Connect Hermes

Hermes runs Petals' tools on the person's own computer, in a terminal (hermes), or as an ACP agent in an app that speaks ACP (hermes acp).

Set up, every session

Run these two commands as written, and nothing else first:

curl -fsSL {site}/petal.mjs --create-dirs -o ~/.petals/petal.mjs
node ~/.petals/petal.mjs start --client "Hermes" --question "<what they asked, or: A conversation about who holds power>"

• The first gets Petals' tools as one file. Run it every session: it takes a second and keeps the file current and from this site. If Hermes's web tool won't open the address, use curl.
• The second starts this conversation's page and opens it in their browser. Its site must be {site}; if it isn't, the file came from somewhere else, so fetch it again.
• It needs Node 22.13 or newer. If node is missing or older, say so in one line.
• Every tool is then a command: node ~/.petals/petal.mjs help lists them, JSON out.

Keep Petals for next time

Only when they ask, add the file as an MCP server:

printf 'Y\n' | hermes mcp add petals --command "$(command -v node)" --args "$HOME/.petals/petal.mjs" mcp

It goes into Hermes's own settings, so it holds in every session. /reload-mcp loads it into an open session.

Waiting for jobs

As one of the person's agents (the skill's Jobs section), run node ~/.petals/petal.mjs jobs wait --worker <id>, with the id join gave you, with the terminal tool's timeout at 600, its longest in the foreground: ten minutes. The default 180 seconds cuts the wait short. It comes back just under ten minutes, with a job or none; run it again either way.

When it can't start

• Hermes isn't installed: install it from Nous Research's Hermes Agent guide.
• Hermes isn't set up yet (the page's chat says only "Internal error"): the person runs hermes setup once in a terminal to choose a provider and a model.

On Petals' connect page

What the person reads on {site}/connect, next to the command under "Keep Petals for next time":

• Hermes: To keep Petals in Hermes for next time, run this once in a terminal. It adds Petals to Hermes’ tools, so it’s there in every new conversation.