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

---
sidebar_position: 3
title: "Curator"
description: "Background maintenance for agent-created skills — usage tracking, staleness, archival, and LLM-driven review"
---

# Curator

The curator is a background maintenance pass for **agent-created skills**. It tracks how often each skill is viewed, used, and patched, moves long-unused skills through `active → stale → archived` states, and periodically spawns a short auxiliary-model review that proposes consolidations or patches drift.

It exists so that skills created via the [self-improvement loop](/user-guide/features/skills#agent-managed-skills-skill_manage-tool) don't pile up forever. Every time the agent solves a novel problem and saves a skill, that skill lands in `~/.hermes/skills/`. Without maintenance, you end up with dozens of narrow near-duplicates that pollute the catalog and waste tokens.

By default (`prune_builtins: true`) the curator can archive **unused bundled built-in skills** (shipped with the repo) after `archive_after_days` of non-use, alongside the agent-created skills it primarily manages. Hub-installed skills (from [agentskills.io](https://agentskills.io)) are always off-limits. Set `curator.prune_builtins: false` to restore the old agent-created-only behavior, where bundled skills are never touched. The curator also **never auto-deletes** — the worst outcome is archival into `~/.hermes/skills/.archive/`, which is recoverable.

Tracks [issue #7816](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/issues/7816).

## How it runs

The curator is triggered by an inactivity check, not a cron daemon. On CLI session start, and on a recurring tick inside the gateway's cron-ticker thread, Hermes checks whether:

1. Enough time has passed since the last curator run (`interval_hours`, default **7 days**), and
2. The agent has been idle long enough (`min_idle_hours`, default **2 hours**).

If both are true, it spawns a background fork of `AIAgent` — the same pattern used by the memory/skill self-improvement nudges. The fork runs in its own prompt cache and never touches the active conversation.

:::info First-run behavior
On a brand-new install (or the first time a pre-curator install ticks after `hermes update`), the curator **does not run immediately**. The first observation seeds `last_run_at` to "now" and defers the first real pass by one full `interval_hours`. This gives you a full interval to review your skill library, pin anything important, or opt out entirely before the curator ever touches it.

If you want to see what the curator *would* do before it runs for real, run `hermes curator run --dry-run` — it produces the same review report without mutating the library.
:::

A run has two phases:

1. **Automatic transitions** (deterministic, no LLM). Skills unused for `stale_after_days` (30) become `stale`; skills unused for `archive_after_days` (90) are moved to `~/.hermes/skills/.archive/`. This is the always-on pruning behavior — it runs whenever the curator is enabled, with no aux-model cost.
   - **Pinned skills** and **skills referenced by any cron job** (including paused/disabled jobs) are skipped entirely — treated like pin for auto-transitions so a slow or paused schedule cannot archive a skill out from under a job. Consolidation also rewrites cron skill references when it merges umbrellas.
   - **Never-used skills** (`use_count == 0`) get a grace floor: they are not archived until they are at least `stale_after_days` old. Zero uses is absence of evidence, not proof the skill is disposable.
2. **LLM consolidation** (single aux-model pass with a high iteration ceiling — a full curation sweep typically takes 50–100 API calls) — **OFF by default**. When `curator.consolidate: true`, the forked agent surveys the agent-created skills, can read any of them with `skill_view`, and decides per-skill whether to keep, patch (via `skill_manage`), consolidate overlapping ones into class-level umbrellas, or archive via the terminal tool. Consolidation treats a skill as a full package: if a skill has `references/`, `templates/`, `scripts/`, `assets/`, or relative links to those paths, the curator must either keep it standalone, re-home the needed support files and rewrite paths, or archive the entire package unchanged — not flatten only `SKILL.md` into another skill's `references/` file.

:::info Consolidation is opt-in
By default the curator only **prunes** — the deterministic inactivity pass marks skills stale and archives long-unused ones. The opinionated LLM **consolidation** pass (umbrella-building, merging overlapping skills) is off by default because it costs aux-model tokens on every run and makes broad structural changes to your library. Turn it on with `curator.consolidate: true`, or run it once on demand with `hermes curator run --consolidate`.
:::

Pinned skills are off-limits to both the curator's auto-transitions and the agent's own `skill_manage` tool. See [Pinning a skill](#pinning-a-skill) below.

## Configuration

All settings live in `config.yaml` under `curator:` (not `.env` — this isn't a secret). Defaults:

```yaml
curator:
  enabled: true
  interval_hours: 168          # 7 days
  min_idle_hours: 2
  stale_after_days: 30
  archive_after_days: 90
  consolidate: false           # LLM umbrella-building pass — opt-in (prune-only by default)
  prune_builtins: true         # archive unused bundled built-in skills too (hub skills always exempt)
```

To disable entirely, set `curator.enabled: false`. To keep the always-on pruning but opt into LLM consolidation, set `curator.consolidate: true`.

