hermes-agent/website/docs/user-guide/features/spotify.md

Spotify

Hermes can control Spotify directly — playback, queue, search, playlists, saved tracks/albums, and listening history — using Spotify's official Web API with PKCE OAuth. Tokens are stored in ~/.hermes/auth.json and refreshed automatically on 401; you only log in once per machine.

Unlike Hermes' built-in OAuth integrations (Google, GitHub Copilot, Codex), Spotify requires every user to register their own lightweight developer app. Spotify does not let third parties ship a public OAuth app that anyone can use. It takes about two minutes and hermes auth spotify walks you through it.

Prerequisites

• A Spotify account. Free works for search, playlist, library, and activity tools. Premium is required for playback control (play, pause, skip, seek, volume, queue add, transfer).
• Hermes Agent installed and running.
• For playback tools: an active Spotify Connect device — the Spotify app must be open on at least one device (phone, desktop, web player, speaker) so the Web API has something to control. If nothing is active you'll get a 403 Forbidden with a "no active device" message; open Spotify on any device and retry.

Setup

One-shot: hermes tools

The fastest path. Run:

hermes tools

Scroll to 🎵 Spotify, press space to toggle it on, then s to save. Hermes drops you straight into the OAuth flow — if you don't have a Spotify app yet, it walks you through creating one inline. Once you finish, the toolset is enabled AND authenticated in one pass.

If you prefer to do the steps separately (or you're re-authing later), use the two-step flow below.

Two-step flow

1. Enable the toolset

hermes tools

Toggle 🎵 Spotify on, save, and when the inline wizard opens, dismiss it (Ctrl+C). The toolset stays on; only the auth step is deferred.

2. Run the login wizard

hermes auth spotify

The 7 Spotify tools only appear in the agent's toolset after step 1 — they're off by default so users who don't want them don't ship extra tool schemas on every API call.

If no HERMES_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID is set, Hermes walks you through the app registration inline:

1. Opens https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard in your browser
2. Prints the exact values to paste into Spotify's "Create app" form
3. Prompts you for the Client ID you get back
4. Saves it to ~/.hermes/.env so future runs skip this step
5. Continues straight into the OAuth consent flow

After you approve, tokens are written under providers.spotify in ~/.hermes/auth.json. The active inference provider is NOT changed — Spotify auth is independent of your LLM provider.

Creating the Spotify app (what the wizard asks for)

When the dashboard opens, click Create app and fill in:

Field	Value
App name	anything (e.g. hermes-agent)
App description	anything (e.g. personal Hermes integration)
Website	leave blank
Redirect URI	http://127.0.0.1:43827/spotify/callback
Which API/SDKs?	check Web API

Agree to the terms and click Save. On the next page click Settings → copy the Client ID and paste it into the Hermes prompt. That's the only value Hermes needs — PKCE doesn't use a client secret.

Running over SSH / in a headless environment

If SSH_CLIENT or SSH_TTY is set, Hermes skips the automatic browser open during both the wizard and the OAuth step. Copy the dashboard URL and the authorization URL Hermes prints, open them in a browser on your local machine, and proceed normally — the local HTTP listener still runs on the remote host on port 43827. If you need to reach it through an SSH tunnel, forward that port: ssh -L 43827:127.0.0.1:43827 remote.

Verify

hermes auth status spotify

Shows whether tokens are present and when the access token expires. Refresh is automatic: when any Spotify API call returns 401, the client exchanges the refresh token and retries once. Refresh tokens persist across Hermes restarts, so you only re-auth if you revoke the app in your Spotify account settings or run hermes auth logout spotify.

Using it

Once logged in, the agent has access to 7 Spotify tools. You talk to the agent naturally — it picks the right tool and action. For the best behavior, the agent loads a companion skill that teaches canonical usage patterns (single-search-then-play, when not to preflight get_state, etc.).

> play some miles davis
> what am I listening to
> add this track to my Late Night Jazz playlist
> skip to the next song
> make a new playlist called "Focus 2026" and add the last three songs I played
> which of my saved albums are by Radiohead
> search for acoustic covers of Blackbird
> transfer playback to my kitchen speaker

Tool reference

All playback-mutating actions accept an optional device_id to target a specific device. If omitted, Spotify uses the currently active device.

spotify_playback

Control and inspect playback, plus fetch recently played history.

Action	Purpose	Premium?
get_state	Full playback state (track, device, progress, shuffle/repeat)	No
get_currently_playing	Just the current track (returns empty on 204 — see below)	No
play	Start/resume playback. Optional: context_uri, uris, offset, position_ms	Yes
pause	Pause playback	Yes
next / previous	Skip track	Yes
seek	Jump to position_ms	Yes
set_repeat	state = track / context / off	Yes
set_shuffle	state = true / false	Yes
set_volume	volume_percent = 0-100	Yes
recently_played	Last played tracks. Optional limit, before, after (Unix ms)	No

spotify_devices

Action	Purpose
list	Every Spotify Connect device visible to your account
transfer	Move playback to device_id. Optional play: true starts playback on transfer

spotify_queue

Action	Purpose	Premium?
get	Currently queued tracks	No
add	Append uri to the queue	Yes

spotify_search

Search the catalog. query is required. Optional: types (array of track / album / artist / playlist / show / episode), limit, offset, market.

spotify_playlists

Action	Purpose	Required args
list	User's playlists	—
get	One playlist + tracks	playlist_id
create	New playlist	name (+ optional description, public, collaborative)
add_items	Add tracks	playlist_id, uris (optional position)
remove_items	Remove tracks	playlist_id, uris (+ optional snapshot_id)
update_details	Rename / edit	playlist_id + any of name, description, public, collaborative

spotify_albums

Action	Purpose	Required args
get	Album metadata	album_id
tracks	Album track list	album_id

spotify_library

Unified access to saved tracks and saved albums. Pick the collection with the kind arg.

