Agent skill · nousresearch
hermes-agent-skill-authoring
Author in-repo SKILL.md files: frontmatter and structure.
What it needs
About 8k tokens when loaded.
What this skill does
Authoring Hermes-Agent Skills (in-repo) Overview There are two places a SKILL.md can live: 1. User-local: ~/.hermes/skills/<maybe-category>/<name>/SKILL.md — personal, not shared. Created via skillmanage(action='create'). 2. In-repo (this skill is about this case): skills/<category>/<name>/SKILL.md or optional-skills/<category>/<name>/SKILL.md inside the hermes-agent repo — committed, shipped with the package. Use writefile + git add. skillmanage(action='create') does NOT target this tree. In-repo skills must meet the repo's hardline authoring standards (see AGENTS.md, "Skill authoring standards (HARDLINE)" — that section is the source of truth; this skill is the operational walkthrough). Reviewers reject PRs that violate them, so meeting them up front is cheaper than a salvage pass later. When to Use User asks you to add a skill "in this branch / repo / commit" You're committing a reusable workflow that should ship with hermes-agent You're editing an existing skill under skills/ or optional-skills/ (use patch for small edits, writefile for rewrites; skillmanage still works for patch on in-repo skills, but not for create) Don't use for: personal skills in ~/.hermes/skills/ (just use skillmanage) Decide the Tier First: Bundled vs Optional Bundled (skills/<category>/) — daily-driver behavior, broadly useful across many user types, low footprint. Hard bar: you can say "a user will load this in 5+ sessions per month" with a straight face. Optional (optional-skills/<category>/) — niche, vertical-specific (blockchain, gaming, finance, one app), recurring-job/task skills, or anything heavy. Installed via hermes skills install official/<category>/<skill>. When in doubt, optional. Promoting later is easy; demoting is churn. "Would be useful to anyone who ever needs this" is an optional-tier argument, not a bundled one. Pick the category by what the tool IS, not what it feels like (an AI-agent CLI goes in autonomous-ai-agents/ even if it "feels productivity"). …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills nousresearch/hermes-agent-skill-authoring--b335d6