ANSI color to true-color format (#2246)
  • Fix: normalize toolset labels and use skin colors in banner (#1912)

CLI Polish

  • Fix: prevent 'Press ENTER to continue...' on exit (#2555)
  • Fix: flush stdout during agent loop to prevent macOS display freeze (#1654)
  • Fix: show human-readable error when hermes setup hits permissions error (#2196)
  • Fix: /stop command crash + UnboundLocalError in streaming media delivery (#2463)
  • Fix: allow custom/local endpoints without API key (#2556)
  • Fix: Kitty keyboard protocol Shift+Enter for Ghostty/WezTerm (attempted + reverted due to prompt_toolkit crash) (#2345, #2349)

Configuration

  • ${ENV_VAR} substitution in config.yaml (#2684)
  • Real-time config reload — config.yaml changes apply without restart (#2210)
  • custom_models.yaml for user-managed model additions (#2214)
  • Priority-based context file selection + CLAUDE.md support (#2301)
  • Merge nested YAML sections instead of replacing on config update (#2213)
  • Fix: config.yaml provider key overrides env var silently (#2272)
  • Fix: log warning instead of silently swallowing config.yaml errors (#2683)
  • Fix: disabled toolsets re-enable themselves after hermes tools (#2268)
  • Fix: platform default toolsets silently override tool deselection (#2624)
  • Fix: honor bare YAML approvals.mode: off (#2620)
  • Fix: hermes update use .[all] extras with fallback (#1728)
  • Fix: hermes update prompt before resetting working tree on stash conflicts (#2390)
  • Fix: use git pull --rebase in update/install to avoid divergent branch error (#2274)
  • Fix: add zprofile fallback and create zshrc on fresh macOS installs (#2320)
  • Fix: remove ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL env var to avoid collisions (#1675)
  • Fix: don't ask IMAP password if already in keyring or env (#2212)
  • Fix: OpenCode Zen/Go show OpenRouter models instead of their own (#2277)

🏗️ Core Agent & Architecture

New Providers

  • GitHub Copilot — Full OAuth auth, API routing, token validation, and 400k context. (#1924, #1896, #1879 by @mchzimm, #2507)
  • Alibaba Cloud / DashScope — Full integration with DashScope v1 runtime, model dot preservation, and 401 auth fixes (#1673, #2332, #2459)
  • Kilo Code — First-class inference provider (#1666)
  • OpenCode Zen and OpenCode Go — New provider backends (#1650, #2393 by @0xbyt4)
  • NeuTTS — Local TTS provider backend with built-in setup flow, replacing the old optional skill (#1657, #1664)

Provider Improvements

  • Eager fallback to backup model on rate-limit errors (#1730)
  • Endpoint metadata for custom model context and pricing; query local servers for actual context window size (#1906, #2091 by @dusterbloom)
  • Context length detection overhaul — models.dev integration, provider-aware resolution, fuzzy matching for custom endpoints, /v1/props for llama.cpp (#2158, #2051, #2403)
  • Model catalog updates — gpt-5.4-mini, gpt-5.4-nano, healer-alpha, haiku-4.5, minimax-m2.7, claude 4.6 at 1M context (#1913, #1915, #1900, #2155, #2474)
  • Custom endpoint improvements — model.base_url in config.yaml, api_mode override for responses API, allow endpoints without API key, fail fast on missing keys (#2330, #1651, #2556, #2445, #1994, #1998)
  • Inject model and provider into system prompt (#1929)
  • Tie api_mode to provider config instead of env var (#1656)
  • Fix: prevent Anthropic token leaking to third-party anthropic_messages providers (#2389)
  • Fix: prevent Anthropic fallback from inheriting non-Anthropic base_url (#2388)
  • Fix: auxiliary_is_nous flag never resets — leaked Nous tags to other providers (#1713)
  • Fix: Anthropic tool_choice 'none' still allowed tool calls (#1714)
  • Fix: Mistral parser nested JSON fallback extraction (#2335)
  • Fix: MiniMax 401 auth resolved by defaulting to anthropic_messages (#2103)
  • Fix: case-insensitive model family matching (#2350)
  • Fix: ignore placeholder provider keys in activation checks (#2358)
  • Fix: Preserve Ollama model:tag colons in context length detection (#2149)
  • Fix: recognize Claude Code OAuth credentials in startup gate (#1663)
  • Fix: detect Claude Code version dynamically for OAuth user-agent (#1670)
  • Fix: OAuth flag stale after refresh/fallback (#1890)
  • Fix: auxiliary client skips expired Codex JWT (#2397)

