Building & Distributing Custom Hermes AI Agents with Profile Distributions

Description and use

Create a secure, version‑controlled Hermes agent repository with SOUL.md, skills, and distribution.yaml, publish it to GitHub, and let others install it via the Hermes CLI without leaking secrets.

Problem

Developers struggle to share Hermes AI agents without leaking private keys, session logs, or credentials, and without sending raw YAML or large prompts.

Outcome

Agents can be shared securely and efficiently as isolated, version‑controlled repositories, keeping runtime memory and credentials private.

Workflow

• Create a profile directory with hermes profile create my-first-agent
• Draft SOUL.md to define persona and directives
• Add skills in the skills/ folder
• Create distribution.yaml with metadata and version
• Add a .gitignore to exclude runtime data
• Initialize a Git repo, commit, tag v1.0.0, and push to GitHub
• Publish the profile so others can install via hermes profile install github.com/your-username/my-first-agent --alias paper-agent
• Invoke the agent with hermes --profile paper-agent "Summarize the latest arXiv paper"

Evidence

Stop sending unorganized raw YAML files or copy-pasting massive system prompts into chat boxes.

Source

Never commit runtime databases, active chat sessions, or credential files.

Source

Hermes natively resolves distributions via standard Git remotes (GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, or self-hosted remotes).

Source