Skills System — AI Gets Smarter with Use | Easy Understand Hermes Agent

Think of your AI assistant as a new hire who starts with basic skills but becomes a specialist once you hand them the company manual.

That’s exactly what Hermes’ Skills System does — it gives your AI a living, breathing reference book it can consult whenever needed.

What Are Skills?

Skills are knowledge documents loaded on demand. They sit quietly in folders, taking up zero “brain space” (no token consumption) until your AI actually needs them. It’s like a map app on your phone — dormant in the background, ready to spring into action when you need directions.

Where Do Skills Live?

All skills reside in ~/.hermes/skills/ — the home base. On first installation, Hermes automatically copies a set of built-in skills there. Any skills you install from the marketplace or write yourself also land in this folder. Your AI can read, modify, or delete them anytime.

You can also add external skill folders, letting your AI scan multiple directories — like giving an employee several filing cabinets instead of just one.

Want to Start from Scratch?

By default, every new profile comes with built-in skills. But if you prefer a “clean slate” AI, here’s how:

Skip during installation (for the default profile):

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash -s -- --no-skills

Skip when creating a new profile:

hermes profile create research --no-skills

Adjust an existing profile anytime:

hermes skills opt-out            # Stop future auto-adds, keep existing files
hermes skills opt-out --remove   # Also delete unmodified built-in skills (with confirmation)
hermes skills opt-in --sync      # Undo and re-add built-in skills

Safety first: opt-out only stops future auto-additions — it never deletes any files you already have. The --remove flag is the only way to delete, and even then, it only removes built-in skills that have never been modified. Anything you wrote, edited, or installed from the marketplace stays safe forever.

How to Use Skills

Installed skills automatically become slash commands — type /research to invoke the research skill. Your AI will also load relevant skills on its own when needed, just like a proactive employee flipping through the manual.

The Bottom Line

The Skills System lets your AI stay light on its feet (saving tokens) while remaining ready to learn (on-demand knowledge).

Pro tip: Regularly run hermes skills opt-in --sync to update your skill collection — it’s like refreshing your team’s training handbook. Just remember to back up any skills you’ve customized before syncing!