Agent Loop

  • Gateway prompt caching — Cache AIAgent per session, keep assistant turns, fix session restore (#2282, #2284, #2361)
  • Context compression overhaul — Structured summaries, iterative updates, token-budget tail protection, configurable summary_base_url (#2323, #1727, #2224)
  • Pre-call sanitization and post-call tool guardrails (#1732)
  • Auto-recover from provider-rejected tool_choice by retrying without (#2174)
  • Background memory/skill review replaces inline nudges (#2235)
  • SOUL.md as primary agent identity instead of hardcoded default (#1922)
  • Fix: prevent silent tool result loss during context compression (#1993)
  • Fix: handle empty/null function arguments in tool call recovery (#2163)
  • Fix: handle API refusal responses gracefully instead of crashing (#2156)
  • Fix: prevent stuck agent loop on malformed tool calls (#2114)
  • Fix: return JSON parse error to model instead of dispatching with empty args (#2342)
  • Fix: consecutive assistant message merge drops content on mixed types (#1703)
  • Fix: message role alternation violations in JSON recovery and error handler (#1722)
  • Fix: compression_attempts resets each iteration — allowed unlimited compressions (#1723)
  • Fix: length_continue_retries never resets — later truncations got fewer retries (#1717)
  • Fix: compressor summary role violated consecutive-role constraint (#1720, #1743)
  • Fix: remove hardcoded gemini-3-flash-preview as default summary model (#2464)
  • Fix: correctly handle empty tool results (#2201)
  • Fix: crash on None entry in tool_calls list (#2209 by @0xbyt4, #2316)
  • Fix: per-thread persistent event loops in worker threads (#2214 by @jquesnelle)
  • Fix: prevent 'event loop already running' when async tools run in parallel (#2207)
  • Fix: strip ANSI at the source — clean terminal output before it reaches the model (#2115)
  • Fix: skip top-level cache_control on role:tool for OpenRouter (#2391)
  • Fix: delegate tool — save parent tool names before child construction mutates global (#2083 by @ygd58, #1894)
  • Fix: only strip last assistant message if empty string (#2326)

Session & Memory

  • Session search and management slash commands (#2198)
  • Auto session titles and .hermes.md project config (#1712)
  • Fix: concurrent memory writes silently drop entries — added file locking (#1726)
  • Fix: search all sources by default in session_search (#1892)
  • Fix: handle hyphenated FTS5 queries and preserve quoted literals (#1776)
  • Fix: skip corrupt lines in load_transcript instead of crashing (#1744)
  • Fix: normalize session keys to prevent case-sensitive duplicates (#2157)
  • Fix: prevent session_search crash when no sessions exist (#2194)
  • Fix: reset token counters on new session for accurate usage display (#2101 by @InB4DevOps)
  • Fix: prevent stale memory overwrites by flush agent (#2687)
  • Fix: remove synthetic error message injection, fix session resume after repeated failures (#2303)
  • Fix: quiet mode with --resume now passes conversation_history (#2357)
  • Fix: unify resume logic in batch mode (#2331)

Honcho Memory

  • Honcho config fixes and @ context reference integration (#2343)
  • Self-hosted / Docker configuration documentation (#2475)

📱 Messaging Platforms (Gateway)

New Platform Adapters

  • Signal Messenger — Full adapter with attachment handling, group message filtering, and Note to Self echo-back protection (#2206, #2400, #2297, #2156)
  • DingTalk — Adapter with gateway wiring and setup docs (#1685, #1690, #1692)
  • SMS (Twilio) (#1688)
  • Mattermost — With @-mention-only channel filter (#1683, #2443)
  • Matrix — With vision support and image caching (#1683, #2520)
  • Webhook — Platform adapter for external event triggers (#2166)
  • OpenAI-compatible API server — /v1/chat/completions endpoint with /api/jobs cron management (#1756, #2450, #2456)

