Hermes

On Hermes Agent a companion is a profile of its own: its persona is the profile’s SOUL.md, and clanka’s tools are the only toolset it has.

Install the plugin

You need hermes on your PATH and a clone of the clanka repository.

hermes/install.sh

The script:

• builds the Python extension and the clanka CLI,
• installs the plugin under ~/.hermes/plugins/clanka,
• installs the soul-writer skill under ~/.agents/skills/clanka-soul-writer, so any agent on the machine can write a soul the same way,
• runs clanka hermes refresh.

Make a profile for a companion

clanka hermes profile nova ~/.config/clanka/souls/<id>.md
hermes -p nova chat

The profile is that companion and nothing else. Hermes’s own memory, user profile, coding brief and agent-style guidance are off, so each turn carries the persona and the conversation instead of Hermes’s whole toolbox.

The root’s own providers, model aliases and the keys they read are copied into the profile, so /model <alias> works in its chat.

Run the command again after changing the persona to refresh the profile’s SOUL.md. A gateway that already serves the profile re-reads its config on its own.

To give a companion another toolset on one platform, add it next to clanka. clanka hermes profile keeps it on later runs:

hermes -p nova config set platform_toolsets.telegram '[clanka, image_gen]'

Let Nightshade write the soul

Nightshade is a Hermes agent that interviews you about the companion you want, writes its soul.md, lints it and makes the profile.

clanka hermes nightshade --model claude-opus-5-5
hermes -p nightshade chat

Without --model it runs on the Hermes default. A stronger model interviews better, and the session is short.

Update

Pull the repository and run the installer again:

git pull
hermes/install.sh

It ends with clanka hermes refresh, which gives every profile clanka made the new plugin and restarts the gateway.