Hermes Agent Bot Mode — What It Is and Why I Didn't Use It

What is Bot Mode?

Bot Mode is a desktop app UI feature that turns Hermes profiles into a roster of named "Bots." Each Bot is just a Hermes profile — isolated config, memory, skills, credentials, and chat history — but with a visual management layer.

Key capabilities:

• Bots tab in the left sidebar shows all profiles as a roster with avatars, latest-message preview, and timestamps
• Click a Bot to land in its canonical "Bot Chat" — a forever conversation that can't be accidentally forked by /new (it reroutes to /compact)
• Routines — recurring tasks (cron jobs) attached to each Bot, visible in a docked pane. Named [bot:<name>] <routine> and also appear in hermes cron list
• Groups — put 2-6 Bots in a shared room where they coordinate. Your message triggers up to 3 serial rounds of member turns. Bots @mention each other and escalate to you with @user
• Bot-to-bot messaging — @mention a Bot from any chat to hand off work and get a reply back
• Avatars — geometric faces, uploaded images, AI-generated portraits, or pixel pets from the petdex gallery
• Create on remote machines — with multiple connections, you can create a Bot on a different machine from the desktop UI

A Bot IS a profile. There is no new primitive. Everything visible in Bot Mode is also accessible via CLI: hermes -p <bot> chat, hermes cron list, etc.

How to Create a Bot

Via Desktop App (the intended way)

1. Open Hermes Desktop
2. Click the "Bots" tab in the left sidebar
3. Click "New Agent"
4. Fill in: Name, Title, Description
5. Optionally open "Advanced" for: clone from existing profile, model/provider pin, custom SOUL.md, per-skill/toolset/MCP enablement
6. Bot exists in seconds, introduces itself as first message of its Bot Chat

Via CLI (equivalent)

# Create a profile (this IS creating a Bot)
hermes profile create <name>

# Or clone from an existing one
hermes profile create <name> --clone-from coding

# Then chat with it
hermes -p <name> chat

# Set up a routine (cron job)
hermes cron create "0 9 * * *" --prompt "Summarize my inbox" --profile <name>

Why I Didn't Use It for Your Request

You asked for "a bot whose job is to create bots for different projects." I built a Python script (project-manager.py) and a registry (projects.json) instead. Here's why — and where the gap is:

What I built (project-manager.py)

• A Python script that creates Hermes profiles via shutil.copytree
• A JSON registry tracking project metadata (name, profile, repo, description)
• Integration with the session-finder to search across profiles
• CLI-only, no GUI, no avatars, no group coordination

What Bot Mode would have given you

• Visual roster of all project Bots with avatars and latest activity
• One-click access to any project's chat
• Routines pane showing each Bot's recurring tasks at a glance
• Group chats where project Bots can coordinate (e.g., "fichub Bot, talk to sysadmin Bot about deployment")
• Bot-to-bot messaging — hand work between specialists
• Remote creation — create a Bot on a different machine from the UI

The real answer

Bot Mode IS the "bot factory" you wanted. The desktop app's "New Agent" dialog is exactly the interface for creating project-specific Bots. I didn't know it existed because:

1. It's a desktop app feature — I was operating from CLI context where Bot Mode doesn't have a visual presence
2. It shipped recently — the docs describe it as "built into the desktop app and on by default," but the CLI skill I loaded didn't mention it
3. I defaulted to scripts — when you said "bot," I thought you meant a programmatic tool, not the desktop UI's Bot management layer

What you should actually do

If you have the Hermes desktop app:

1. Open it → Bots tab → New Agent
2. Create a Bot per project (fichub, dotfiles, hermes, etc.)
3. Each Bot gets its own SOUL.md with project-specific context
4. Add Routines for recurring tasks (deploy checks, CI monitoring, etc.)
5. Put related Bots in a group for coordination

If you're CLI-only (like this session):

• hermes profile create <name> IS creating a Bot
• hermes -p <name> chat IS talking to a Bot
• hermes cron list shows all Bot routines
• The project-manager.py script I built is a thin wrapper around the same underlying profile mechanism

The project-manager.py is still useful for

• Registry — tracking which profile maps to which project/repo
• Session finding — searching across all profiles for past work
• Batch creation — scripting multiple profile creations from the terminal
• Integration — the session-finder uses the registry to route searches

But the "bot creation" part is redundant with hermes profile create / the desktop app's New Agent dialog. I should have pointed you there first.

Summary

Bottom line: Bot Mode is the first-class way to manage project Bots in Hermes. The script I built complements it with CLI registry + session search, but shouldn't have been positioned as the primary "bot factory."