Telegram Improvements

  • MarkdownV2 support — strikethrough, spoiler, blockquotes, escape parentheses/braces/backslashes/backticks (#2199, #2200 by @llbn, #2386)
  • Auto-detect HTML tags and use parse_mode=HTML (#1709)
  • Telegram group vision support + thread-based sessions (#2153)
  • Auto-reconnect polling after network interruption (#2517)
  • Aggregate split text messages before dispatching (#1674)
  • Fix: streaming config bridge, not-modified, flood control (#1782, #1783)
  • Fix: edited_message event crashes (#2074)
  • Fix: retry 409 polling conflicts before giving up (#2312)
  • Fix: topic delivery via platform:chat_id:thread_id format (#2455)

Discord Improvements

  • Document caching and text-file injection (#2503)
  • Persistent typing indicator for DMs (#2468)
  • Discord DM vision — inline images + attachment analysis (#2186)
  • Persist thread participation across gateway restarts (#1661)
  • Fix: gateway crash on non-ASCII guild names (#2302)
  • Fix: thread permission errors (#2073)
  • Fix: slash event routing in threads (#2460)
  • Fix: remove bugged followup messages + /ask command (#1836)
  • Fix: graceful WebSocket reconnection (#2127)
  • Fix: voice channel TTS when streaming enabled (#2322)

WhatsApp & Other Adapters

  • WhatsApp: outbound send_message routing (#1769 by @sai-samarth), LID format self-chat (#1667), reply_prefix config fix (#1923), restart on bridge child exit (#2334), image/bridge improvements (#2181)
  • Matrix: correct reply_to_message_id parameter (#1895), bare media types fix (#1736)
  • Mattermost: MIME types for media attachments (#2329)

Gateway Core

  • Auto-reconnect failed platforms with exponential backoff (#2584)
  • Notify users when session auto-resets (#2519)
  • Reply-to message context for out-of-session replies (#1662)
  • Ignore unauthorized DMs config option (#1919)
  • Fix: /reset in thread-mode resets global session instead of thread (#2254)
  • Fix: deliver MEDIA: files after streaming responses (#2382)
  • Fix: cap interrupt recursion depth to prevent resource exhaustion (#1659)
  • Fix: detect stopped processes and release stale locks on --replace (#2406, #1908)
  • Fix: PID-based wait with force-kill for gateway restart (#1902)
  • Fix: prevent --replace mode from killing the caller process (#2185)
  • Fix: /model shows active fallback model instead of config default (#1660)
  • Fix: /title command fails when session doesn't exist in SQLite yet (#2379 by @ten-jampa)
  • Fix: process /queue'd messages after agent completion (#2469)
  • Fix: strip orphaned tool_results + let /reset bypass running agent (#2180)
  • Fix: prevent agents from starting gateway outside systemd management (#2617)
  • Fix: prevent systemd restart storm on gateway connection failure (#2327)
  • Fix: include resolved node path in systemd unit (#1767 by @sai-samarth)
  • Fix: send error details to user in gateway outer exception handler (#1966)
  • Fix: improve error handling for 429 usage limits and 500 context overflow (#1839)
  • Fix: add all missing platform allowlist env vars to startup warning check (#2628)
  • Fix: media delivery fails for file paths containing spaces (#2621)
  • Fix: duplicate session-key collision in multi-platform gateway (#2171)
  • Fix: Matrix and Mattermost never report as connected (#1711)
  • Fix: PII redaction config never read — missing yaml import (#1701)
  • Fix: NameError on skill slash commands (#1697)
  • Fix: persist watcher metadata in checkpoint for crash recovery (#1706)
  • Fix: pass message_thread_id in send_image_file, send_document, send_video (#2339)
  • Fix: media-group aggregation on rapid successive photo messages (#2160)

🔧 Tool System

MCP Enhancements

  • MCP server management CLI + OAuth 2.1 PKCE auth (#2465)
  • Expose MCP servers as standalone toolsets (#1907)
  • Interactive MCP tool configuration in hermes tools (#1694)
  • Fix: MCP-OAuth port mismatch, path traversal, and shared handler state (#2552)
  • Fix: preserve MCP tool registrations across session resets (#2124)
  • Fix: concurrent file access crash + duplicate MCP registration (#2154)
  • Fix: normalise MCP schemas + expand session list columns (#2102)
  • Fix: tool_choice mcp_ prefix handling (#1775)

