hermes-agent/plugins/platforms/photon

Photon iMessage platform plugin

This plugin connects Hermes Agent to iMessage (and other Spectrum interfaces) through Photon — a managed service that handles iMessage line allocation, delivery, and abuse-prevention so users don't have to run their own Mac relay.

The free tier uses Photon's shared iMessage line pool and is the path we recommend for everyone who doesn't already pay for a dedicated number.

Architecture

Like Discord and Slack, Photon is a persistent-connection channel — no public URL, no webhook, no signing secret. The spectrum-ts SDK holds a long-lived gRPC stream to Photon for both directions. Because the SDK is TypeScript-only, Hermes runs it inside a small supervised Node sidecar and talks to it over loopback.

                         gRPC (spectrum-ts)
┌─────────────────────────┐ ◄───────────────► ┌──────────────────────┐
│  Photon Spectrum cloud  │   app.messages    │  Node sidecar        │
│  (iMessage line owner)  │   space.send()    │  (plugins/…/sidecar) │
└─────────────────────────┘                   └──────────┬───────────┘
                                       GET /inbound (NDJSON) │  ▲ POST /send
                                       inbound events        ▼  │ /typing
                                              ┌──────────────────────┐
                                              │  PhotonAdapter        │
                                              │  (Python, in gateway) │
                                              └──────────────────────┘

• Inbound: the sidecar consumes the SDK's app.messages gRPC stream, normalizes each message, and streams it to the adapter over a loopback GET /inbound (NDJSON). The adapter dedupes on messageId and dispatches a MessageEvent to the gateway. It reconnects automatically if the stream drops; the sidecar owns the gRPC reconnect to Photon.
• Outbound: send / send_typing / reaction tapbacks are loopback POSTs to the sidecar (/send, /send-attachment, /typing, /react, /unreact), authenticated with a shared X-Hermes-Sidecar-Token.

First-time setup

# One-shot setup: device login (opens browser) + project + user + sidecar deps
hermes photon setup --phone +15551234567

# Start the gateway
hermes gateway start

hermes photon setup does, in order:

1. Device login (RFC 8628, client_id=photon-cli) — opens https://app.photon.codes/ for approval and stores the bearer token.
2. Find or create the Hermes Agent project on the Photon dashboard.
3. Provision the project secret — mint a fresh project secret (the dashboard reveals it only once) and persist it to ~/.hermes/.env so the sidecar can authenticate spectrum-ts. Spectrum is always on, so there's no separate enable step.
4. Register your phone number as a Spectrum user (idempotent — skipped if a user with that number already exists).
5. Print the assigned iMessage line — the number you text to reach your agent.
6. Install the sidecar deps (npm ci — installs the committed lockfile verbatim, so every setup runs the exact spectrum-ts version this plugin was written against).

There is no separate login command; like every other Hermes channel, onboarding goes through one setup surface. Re-running setup reuses an existing token/project, so it's safe to run again to finish a partial setup. Run hermes photon status to see what's configured.

Credentials

Runtime SDK credentials live in ~/.hermes/.env (the same place every other channel keeps its token), and the adapter reads them from the environment:

PHOTON_PROJECT_ID=<projectId>   # the SDK's projectId (same as the dashboard project id)
PHOTON_PROJECT_SECRET=<projectSecret>

Management metadata lives in ~/.hermes/auth.json under credential_pool:

{
  "credential_pool": {
    "photon": [
      { "access_token": "<device-bearer>", "issued_at": ... }
    ],
    "photon_project": [
      {
        "dashboard_project_id": "<project id>",
        "spectrum_project_id": "<project id>",
        "project_secret": "<projectSecret>",
        "name": "Hermes Agent"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Note on ids. A Photon project's dashboard id and its Spectrum project id are the same value, exposed as PHOTON_PROJECT_ID. The dashboard_project_id and spectrum_project_id keys in auth.json both hold that id.

Configuration knobs

All env vars are documented in plugin.yaml. The most important:

