hermes-agent/hermes-already-has-routines.md

Hermes Agent Has Had "Routines" Since March

Anthropic just announced Claude Code Routines — scheduled tasks, GitHub event triggers, and API-triggered agent runs. Bundled prompt + repo + connectors, running on their infrastructure.

It's a good feature. We shipped it two months ago.

---

The Three Trigger Types — Side by Side

Claude Code Routines offers three ways to trigger an automation:

1. Scheduled (cron)

"Every night at 2am: pull the top bug from Linear, attempt a fix, and open a draft PR."

Hermes equivalent — works today:

hermes cron create "0 2 * * *" \
  "Pull the top bug from the issue tracker, attempt a fix, and open a draft PR." \
  --name "Nightly bug fix" \
  --deliver telegram

2. GitHub Events (webhook)

"Flag PRs that touch the /auth-provider module and post to #auth-changes."

Hermes equivalent — works today:

hermes webhook subscribe auth-watch \
  --events "pull_request" \
  --prompt "PR #{pull_request.number}: {pull_request.title} by {pull_request.user.login}. Check if it touches the auth-provider module. If yes, summarize the changes." \
  --deliver slack

3. API Triggers

"Read the alert payload, find the owning service, post a triage summary to #oncall."

Hermes equivalent — works today:

hermes webhook subscribe alert-triage \
  --prompt "Alert: {alert.name} — Severity: {alert.severity}. Find the owning service, investigate, and post a triage summary with proposed first steps." \
  --deliver slack

Every use case in their blog post — backlog triage, docs drift, deploy verification, alert correlation, library porting, bespoke PR review — has a working Hermes implementation. No new features needed. It's been shipping since March 2026.

---

What's Different

	Claude Code Routines	Hermes Agent
Scheduled tasks	✅ Schedule-based	✅ Any cron expression + human-readable intervals
GitHub triggers	✅ PR, issue, push events	✅ Any GitHub event via webhook subscriptions
API triggers	✅ POST to unique endpoint	✅ POST to webhook routes with HMAC auth
MCP connectors	✅ Native connectors	✅ Full MCP client support
Script pre-processing	❌	✅ Python scripts run before agent, inject context
Skill chaining	❌	✅ Load multiple skills per automation
Daily limit	5-25 runs/day	Unlimited
Model choice	Claude only	Any model — Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen, local
Delivery targets	GitHub comments	Telegram, Discord, Slack, SMS, email, GitHub comments, webhooks, local files
Infrastructure	Anthropic's servers	Your infrastructure — VPS, home server, laptop
Data residency	Anthropic's cloud	Your machines
Cost	Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise subscription	Your API key, your rates
Open source	No	Yes — MIT license

---

Things Hermes Does That Routines Can't

Script Injection

Run a Python script before the agent. The script's stdout becomes context. The script handles mechanical work (fetching, diffing, computing); the agent handles reasoning.

hermes cron create "every 1h" \
  "If CHANGE DETECTED, summarize what changed. If NO_CHANGE, respond with [SILENT]." \
  --script ~/.hermes/scripts/watch-site.py \
  --name "Pricing monitor" \
  --deliver telegram

The [SILENT] pattern means you only get notified when something actually happens. No spam.

Multi-Skill Workflows

Chain specialized skills together. Each skill teaches the agent a specific capability, and the prompt ties them together.

hermes cron create "0 8 * * *" \
  "Search arXiv for papers on language model reasoning. Save the top 3 as Obsidian notes." \
  --skills "arxiv,obsidian" \
  --name "Paper digest"

Deliver Anywhere

One automation, any destination:

--deliver telegram                      # Telegram home channel
--deliver discord                       # Discord home channel  
--deliver slack                         # Slack channel
--deliver sms:+15551234567              # Text message
--deliver telegram:-1001234567890:42    # Specific Telegram forum topic
--deliver local                         # Save to file, no notification

Model-Agnostic

Your nightly triage can run on Claude. Your deploy verification can run on GPT. Your cost-sensitive monitors can run on DeepSeek or a local model. Same automation system, any backend.

---

The Limits Tell the Story

Claude Code Routines: 5 routines per day on Pro. 25 on Enterprise. That's their ceiling.

Hermes has no daily limit. Run 500 automations a day if you want. The only constraint is your API budget, and you choose which models to use for which tasks.

A nightly backlog triage on Sonnet costs roughly $0.02-0.05. A monitoring check on DeepSeek costs fractions of a cent. You control the economics.

---

Get Started

Hermes Agent is open source and free. The automation infrastructure — cron scheduler, webhook platform, skill system, multi-platform delivery — is built in.

pip install hermes-agent
hermes setup

Set up a scheduled task in 30 seconds:

hermes cron create "0 9 * * 1" \
  "Generate a weekly AI news digest. Search the web for major announcements, trending repos, and notable papers. Keep it under 500 words with links." \
  --name "Weekly digest" \
  --deliver telegram

Set up a GitHub webhook in 60 seconds:

hermes gateway setup    # enable webhooks
hermes webhook subscribe pr-review \
  --events "pull_request" \
  --prompt "Review PR #{pull_request.number}: {pull_request.title}" \
  --skills "github-code-review" \
  --deliver github_comment

Full automation templates gallery: hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/guides/automation-templates

Documentation: hermes-agent.nousresearch.com

GitHub: github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

---

Hermes Agent is built by Nous Research. Open source, model-agnostic, runs on your infrastructure.