Web Tool Backends

  • Tavily as web search/extract/crawl backend (#1731)
  • Parallel as alternative web search/extract backend (#1696)
  • Configurable web backend — Firecrawl/BeautifulSoup/Playwright selection (#2256)
  • Fix: whitespace-only env vars bypass web backend detection (#2341)

New Tools

  • IMAP email reading and sending (#2173)
  • STT (speech-to-text) tool using Whisper API (#2072)
  • Route-aware pricing estimates (#1695)

Tool Improvements

  • TTS: base_url support for OpenAI TTS provider (#2064 by @hanai)
  • Vision: configurable timeout, tilde expansion in file paths, DM vision with multi-image and base64 fallback (#2480, #2585, #2211)
  • Browser: race condition fix in session creation (#1721), TypeError on unexpected LLM params (#1735)
  • File tools: strip ANSI escape codes from write_file and patch content (#2532), include pagination args in repeated search key (#1824 by @cutepawss), improve fuzzy matching accuracy + position calculation refactor (#2096, #1681)
  • Code execution: resource leak and double socket close fix (#2381)
  • Delegate: thread safety for concurrent subagent delegation (#1672), preserve parent agent's tool list after delegation (#1778)
  • Fix: make concurrent tool batching path-aware for file mutations (#1914)
  • Fix: chunk long messages in send_message_tool before platform dispatch (#1646)
  • Fix: add missing 'messaging' toolset (#1718)
  • Fix: prevent unavailable tool names from leaking into model schemas (#2072)
  • Fix: pass visited set by reference to prevent diamond dependency duplication (#2311)
  • Fix: Daytona sandbox lookup migrated from find_one to get/list (#2063 by @rovle)

🧩 Skills Ecosystem

Skills System Improvements

  • Agent-created skills — Caution-level findings allowed, dangerous skills ask instead of block (#1840, #2446)
  • --yes flag to bypass confirmation in /skills install and uninstall (#1647)
  • Disabled skills respected across banner, system prompt, and slash commands (#1897)
  • Fix: skills custom_tools import crash + sandbox file_tools integration (#2239)
  • Fix: agent-created skills with pip requirements crash on install (#2145)
  • Fix: race condition in Skills.__init__ when hub.yaml missing (#2242)
  • Fix: validate skill metadata before install and block duplicates (#2241)
  • Fix: skills hub inspect/resolve — 4 bugs in inspect, redirects, discovery, tap list (#2447)
  • Fix: agent-created skills keep working after session reset (#2121)

New Skills

  • OCR-and-documents — PDF/DOCX/XLS/PPTX/image OCR with optional GPU (#2236, #2461)
  • Huggingface-hub bundled skill (#1921)
  • Sherlock OSINT username search (#1671)
  • Meme-generation — Image generator with Pillow (#2344)
  • Bioinformatics gateway skill — index to 400+ bio skills (#2387)
  • Inference.sh skill (terminal-based) (#1686)
  • Base blockchain optional skill (#1643)
  • 3D-model-viewer optional skill (#2226)
  • FastMCP optional skill (#2113)
  • Hermes-agent-setup skill (#1905)

🔌 Plugin System Enhancements

  • TUI extension hooks — Build custom CLIs on top of Hermes (#2333)
  • hermes plugins install/remove/list commands (#2337)
  • Slash command registration for plugins (#2359)
  • session:end lifecycle event hook (#1725)
  • Fix: require opt-in for project plugin discovery (#2215)

🔒 Security & Reliability

Security

  • SSRF protection for vision_tools and web_tools (#2679)
  • Shell injection prevention in _expand_path via ~user path suffix (#2685)
  • Block untrusted browser-origin API server access (#2451)
  • Block sandbox backend creds from subprocess env (#1658)
  • Block @ references from reading secrets outside workspace (#2601 by @Gutslabs)
  • Malicious code pattern pre-exec scanner for terminal_tool (#2245)
  • Harden terminal safety and sandbox file writes (#1653)
  • PKCE verifier leak fix + OAuth refresh Content-Type (#1775)
  • Eliminate SQL string formatting in execute() calls (#2061 by @dusterbloom)
  • Harden jobs API — input limits, field whitelist, startup check (#2456)

