# Hermes Agent sessions: search and resume past work > How Hermes stores every conversation, how to name, resume, export and prune sessions, and how the agent searches its own history. Canonical: https://hermeswatcher.com/learn/sessions-and-session-search Section: Learn ยท Memory & context Last reviewed: Oct 20, 2026 Basis: Explained from the official Hermes Agent docs and repository (Nous Research). Steps follow the linked official sources. ## Every conversation is a session Whether you chat in the terminal, through Telegram, from a cron job or via the API server, Hermes records the conversation as a session in a SQLite database at ~/.hermes/state.db. Each session keeps its ID, the platform it came from, the model used, a snapshot of the system prompt, the full message history, token counts, timestamps and a parent session ID. That last field matters later, because it is how Hermes links a conversation to its continuation after compression. The source tag tells you where a session came from: cli, telegram, discord, slack, cron, api-server and many more. A few internal kinds (oneshot, kanban and tool) are hidden from the TUI, desktop and dashboard pickers so they don't clutter your list. ## Naming and resuming Sessions are easier to find again if you name them. Use /title inside a chat, or hermes sessions rename from the shell. When you exit, Hermes prints a resume command containing the session ID. - hermes -c (or hermes --continue): pick up your most recent CLI session with its full history. - hermes --resume <id|title|latest> (short form -r): resume a specific session by ID or title. - --in <dir>: limit the 'latest session' lookup to one workspace directory. - /resume and /sessions inside a chat let you switch without leaving. - /new or /reset: start fresh. The docs recommend doing this at natural task or topic boundaries. ## Housekeeping from the command line The hermes sessions command covers the routine maintenance most people eventually need: - hermes sessions list, with --source <platform>, --limit N or --workspace <needle> to narrow it. - hermes sessions export <file> writes jsonl by default; --format also accepts md, html and others, and --redact strips sensitive content. - hermes sessions delete <id> removes one session. - hermes sessions prune removes ended sessions older than 90 days by default; add --dry-run first to see what would go. - hermes sessions archive hides matching sessions without deleting them, and hermes sessions pin keeps important ones safe from auto-archiving. - hermes sessions stats and hermes sessions optimize report on and tidy the database. ## How the agent searches its own history The session_search tool lets Hermes look things up across all stored conversations. It returns the raw stored messages rather than an LLM-written summary, and once it finds a relevant session it can scroll forwards and backwards around a specific message. Queries use standard SQLite full-text syntax: keywords are combined with AND by default, and quoted phrases, OR, NOT and prefix wildcards (deploy*) all work. Because search runs only on demand and uses no extra model calls, it complements memory nicely. Memory is always in context but tiny; session search is unlimited but has to be asked for. A useful habit is to prompt explicitly: "search our past sessions for the decision about the staging database." ## Compression creates linked sessions When a conversation gets long, Hermes compresses it (automatically, or when you run /compress). Compression starts a continuation session that points back to the original through its parent ID. Titled sessions get numbered continuations such as #2 and #3, and resuming by name picks the newest one in that chain. Pruning keeps older segments as long as a later segment survives, so you don't lose the beginning of a long-running thread. ## Messaging sessions don't time out On Telegram, Discord and other gateway platforms, conversations no longer reset after inactivity or at a daily boundary. They continue until someone sends /new or /reset, with compression handling length. If you relied on older session_reset settings, note that they are now ignored; the docs point to an optional hermes-session-reset-policy plugin if you want timed resets back. In group chats, each user gets their own session by default (group_sessions_per_user: true). ## Related guides - [How Hermes Agent memory works (and where it stops)](https://hermeswatcher.com/learn/how-hermes-memory-works.md) - [Hermes Agent forgets things mid-conversation](https://hermeswatcher.com/troubleshoot/forgets-mid-conversation.md) - [Hermes Agent memory not carrying over between sessions](https://hermeswatcher.com/troubleshoot/memory-did-not-persist.md) ## Related tools - [Carry project knowledge into the next session](https://hermeswatcher.com/workflows/project-knowledge.md) - [Persistent memory: retain compact working knowledge](https://hermeswatcher.com/tools/memory.md) - [CLI: run bounded tasks and inspect the working environment](https://hermeswatcher.com/tools/cli.md) ## Sources - [Sessions (official docs)](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/sessions) - [CLI Interface (official docs)](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/cli) - [Persistent Memory (official docs)](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/features/memory) - [Tips and Best Practices (official guide)](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/guides/tips) --- HermesWatcher is an independent guide. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nous Research. The [official Hermes Agent documentation](https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs) and [repository](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent) from Nous Research are the authority; each page here lists the official sources it was written from. If this site and the official docs disagree, trust the official docs. Index for agents: https://hermeswatcher.com/llms.txt