Hermes Agent Update v0.16 is HUGE! (Surface Release)

Hermes Agent v0.16 'Surface' ships a desktop app, a browser admin panel, and cuts default skill bloat.

Desktop app vs TUI

The new Hermes desktop app handles drag-and-drop config, skills, and sessions without touching a terminal. Creator Ron flags a real cost: it bleeds tokens on heavy UI schemas, so coding sessions should stay in the TUI. Community user Tom in Tampa confirms MCP tools are not discoverable in desktop sessions yet — the fix is an open pull request. A thin client to your headless server now lets a VPS-hosted agent connect back to the desktop UI.

Web dashboard becomes an admin panel

The dashboard now has a dedicated system tab exposing the Hermes server, messaging channels, MCP catalogs, credentials, webhooks, and memory settings. Ron calls this a very big deal because routine admin leaves the config files and lives in the browser — useful for team handoff and more compatible with terminal-heavy workflows than the desktop app.

Skills trimmed, not curated

Default built-in skills were pruned; niche and heavy skills are now optional installs, and a --no skills blank-slate install is available. The front-matter environment gating keeps context-specific skills out of the default index. The Skills Hub adds Nvidia skills as a trusted source alongside OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face — relevant for CUDA-X and NIM workflows.

Smaller loop-level wins

A new undo command rolls back the last several user turns. Max spawn depth is effectively uncapped for deeper delegation trees. Read file token usage drops by about 14%. Model picker now supports fuzzy search (V4 FL finds Deepseek V4 Flash). The Hermes prompt-size diagnostic exposes context usage directly. News portal subscribers (including the free tier) get file/video generation routed through the managed news gateway instead of leaking to user API keys.

Messaging, Kanban, security

Telegram and Discord streaming moved to a structured event protocol. Kanban /goal cards run workers in a dedicated slashgoal loop; tasks now carry attachments, vision-capable workers auto-attach referenced images, and tasks can be terminated via endpoint. Browser automation got SSRF hardening in the event-loop checks.