Env var	Default	Meaning
PHOTON_PROJECT_ID	from .env / auth.json	Spectrum project id (SDK projectId)
PHOTON_PROJECT_SECRET	from .env / auth.json	Project secret
PHOTON_SIDECAR_PORT	8789	Loopback port for the sidecar
PHOTON_SIDECAR_AUTOSTART	true	Spawn the sidecar on connect
PHOTON_DASHBOARD_HOST	https://app.photon.codes	Dashboard API host
PHOTON_SPECTRUM_HOST	https://spectrum.photon.codes	Spectrum API host
PHOTON_HOME_CHANNEL	your number (set by setup)	Default space for cron delivery — a space id, or a bare E.164 number (resolved to a DM)
PHOTON_ALLOWED_USERS	your number (set by setup)	Comma-separated E.164 allowlist
PHOTON_REQUIRE_MENTION	false	Gate group chats on a wake word
PHOTON_MAX_INLINE_ATTACHMENT_BYTES	20 MB	Max inbound attachment size the sidecar reads & inlines
PHOTON_TELEMETRY	false	Spectrum SDK telemetry — toggle with hermes photon telemetry on|off (restart the gateway to apply)
PHOTON_MARKDOWN	true	Send agent replies as markdown (iMessage renders natively). false strips formatting to plain text
PHOTON_REACTIONS	false	Tapback 👀/👍/👎 as processing status; tapbacks on bot messages reach the agent as reaction:added:<emoji>

Attachments & limitations

• Inbound attachments and voice notes are downloaded. The sidecar reads the bytes (content.read()) and base64-inlines them on the NDJSON event; the adapter caches them to the shared media cache and populates media_urls / media_types, so the agent sees the real image/file or can transcribe the voice note — parity with the BlueBubbles iMessage channel. Mixed iMessage bubbles that contain both text and attachments are normalized as a grouped payload so the user's typed text is preserved alongside the cached media. Media larger than PHOTON_MAX_INLINE_ATTACHMENT_BYTES (default 20 MB), or any byte read that fails, falls back to a text marker ([Photon attachment received: …] or [Photon voice received: …]) so the agent still knows something arrived.
• Outbound attachments are supported. Images, voice notes, video, and documents are sent via space.send(attachment(...)) / space.send(voice(...)) through the sidecar's /send-attachment endpoint; a caption is delivered as a separate text bubble after the media.
• Markdown is rendered. Replies go out via spectrum-ts' markdown() builder; iMessage renders bold/italics/lists/code natively and other Spectrum platforms degrade to readable plain text. PHOTON_MARKDOWN=false reverts to stripped plain text.
• Reactions (tapbacks) are supported behind PHOTON_REACTIONS (default off): the adapter tapbacks 👀 while processing and swaps it for 👍/👎 on completion, and a user tapback on a bot-sent message is routed to the agent as a synthetic reaction:added:<emoji> event. Removal after a sidecar restart is best-effort — the live reaction handle is lost, so a stale tapback heals when the next reaction replaces it. Group spaces stay reachable across restarts via spectrum-ts' space.get(id).
• Message effects, polls — supported by spectrum-ts but not yet exposed; the sidecar is the natural place to add them.
• Cron/standalone sends require a running gateway. Processes outside the gateway (cron subprocesses, hermes send) cannot spawn the sidecar; they authenticate to the gateway's live sidecar via the runtime record at <hermes-home>/runtime/photon-sidecar.json (written after the sidecar's /healthz readiness check, 0600, removed on stop/failed start). Also note that shared/free-tier Photon lines cannot INITIATE conversations with numbers that never texted the line — that's Photon-side policy, not a Hermes limitation.

Upgrading spectrum-ts

spectrum-ts is pinned to an exact version in sidecar/package.json (no ^ range) and installed with npm ci, because the SDK ships breaking majors (v2 removed defineFusorPlatform; v3 reworked space construction; v5 split it into @spectrum-ts/* packages, with spectrum-ts as the umbrella that re-exports them; v8 made richlink outbound-only, so inbound rich links now arrive as plain text). A floating range or npm install spectrum-ts@latest would let a breaking release take down fresh setups silently. Upgrades are deliberate:

1. Read the SDK release notes for every version between the current pin and the target.
2. Bump the exact pin in sidecar/package.json, then run npm install inside sidecar/ to regenerate package-lock.json. Commit both.
3. Migrate sidecar/index.mjs against the new typings. spectrum-ts re-exports @spectrum-ts/core (the framework: Spectrum, content builders, Space/Message) and @spectrum-ts/imessage (the provider), so the source of truth is sidecar/node_modules/@spectrum-ts/{core,imessage}/dist/*.d.ts (the hosted docs can lag).
4. Re-validate sidecar/patch-spectrum-mixed-attachments.mjs. It rewrites the compiled iMessage inbound mappers in @spectrum-ts/imessage/dist/index.js so a bubble with both text and attachments keeps its typed text; the anchors are tied to that build's output. npm install runs it via postinstall and fails loudly if the anchors no longer match — update them to the new output (test_spectrum_patch.py covers the patch).
5. Run pytest tests/plugins/platforms/photon/.
6. Verify end-to-end: hermes photon status, a DM and a group roundtrip, and an agent reply into a group right after a gateway restart (exercises space.get rehydration).