Hermes Maxi Manifesto

Adopted 2026-04-12. This document is the canonical statement of the Timmy Foundation's infrastructure philosophy.

The Decision

We are Hermes maxis. One harness. One truth. No intermediary gateway layers.

Hermes handles everything:

Cognitive core — reasoning, planning, tool use
Channels — Telegram, Discord, Nostr, Matrix (direct, not via gateway)
Dispatch — task routing, agent coordination, swarm management
Memory — MemPalace, sovereign SQLite+FTS5 store, trajectory export
Cron — heartbeat, morning reports, nightly retros
Health — process monitoring, fleet status, self-healing

What This Replaces

OpenClaw was evaluated as a gateway layer (March–April 2026). The assessment:

Capability	OpenClaw	Hermes Native
Multi-channel comms	Built-in	Direct integration per channel
Persistent memory	SQLite (basic)	MemPalace + FTS5 + trajectory export
Cron/scheduling	Native cron	Huey task queue + launchd
Multi-agent sessions	Session routing	Wizard fleet + dispatch router
Procedural memory	None	Sovereign Memory Store
Model sovereignty	Requires external provider	Ollama local-first
Identity	Configurable persona	SOUL.md + Bitcoin inscription

The governance concern (founder joined OpenAI, Feb 2026) sealed the decision, but the technical case was already clear: OpenClaw adds a layer without adding capability that Hermes doesn't already have or can't build natively.

The Principle

Every external dependency is temporary falsework. If it can be built locally, it must be built locally. The target is a $0 cloud bill with full operational capability.

This applies to:

Agent harness — Hermes, not OpenClaw/Claude Code/Cursor
Inference — Ollama + local models, not cloud APIs
Data — SQLite + FTS5, not managed databases
Hosting — Hermes VPS + Mac M3 Max, not cloud platforms
Identity — Bitcoin inscription + SOUL.md, not OAuth providers

Exceptions

Cloud services are permitted as temporary scaffolding when:

The local alternative doesn't exist yet
There's a concrete plan (with a Gitea issue) to bring it local
The dependency is isolated and can be swapped without architectural changes

Every cloud dependency must have a [FALSEWORK] label in the issue tracker.

Enforcement

BANNED_PROVIDERS.md lists permanently banned providers (Anthropic)
Pre-commit hooks scan for banned provider references
The Swarm Governor enforces PR discipline
The Conflict Detector catches sibling collisions
All of these are stdlib-only Python with zero external dependencies

History

2026-03-28: OpenClaw evaluation spike filed (timmy-home #19)
2026-03-28: OpenClaw Bootstrap epic created (timmy-config #51–#63)
2026-03-28: Governance concern flagged (founder → OpenAI)
2026-04-09: Anthropic banned (timmy-config PR #440)
2026-04-12: OpenClaw purged — Hermes maxi directive adopted
- timmy-config PR #487 (7 files, merged)
- timmy-home PR #595 (3 files, merged)
- the-nexus PRs #1278, #1279 (merged)
- 2 issues closed, 27 historical issues preserved

"The clean pattern is to separate identity, routing, live task state, durable memory, reusable procedure, and artifact truth. Hermes does all six."

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