### Running the review on a cheaper aux model

The curator's LLM review pass is a regular auxiliary task slot — `auxiliary.curator` — alongside Vision, Compression, Session Search, etc. "Auto" means "use my main chat model"; override the slot to pin a specific provider + model for the review pass instead.

**Easiest — `hermes model`:**

```bash
hermes model                   # → "Auxiliary models — side-task routing"
                               # → pick "Curator" → pick provider → pick model
```

The same picker is available in the web dashboard under the **Models** tab.

**Direct config.yaml (equivalent):**

```yaml
auxiliary:
  curator:
    provider: openrouter
    model: google/gemini-3-flash-preview
    timeout: 600               # generous — reviews can take several minutes
```

Leaving `provider: auto` (the default) routes the review pass through whatever your main chat model is, matching the behavior of every other auxiliary task.

:::note Legacy config
Earlier releases used a one-off `curator.auxiliary.{provider,model}` block. That path still works but emits a deprecation log line — please migrate to `auxiliary.curator` above so the curator shares the same plumbing (`hermes model`, dashboard Models tab, `base_url`, `api_key`, `timeout`, `extra_body`) as every other aux task.
:::

## CLI

```bash
hermes curator status         # last run, counts, pinned list, LRU top 5
hermes curator run            # trigger a run now (blocks until done). Prune-only unless curator.consolidate: true
hermes curator run --consolidate # force the LLM consolidation pass on for this run, overriding the config default
hermes curator run --background  # fire-and-forget: start the run in a background thread
hermes curator run --dry-run  # preview only — report without any mutations
hermes curator backup         # take a manual snapshot of ~/.hermes/skills/
hermes curator rollback       # restore from the newest snapshot
hermes curator rollback --list     # list available snapshots
hermes curator rollback --id <ts>  # restore a specific snapshot
hermes curator rollback -y         # skip the confirmation prompt
hermes curator pause          # stop runs until resumed
hermes curator resume
hermes curator pin <skill>    # never auto-transition this skill
hermes curator unpin <skill>
hermes curator adopt <skill>    # hand an unmanaged skill to the curator
hermes curator adopt --all-unmanaged   # hand over every unmanaged skill
hermes curator list-unmanaged   # itemize skills with no provenance marker
hermes curator restore <skill>  # move an archived skill back to active
hermes curator list-archived    # list skills currently in ~/.hermes/skills/.archive/
hermes curator archive <skill>  # manually archive a single skill now
hermes curator prune [--days N] # bulk-archive agent-created skills idle >= N days (default 90)
```

## Backups and rollback

Before every real curator pass, Hermes takes a tar.gz snapshot of `~/.hermes/skills/` at `~/.hermes/skills/.curator_backups/<utc-iso>/skills.tar.gz`. If a pass archives or consolidates something you didn't want touched, you can undo the whole run with one command:

```bash
hermes curator rollback        # restore newest snapshot (with confirmation)
hermes curator rollback -y     # skip the prompt
hermes curator rollback --list # see all snapshots with reason + size
```

The rollback itself is reversible: before replacing the skills tree, Hermes takes another snapshot tagged `pre-rollback to <target-id>`, so a mistaken rollback can be undone by rolling forward to that one with `--id`.

You can also take manual snapshots at any time with `hermes curator backup --reason "before-refactor"`. The `--reason` string lands in the snapshot's `manifest.json` and is shown in `--list`.

Snapshots are pruned to `curator.backup.keep` (default 5) to keep disk usage bounded:

```yaml
curator:
  backup:
    enabled: true
    keep: 5
```

Set `curator.backup.enabled: false` to disable automatic snapshotting. The manual `hermes curator backup` command still works when backups are disabled only if you set `enabled: true` first — the flag gates both paths symmetrically so there's no way to accidentally skip the pre-run snapshot on mutating runs.

`hermes curator status` also lists the five least-recently-used skills — a quick way to see what's likely to become stale next.

The same subcommands are available as the `/curator` slash command inside a running session (CLI or gateway platforms).

## What "agent-created" means

The curator only manages skills explicitly marked as **agent-created** in
`~/.hermes/skills/.usage.json`. A skill qualifies when ALL of the following
are true:

1. Its name is **not** in `~/.hermes/skills/.bundled_manifest` (bundled skills shipped with the repo).
2. Its name is **not** in `~/.hermes/skills/.hub/lock.json` (hub-installed skills).
3. Its `.usage.json` entry has `"created_by": "agent"` or `"agent_created": true`.