Reliability

  • Thread locks on 4 SessionDB methods (#1704)
  • File locking for concurrent memory writes (#1726)
  • Handle OpenRouter errors gracefully (#2112)
  • Guard print() calls against OSError (#1668)
  • Safely handle non-string inputs in redacting formatter (#2392, #1700)
  • ACP: preserve session provider on model switch, persist sessions to disk (#2380, #2071)
  • API server: persist ResponseStore to SQLite across restarts (#2472)
  • Fix: fetch_nous_models always TypeError from positional args (#1699)
  • Fix: resolve merge conflict markers in cli.py breaking startup (#2347)
  • Fix: minisweagent_path.py missing from wheel (#2098 by @JiwaniZakir)

Cron System

  • [SILENT] response — cron agents can suppress delivery (#1833)
  • Scale missed-job grace window with schedule frequency (#2449)
  • Recover recent one-shot jobs (#1918)
  • Fix: normalize repeat<=0 to None — jobs deleted after first run when LLM passes -1 (#2612 by @Mibayy)
  • Fix: Matrix added to scheduler delivery platform_map (#2167 by @buntingszn)
  • Fix: naive ISO timestamps without timezone — jobs fire at wrong time (#1729)
  • Fix: get_due_jobs reads jobs.json twice — race condition (#1716)
  • Fix: silent jobs return empty response for delivery skip (#2442)
  • Fix: stop injecting cron outputs into gateway session history (#2313)
  • Fix: close abandoned coroutine when asyncio.run() raises RuntimeError (#2317)

🧪 Testing

  • Resolve all consistently failing tests (#2488)
  • Replace FakePath with monkeypatch for Python 3.12 compat (#2444)
  • Align Hermes setup and full-suite expectations (#1710)

📚 Documentation

  • Comprehensive docs update for recent features (#1693, #2183)
  • Alibaba Cloud and DingTalk setup guides (#1687, #1692)
  • Detailed skills documentation (#2244)
  • Honcho self-hosted / Docker configuration (#2475)
  • Context length detection FAQ and quickstart references (#2179)
  • Fix docs inconsistencies across reference and user guides (#1995)
  • Fix MCP install commands — use uv, not bare pip (#1909)
  • Replace ASCII diagrams with Mermaid/lists (#2402)
  • Gemini OAuth provider implementation plan (#2467)
  • Discord Server Members Intent marked as required (#2330)
  • Fix MDX build error in api-server.md (#1787)
  • Align venv path to match installer (#2114)
  • New skills added to hub index (#2281)

👥 Contributors

Core

  • @teknium1 (Teknium) — 280 PRs

Community Contributors

  • @mchzimm (to_the_max) — GitHub Copilot provider integration (#1879)
  • @jquesnelle (Jeffrey Quesnelle) — Per-thread persistent event loops fix (#2214)
  • @llbn (lbn) — Telegram MarkdownV2 strikethrough, spoiler, blockquotes, and escape fixes (#2199, #2200)
  • @dusterbloom — SQL injection prevention + local server context window querying (#2061, #2091)
  • @0xbyt4 — Anthropic tool_calls None guard + OpenCode-Go provider config fix (#2209, #2393)
  • @sai-samarth (Saisamarth) — WhatsApp send_message routing + systemd node path (#1769, #1767)
  • @Gutslabs (Guts) — Block @ references from reading secrets (#2601)
  • @Mibayy (Mibay) — Cron job repeat normalization (#2612)
  • @ten-jampa (Tenzin Jampa) — Gateway /title command fix (#2379)
  • @cutepawss (lila) — File tools search pagination fix (#1824)
  • @hanai (Hanai) — OpenAI TTS base_url support (#2064)
  • @rovle (Lovre Pešut) — Daytona sandbox API migration (#2063)
  • @buntingszn (bunting szn) — Matrix cron delivery support (#2167)
  • @InB4DevOps — Token counter reset on new session (#2101)
  • @JiwaniZakir (Zakir Jiwani) — Missing file in wheel fix (#2098)
  • @ygd58 (buray) — Delegate tool parent tool names fix (#2083)

Full Changelog: v2026.3.17...v2026.3.23

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