Action	Purpose
list	Paginated library listing
save	Add ids / uris to library
remove	Remove ids / uris from library

Required: kind = tracks or albums, plus action.

Feature matrix: Free vs Premium

Read-only tools work on Free accounts. Anything that mutates playback or the queue requires Premium.

Works on Free	Premium required
spotify_search (all)	spotify_playback — play, pause, next, previous, seek, set_repeat, set_shuffle, set_volume
spotify_playback — get_state, get_currently_playing, recently_played	spotify_queue — add
spotify_devices — list	spotify_devices — transfer
spotify_queue — get
spotify_playlists (all)
spotify_albums (all)
spotify_library (all)

Scheduling: Spotify + cron

Because Spotify tools are regular Hermes tools, a cron job running in a Hermes session can trigger playback on any schedule. No new code needed.

Morning wake-up playlist

hermes cron add \
  --name "morning-commute" \
  "0 7 * * 1-5" \
  "Transfer playback to my kitchen speaker and start my 'Morning Commute' playlist. Volume to 40. Shuffle on."

What happens at 7am every weekday:

1. Cron spins up a headless Hermes session.
2. Agent reads the prompt, calls spotify_devices list to find "kitchen speaker" by name, then spotify_devices transfer → spotify_playback set_volume → spotify_playback set_shuffle → spotify_search + spotify_playback play.
3. Music starts on the target speaker. Total cost: one session, a few tool calls, no human input.

Wind-down at night

hermes cron add \
  --name "wind-down" \
  "30 22 * * *" \
  "Pause Spotify. Then set volume to 20 so it's quiet when I start it again tomorrow."

Gotchas

• An active device must exist when the cron fires. If no Spotify client is running (phone/desktop/Connect speaker), playback actions return 403 no active device. For morning playlists, the trick is to target a device that's always on (Sonos, Echo, a smart speaker) rather than your phone.
• Premium required for anything that mutates playback — play, pause, skip, volume, transfer. Read-only cron jobs (scheduled "email me my recently played tracks") work fine on Free.
• The cron agent inherits your active toolsets. Spotify must be enabled in hermes tools for the cron session to see the Spotify tools.
• Cron jobs run with skip_memory=True so they don't write to your memory store.

Full cron reference: Cron Jobs.

Sign out

hermes auth logout spotify

Removes tokens from ~/.hermes/auth.json. To also clear the app config, delete HERMES_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID (and HERMES_SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI if you set it) from ~/.hermes/.env, or run the wizard again.

To revoke the app on Spotify's side, visit Apps connected to your account and click REMOVE ACCESS.

Troubleshooting

403 Forbidden — Player command failed: No active device found — You need Spotify running on at least one device. Open the Spotify app on your phone, desktop, or web player, start any track for a second to register it, and retry. spotify_devices list shows what's currently visible.

403 Forbidden — Premium required — You're on a Free account trying to use a playback-mutating action. See the feature matrix above.

204 No Content on get_currently_playing — nothing is currently playing on any device. This is Spotify's normal response, not an error; Hermes surfaces it as an explanatory empty result (is_playing: false).

INVALID_CLIENT: Invalid redirect URI — the redirect URI in your Spotify app settings doesn't match what Hermes is using. The default is http://127.0.0.1:43827/spotify/callback. Either add that to your app's allowed redirect URIs, or set HERMES_SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI in ~/.hermes/.env to whatever you registered.

429 Too Many Requests — Spotify's rate limit. Hermes returns a friendly error; wait a minute and retry. If this persists, you're probably running a tight loop in a script — Spotify's quota resets roughly every 30 seconds.

401 Unauthorized keeps coming back — Your refresh token was revoked (usually because you removed the app from your account, or the app was deleted). Run hermes auth spotify again.

Wizard doesn't open the browser — If you're over SSH or in a container without a display, Hermes detects it and skips the auto-open. Copy the dashboard URL it prints and open it manually.

Advanced: custom scopes

By default Hermes requests the scopes needed for every shipped tool. Override if you want to restrict access:

hermes auth spotify --scope "user-read-playback-state user-modify-playback-state playlist-read-private"

Scope reference: Spotify Web API scopes. If you request fewer scopes than a tool needs, that tool's calls will fail with 403.

Advanced: custom client ID / redirect URI

hermes auth spotify --client-id <id> --redirect-uri http://localhost:3000/callback

Or set them permanently in ~/.hermes/.env:

HERMES_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID=<your_id>
HERMES_SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI=http://localhost:3000/callback

The redirect URI must be allow-listed in your Spotify app's settings. The default works for almost everyone — only change it if port 43827 is taken.

Where things live

File	Contents
~/.hermes/auth.json → providers.spotify	access token, refresh token, expiry, scope, redirect URI
~/.hermes/.env	HERMES_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID, optional HERMES_SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI
Spotify app	owned by you at developer.spotify.com/dashboard; contains the Client ID and the redirect URI allow-list