hermes-agent/website/docs/user-guide/profiles.md

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Profiles: Running Multiple Agents

Run multiple independent Hermes agents on the same machine — each with its own config, API keys, memory, sessions, skills, and gateway state.

What are profiles?

A profile is a separate Hermes home directory. Each profile gets its own directory containing its own config.yaml, .env, SOUL.md, memories, sessions, skills, cron jobs, and state database. Profiles let you run separate agents for different purposes — a coding assistant, a personal bot, a research agent — without mixing up Hermes state.

When you create a profile, it automatically becomes its own command. Create a profile called coder and you immediately have coder chat, coder setup, coder gateway start, etc.

Quick start

hermes profile create coder       # creates profile + "coder" command alias
coder setup                       # configure API keys and model
coder chat                        # start chatting

That's it. coder is now its own Hermes profile with its own config, memory, and state.

Creating a profile

:::tip Quickest setup: run hermes setup --portal inside the new profile to wire up models + tools at once. See Nous Portal. :::

Blank profile

hermes profile create mybot

Creates a fresh profile with bundled skills seeded. Run mybot setup to configure API keys, model, and gateway tokens.

If you plan to use this profile as a kanban worker (or want the kanban orchestrator to route work to it), pass --description "<role>" at create time so the orchestrator knows what it's good at:

hermes profile create researcher --description "Reads source code and external docs, writes findings."

You can also set or auto-generate the description later with hermes profile describe — see the Kanban guide for the full routing model.

Clone config only (--clone)

hermes profile create work --clone

Copies your current profile's config.yaml, .env, and SOUL.md into the new profile. Same API keys and model, but fresh sessions and memory. Edit ~/.hermes/profiles/work/.env for different API keys, or ~/.hermes/profiles/work/SOUL.md for a different personality.

Clone everything (--clone-all)

hermes profile create backup --clone-all

Copies everything — config, API keys, personality, all memories, full session history, skills, cron jobs, plugins. A complete snapshot. Useful for backups or forking an agent that already has context.

Clone from a specific profile

hermes profile create work --clone --clone-from coder

:::tip Honcho memory + profiles When Honcho is enabled, --clone automatically creates a dedicated AI peer for the new profile while sharing the same user workspace. Each profile builds its own observations and identity. See Honcho -- Multi-agent / Profiles for details. :::

Using profiles

Command aliases

Every profile automatically gets a command alias at ~/.local/bin/<name>:

coder chat                    # chat with the coder agent
coder setup                   # configure coder's settings
coder gateway start           # start coder's gateway
coder doctor                  # check coder's health
coder skills list             # list coder's skills
coder config set model.default anthropic/claude-sonnet-4

The alias works with every hermes subcommand — it's just hermes -p <name> under the hood.

The -p flag

You can also target a profile explicitly with any command:

hermes -p coder chat
hermes --profile=coder doctor
hermes chat -p coder -q "hello"    # works in any position

Sticky default (hermes profile use)

hermes profile use coder
hermes chat                   # now targets coder
hermes tools                  # configures coder's tools
hermes profile use default    # switch back

Sets a default so plain hermes commands target that profile. Like kubectl config use-context.

Knowing where you are

The CLI always shows which profile is active:

• Prompt: coder ❯ instead of ❯
• Banner: Shows Profile: coder on startup
• hermes profile: Shows current profile name, path, model, gateway status

Profiles vs workspaces vs sandboxing

Profiles are often confused with workspaces or sandboxes, but they are different things:

• A profile gives Hermes its own state directory: config.yaml, .env, SOUL.md, sessions, memory, logs, cron jobs, and gateway state.
• A workspace or working directory is where terminal commands start. That is controlled separately by terminal.cwd.
• A sandbox is what limits filesystem access. Profiles do not sandbox the agent.

On the default local terminal backend, the agent still has the same filesystem access as your user account. A profile does not stop it from accessing folders outside the profile directory.

If you want a profile to start in a specific project folder, set an explicit absolute terminal.cwd in that profile's config.yaml:

terminal:
  backend: local
  cwd: /absolute/path/to/project

Using cwd: "." on the local backend means "the directory Hermes was launched from", not "the profile directory".

Also note:

• SOUL.md can guide the model, but it does not enforce a workspace boundary.
• Changes to SOUL.md take effect cleanly on a new session. Existing sessions may still be using the old prompt state.
• Asking the model "what directory are you in?" is not a reliable isolation test. If you need a predictable starting directory for tools, set terminal.cwd explicitly.