Currently, only the **background self-improvement review fork** sets this marker
— when it creates a new umbrella skill during its periodic review pass (~every 10
agent turns). The background fork runs with a write origin of `"background_review"`
(via `tools/skill_provenance.py`), which is the only path that triggers the
`mark_agent_created()` call in `skill_manage`.

Skills the foreground agent creates via `skill_manage(action="create")` during a
conversation are **not** marked as agent-created — they are considered
user-directed and the curator intentionally leaves them alone.

:::warning Your hand-written skills are NOT curated
If you manually created a `SKILL.md` or pointed Hermes at an external skill
directory, that skill will have a `.usage.json` entry with `created_by: null`
(or the field absent). The curator will not touch it. The same applies to
skills the foreground agent created at your request.

**To see which skills the curator actually manages**, run `hermes curator status`.
If the agent-created count is 0, no skills are currently in the curator's
jurisdiction — the LLM review pass is skipped and the report will show
`Model: (not resolved) via (not resolved)` with `Duration: 0s`.
:::

### Adopting unmanaged skills

`hermes curator status` reports an **unmanaged** count alongside the managed
one:

```
curator-managed skills: 43 total  (agent-created=43  bundled=0)
  active     41
  stale       2
  archived    0

unmanaged (no provenance marker): 112 total
  pre-dates marker    34
  foreground-created  78
  never auto-staled or archived — `hermes curator adopt <name>` hands one over
```

Those 112 are curation-*eligible* but permanently invisible to the lifecycle,
for one of two reasons:

- **pre-dates marker** — the record was written before `created_by` existed, so
  it carries no provenance signal at all. Authorship is genuinely unknowable
  from the record.
- **foreground-created** — a foreground `skill_manage(create)` left the marker
  unset by design, since skills you ask for belong to you.

A large library can therefore look fully curated while most of it is
untouchable. `adopt` closes that gap by **declaration**:

```bash
hermes curator list-unmanaged                    # itemize them, with reasons
hermes curator adopt <name> [<name> ...]         # hand specific skills over
hermes curator adopt --all-unmanaged --dry-run   # preview the full list
hermes curator adopt --all-unmanaged             # hand over everything (prompts)
hermes curator adopt --all-unmanaged --yes       # skip the prompt
```

Adoption writes the same `created_by: agent` marker the background review fork
writes. It does **not** reset the inactivity clock — an adopted skill keeps its
existing `last_activity_at`, so handing over a library you already stopped
using does not buy it a fresh 90-day window. Expect adopted long-idle skills to
go `stale` (or `archived`) on the next pass; that is the point.

Adoption is also what unblocks autonomous *improvement*. The background review
fork refuses to patch a skill that isn't curator-managed, so if it notices one
of your skills is outdated it will say so and recommend adoption rather than
edit it. Foreground (user-directed) edits are never affected — you and the
agent can always edit your own skills on request.

:::note `created_by` is a policy flag, not a provenance claim
The stored field is named `created_by`, but it is consumed as "may autonomous
curation touch this?" — not "who wrote this file". Those are different
questions, and for records predating the marker the authorship answer is simply
unrecoverable. The name is kept because it is already on disk in every
`.usage.json`; read it as policy. `hermes curator adopt` changes the policy, and
says nothing about who authored the file.
:::

:::note Provenance is declared, never inferred
Adoption is deliberately manual. Telemetry cannot establish authorship: a skill
with thousands of patches proves the agent **maintains** it, not that the agent
**wrote** it — Hermes edits user-authored skills on your behalf constantly. An
automatic "looks agent-made, adopt it" heuristic would eventually archive
something you hand-wrote. `adopt` refuses bundled, hub-installed, external, and
protected built-in skills, which have an owner other than you.
:::

Skills that ARE agent-created follow the full lifecycle:

- `active` → (30d unused) `stale` → (90d unused) `archived`
- Pinned skills bypass all auto-transitions
- Archives are recoverable via `hermes curator restore <name>`

If you want to protect a specific skill from ever being touched — for example a
hand-authored skill you rely on — use `hermes curator pin <name>`. See the next
section.

## Pinning a skill

Pinning protects a skill from deletion — both the curator's automated archive passes and the agent's `skill_manage(action="delete")` tool call. Once a skill is pinned:

- The **curator** skips it during auto-transitions (`active → stale → archived`), and its LLM review pass is instructed to leave it alone.
- The **agent's `skill_manage` tool** refuses `delete` on it, pointing the user at `hermes curator unpin <name>`. Patches and edits still go through, so the agent can improve a pinned skill's content as pitfalls come up without a pin/unpin/re-pin dance.

