Nous Research launches Bot Mode: agent profiles become a bot team with a shared inbox

Nous Research released Bot Mode for Hermes Agent yesterday, turning the MIT-licensed open-source agent into a roster of named bots, each a full Hermes profile with its own chat, memory, skills, and pinned model, that share a persistent Agent Inbox and hand off work with @mentions. The feature replaces the single chat list and ships by default in Hermes Desktop starting with version 0.20.3, after a one-day public beta run through a standalone plugin by co-founder Teknium.

Architecturally, a bot is not a new layer — it is an existing Hermes profile. Each one lives under `~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/` with completely isolated configuration, memory, skills, credentials and chat history. The plugin is only a UI over the primitives Hermes already exposes: creation and editing ride the `profiles.*` RPC set (list, create, describe, configure), avatar generation uses `image.generate` against local and remote gateways, and routines are cron jobs in the `[bot:<name>] <routine>` namespace, still visible in `hermes cron list`. The choice keeps the attack surface small.

Inter-bot messages are not simulated; they are real CLI chat transfers: `hermes -p <bot> chat -c "Agent Inbox" -q "..."`. Messages arrive with attribution, and every bot carries a `SOUL.md` that teaches it the reply protocol. Typing `@researcher look at this` makes the active bot hand off the task and report back. The system supports handoff chains in which a scout, reviewer and publisher pass work sequentially.

The new-agent dialog asks for a name, title and description; expanding "Advanced" opens the full profile configuration. An existing profile can be duplicated, a provider and model pinned, a custom `SOUL.md` written, or skills skipped. Right-clicking a bot reveals live profile editing, including per-tool and per-skill toggles, model pinning and `SOUL.md` editing. Duplication copies configuration, skills, `SOUL.md`, memory and appearance. Avatars ship as geometric faces in 7 shapes and 10 colors, with options to upload an image, generate a portrait or attach a "pixel pet" whose eyes scan while the bot works.

The rollout was fast: Teknium ran a one-day public beta via the standalone plugin, collected bug reports and committed to folding the code into the main desktop application. According to PR #87886, Bot Mode is now bundled and enabled by default, and the standalone repository has been archived. Development continues inside the tree at `apps/desktop/src/plugins/hermes-bots/`. The in-tree version added a capability absent from the beta: Groups organize the roster into labeled sections that sync across machines. A group chat opens a shared room for 2 to 6 bots; a user message triggers up to 3 sequential rounds of member turns, mentioned bots respond, and when no mention is present all members respond.

The tool is deployable today on desktop at no license cost — both Hermes Agent and the plugin are MIT-licensed. Solo builders, startups and small-to-mid engineering teams can adopt immediately. Enterprises should treat it as a workstation tool, not managed infrastructure: there is no admin console, no SSO, no centralized audit log and no policy layer. Regulated buyers will need to build their own controls around it. Relevant industries include software engineering, AI research labs, content operations and technical media, developer relations, quantitative research and Ops. Typical use cases pair a research bot on a reasoning model with a writing bot on a cheaper model, scheduled digests and overnight reports, per-project agents that never leak context into each other, and multi-step handoff chains.