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Hermes command cheat sheet

The commands you actually use, on one page. Reviewed Nov 2, 2026 against the official Hermes Agent docs.

Replace anything in <angle brackets> with your own value. [Square brackets] mean optional. Type hermes in a terminal and / or ! in a chat.

Cheat sheet results

1 of 108 commands

  • hermes chat --toolsets "web,terminal,skills"

    Turn on specific toolsets for one run. Group: Tools, MCP and plugins

Keyboard shortcuts

Keys for the chat prompt.

  • Alt+Enter, Ctrl+J or Shift+Enter

    New line. Shift+Enter works only in some terminals. On Windows Terminal, use Ctrl+J.

  • Ctrl+C

    Clear what you typed, or stop the agent if the prompt is empty

  • Tab

    Accept a suggestion or complete a slash command

Key files and folders

Where Hermes keeps its settings, keys and data.

  • ~/.hermes/

    Hermes home and default profile. Set HERMES_HOME to use another folder.

  • ~/.hermes/config.yaml

    Main settings (no secrets): model, terminal backend, memory, skills, display, MCP servers

  • ~/.hermes/.env

    API keys and other secrets

  • ~/.hermes/auth.json

    OAuth credentials (e.g. Nous Portal)

  • ~/.hermes/SOUL.md

    The agent's identity, loaded first in the system prompt

  • ~/.hermes/memories/MEMORY.md

    The agent's own notes, capped at 2,200 characters by default

  • ~/.hermes/memories/USER.md

    Your user profile, capped at 1,375 characters by default

  • ~/.hermes/skills/<category>/<skill>/SKILL.md

    Installed and agent-created skills

  • ~/.hermes/state.db

    Session history and its search index, for the CLI, TUI and messaging apps

  • ~/.hermes/sessions/

    Gateway session files and /save snapshots (sessions/saved/)

  • ~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json

    Scheduled job definitions; run output goes to ~/.hermes/cron/output/

  • ~/.hermes/checkpoints/

    File snapshots used by /rollback, when checkpoints are on

  • ~/.hermes/plugins/

    Installed plugins

  • ~/.hermes/logs/

    Logs such as agent.log, errors.log and gateway.log, with secrets redacted

  • ~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/

    A named profile's own config, .env, memories, skills, sessions and cron

  • ~/.hermes/hermes-agent/

    Hermes code, from the Linux/macOS install script

  • ~/.local/bin/hermes

    The hermes command from the Linux/macOS install script. Profile aliases live here too.

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\

    Windows script install: your data, with the code in hermes-agent\ and the CLI in bin\

  • <repo>/.hermes/skills/

    Project skills. Run hermes skills trust in the project before they load.

Flags change between releases. Run hermes <command> --help to see the options in your version.

Primary sources