Pin and unpin with:

```bash
hermes curator pin <skill>
hermes curator unpin <skill>
```

The flag is stored as `"pinned": true` on the skill's entry in `~/.hermes/skills/.usage.json`, so it survives across sessions.

Skills named in any cron job's `skills:` list are protected the same way for **auto-transitions** (the curator never stales/archives them while the reference remains), even when the job is paused or disabled. Prefer an explicit pin when you also want `skill_manage delete` blocked.

Only **agent-created** skills can be pinned — `hermes curator pin` refuses on bundled and hub-installed skills with an explanatory message if you try. Hub-installed skills are never subject to curator mutation. Bundled built-in skills are only touched when `curator.prune_builtins: true` (the default), and even then only archived after `archive_after_days` of non-use — never patched, consolidated, or deleted. Set `curator.prune_builtins: false` to exempt bundled skills entirely.

A small set of **protected built-ins** is hardcoded as never-archivable and never-consolidatable, regardless of `curator.prune_builtins`, pin state, or LLM judgment. These back load-bearing UX — for example, `plan` powers the `/plan` slash-command flow — so silently archiving one would turn its slash command into an "Unknown command" error with no signal to you. Protected built-ins are filtered out of the curator's candidate list entirely, so the consolidation pass never sees them.

If you want a stronger guarantee than "no deletion" — for instance, freezing a skill's content entirely while the agent still reads it — edit `~/.hermes/skills/<name>/SKILL.md` directly with your editor. The pin guards tool-driven deletion, not your own filesystem access.

## Usage telemetry

The curator maintains a sidecar at `~/.hermes/skills/.usage.json` with one entry per skill:

```json
{
  "my-skill": {
    "use_count": 12,
    "view_count": 34,
    "last_used_at": "2026-04-24T18:12:03Z",
    "last_viewed_at": "2026-04-23T09:44:17Z",
    "patch_count": 3,
    "last_patched_at": "2026-04-20T22:01:55Z",
    "created_at": "2026-03-01T14:20:00Z",
    "state": "active",
    "pinned": false,
    "archived_at": null
  }
}
```

Counters increment when:

- `view_count`: the agent calls `skill_view` on the skill.
- `use_count`: the skill is loaded into a conversation's prompt.
- `patch_count`: `skill_manage patch/edit/write_file/remove_file` runs on the skill.

Bundled and hub-installed skills are explicitly excluded from telemetry writes.

## Per-run reports

Every curator run writes a timestamped directory under `~/.hermes/logs/curator/`:

```
~/.hermes/logs/curator/
└── 20260429-111512/
    ├── run.json      # machine-readable: full fidelity, stats, LLM output
    └── REPORT.md     # human-readable summary
```

`REPORT.md` is a quick way to see what a given run did — which skills transitioned, what the LLM reviewer said, which skills it patched. Good for auditing without having to grep `agent.log`.

:::note No candidates? Report shows `(not resolved)`
When the curator has **no agent-created skills** to review, the LLM review pass
is skipped entirely. The report header will show
`Model: (not resolved) via (not resolved)` with `Duration: 0s` — this does **not**
indicate a configuration error or model resolution failure. It simply means there
were no candidates, so no model was ever invoked. The auto-transition phase still
runs and reports its counts normally.
:::

### Rename map in the summary

If a run consolidated multiple skills under an umbrella (or merged near-duplicates), the user-visible summary printed at the end of the run includes an explicit rename map showing every `old-name → new-name` pair the curator applied. This is in addition to per-skill transition lines, so when a wave of renames lands you can spot them at a glance without diffing the JSON report. The hint also surfaces under `hermes curator pin` so you can pin the umbrella name immediately if you want to lock the new label in.

## Restoring an archived skill

If the curator archived something you still want:

```bash
hermes curator restore <skill-name>
```

This moves the skill back from `~/.hermes/skills/.archive/` to the active tree and resets its state to `active`. The restore refuses if a bundled or hub-installed skill has since been installed under the same name (would shadow upstream).

## Disabling per environment

The curator is on by default. To turn it off:

- **For one profile only:** edit `~/.hermes/config.yaml` (or the active profile's config) and set `curator.enabled: false`.
- **For just one run:** `hermes curator pause` — the pause persists across sessions; use `resume` to re-enable.

The curator also refuses to run if `min_idle_hours` hasn't elapsed, so on an active dev machine it naturally only runs during quiet stretches.

## See also

- [Skills System](/user-guide/features/skills) — how skills work in general and the self-improvement loop that creates them
- [Memory](/user-guide/features/memory) — a parallel background review that maintains long-term memory
- [Bundled Skills Catalog](/reference/skills-catalog)
- [Issue #7816](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/issues/7816) — original proposal and design discussion