diff --git a/cli.py b/cli.py
index 6bd883d173c..d474e405a16 100644
--- a/cli.py
+++ b/cli.py
@@ -12934,7 +12934,19 @@ def main(
             # Exit with error code if credentials or agent init fails
             sys.exit(1)
         else:
-            cli.show_banner()
+            # Single-query mode (`hermes chat -q "…"`): skip the welcome
+            # banner. Building the banner takes ~420 ms on cold start —
+            # ~200 ms of that is the version-update check, the rest is
+            # toolset / skill enumeration and Rich panel rendering. None
+            # of that is useful for a one-shot query: the user already
+            # picked the prompt, doesn't need a toolset reference, and
+            # gets the session ID + resume hint from
+            # ``_print_exit_summary()`` after the response prints.
+            #
+            # The fully-quiet ``-Q`` / ``--quiet`` machine-readable path
+            # above was already banner-free; this brings the human-
+            # facing single-query path in line so all non-interactive
+            # invocations are fast.
             _query_label = query or ("[image attached]" if single_query_images else "")
             if _query_label:
                 cli.console.print(f"[bold blue]Query:[/] {_query_label}")