What Hermes can actually do

Hermes groups its abilities into toolsets you turn on or off. This is the map of what an agent can reach when you allow it.

Web & searchLook things up and read pages

Files & terminalCreate, edit, and run things

BrowserClick through sites with vision

Memory & recallRemember and search your past

SkillsReusable playbooks it can grow

Automation (cron)Run tasks on a schedule

DelegationSpawn helper agents for big jobs

IntegrationsMCP, Composio, and messaging apps

What Hermes Can Do

Station 11 — The toolbox. Time: 12 min. Pass when you can name three things Hermes can do beyond replying.

What this is

Hermes groups its abilities into toolsets you can switch on or off. The map above shows the main ones. You control them with hermes tools, and only the toolsets you enable are available — so the agent can reach exactly what you allow, and nothing more.

Why it matters

A chatbot answers. An agent acts — it can search the web, read and write files, browse a site, remember your context, and run jobs on a schedule. Knowing the toolbox is how you spot the tasks worth handing to Hermes.

What to do

Skim the categories and notice what each unlocks:

Web & search — look things up and read pages for you.
Files & terminal — create, edit, and run things (inside your chosen safety layer).
Browser — click through real sites, with vision to "see" the page.
Memory & recall — remember useful context and search your past sessions.
Automation (cron) — run a task on a schedule, like a daily briefing.
Delegation — spin up helper agents to work on parts of a big job in parallel.
Integrations — connect external tools through MCP or Composio, and messaging apps like Telegram.

The part that makes Hermes different is that it grows with you:

It can turn things it learns into reusable skills (playbooks it loads on demand).
It can search its own past conversations instead of starting cold.
Over time it builds a picture of how you work, so it needs less hand-holding.

Reference

Capabilities depend on your setup, provider, enabled toolsets, and permissions.

Some of the most powerful abilities — scheduled jobs (cron) and always-on messaging — really shine when Hermes lives on an always-on machine. That is exactly what the Developer Upgrade VPS route is for.

Common mistakes

Turning on every toolset "just in case" instead of only what you need.
Expecting scheduled or messaging features to run when your laptop is asleep.
Thinking memory and skills work by magic — they build up as you use Hermes intentionally.

Next step

Go to Tool Demo Missions.