Running gateways

Each profile runs its own gateway as a separate process with its own bot token:

coder gateway start           # starts coder's gateway
assistant gateway start       # starts assistant's gateway (separate process)

Different bot tokens

Each profile has its own .env file. Configure a different Telegram/Discord/Slack bot token in each:

# Edit coder's tokens
nano ~/.hermes/profiles/coder/.env

# Edit assistant's tokens
nano ~/.hermes/profiles/assistant/.env

Safety: token locks

If two profiles accidentally use the same bot token, the second gateway will be blocked with a clear error naming the conflicting profile. Supported for Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, and Signal.

Persistent services

coder gateway install         # creates hermes-gateway-coder systemd/launchd service
assistant gateway install     # creates hermes-gateway-assistant service

Each profile gets its own service name. They run independently.

:::note Inside the official Docker image Per-profile gateways are supervised by s6-overlay (PID 1 in the container), so hermes profile create <name> automatically registers an s6 service slot at /run/service/gateway-<name>/. hermes -p <name> gateway start/stop/restart dispatches to s6-svc instead of spawning a bare process — crashes are auto-restarted and docker restart preserves the previously-running set of gateways. See Per-profile gateway supervision for details. :::

Configuring profiles

Each profile has its own:

• config.yaml — model, provider, toolsets, all settings
• .env — API keys, bot tokens
• SOUL.md — personality and instructions

coder config set model.default anthropic/claude-sonnet-4
echo "You are a focused coding assistant." > ~/.hermes/profiles/coder/SOUL.md

If you want this profile to work in a specific project by default, also set its own terminal.cwd:

coder config set terminal.cwd /absolute/path/to/project

From the dashboard

The web dashboard is a machine-level surface that can manage any profile's config, API keys, skills, MCPs, and model via the profile switcher in its sidebar — no per-profile dashboard needed. coder dashboard routes to the machine dashboard with the coder profile preselected. The dashboard's Chat tab also follows the switcher, spawning a conversation under the selected profile's home.

Note: "Set as active" on the dashboard's Profiles page is the sticky default for future CLI/gateway runs (same as hermes profile use) — to edit a profile from the dashboard, use the switcher instead.

Updating

hermes update pulls code once (shared) and syncs new bundled skills to all profiles automatically:

hermes update
# → Code updated (12 commits)
# → Skills synced: default (up to date), coder (+2 new), assistant (+2 new)

User-modified skills are never overwritten.

Managing profiles

hermes profile list           # show all profiles with status
hermes profile show coder     # detailed info for one profile
hermes profile rename coder dev-bot   # rename (updates alias + service)
hermes profile export coder   # export to coder.tar.gz
hermes profile import coder.tar.gz   # import from archive

Deleting a profile

hermes profile delete coder

This stops the gateway, removes the systemd/launchd service, removes the command alias, and deletes all profile data. You'll be asked to type the profile name to confirm.

Use --yes to skip confirmation: hermes profile delete coder --yes

:::note You cannot delete the default profile (~/.hermes). To remove everything, use hermes uninstall. :::

Tab completion

# Bash
eval "$(hermes completion bash)"

# Zsh
eval "$(hermes completion zsh)"

Add the line to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc for persistent completion. Completes profile names after -p, profile subcommands, and top-level commands.

How it works

Profiles use the HERMES_HOME environment variable. When you run coder chat, the wrapper script sets HERMES_HOME=~/.hermes/profiles/coder before launching hermes. Since 119+ files in the codebase resolve paths via get_hermes_home(), Hermes state automatically scopes to the profile's directory — config, sessions, memory, skills, state database, gateway PID, logs, and cron jobs.

This is separate from terminal working directory. Tool execution starts from terminal.cwd (or the launch directory when cwd: "." on the local backend), not automatically from HERMES_HOME.

The default profile is simply ~/.hermes itself. No migration needed — existing installs work identically.

Sharing profiles as distributions

A profile you built on one machine can be packaged as a git repository and installed with one command on another machine — your own workstation, a teammate's laptop, or a community user's environment. The shared package includes the SOUL, config, skills, cron jobs, and MCP connections. Credentials, memories, and sessions stay per-machine.

# Install a whole agent from a git repo
hermes profile install github.com/you/research-bot --alias

# Update later when the author ships a new version (keeps your memories + .env)
hermes profile update research-bot

See Profile Distributions: Share a Whole Agent for the full guide — authoring, publishing, update semantics, security model, and use cases.