Hermes Profiles

Hermes Profiles is an open-source MIT-licensed repository by Magnus Hedemark that provides curated, opinionated agent profiles for use with the Hermes agent harness. Each profile bundles a role identity (SOUL.md), skill dependencies, and configuration for a specific engineering or organizational capability, enabling deployment as a Hermes agent in specialist swarms.

What It Is

Hermes Profiles is a collection of ready-to-use agent role definitions designed for the Hermes agent harness. The repository ships 39+ profiles spanning engineering, product, design, C-suite, and editorial roles — from backend engineer and ML engineer to CEO, CLO, and CHRO. Each profile is self-contained and opinionated, using Hermes-native patterns such as artifact-pyramid output format, skill-based methodology loading, and Hermes kanban for multi-agent orchestration.

Repository Architecture

The repository is organized into two main directories:

• profiles/ — Role-specific bundles, each containing a SOUL.md (first principles and output contract) and a profile.yaml listing required skills and Hermes configuration. Profiles symlink into the shared skills/ directory so one copy of each skill serves every profile without duplication.
• skills/ — Methodology directories following the Agent Skills open standard, each with a SKILL.md and a references/ subdirectory. The README notes that skills are compatible with Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, and 20+ other coding agents.

Profile Coverage

The 39 profiles span a wide range of specialist roles:

• Engineering: backend-engineer, frontend-engineer, platform-engineer, ml-engineer, data-engineer, data-architect, data-scientist, site-reliability-engineer, security-engineer, qa-engineer
• Architecture & Design: technical-architect, ux-designer, brand-designer
• Product & Strategy: product-manager, implementation-planner, orchestrator, spec-driven-development
• Editorial & Research: researcher, technical-writer, editor, copy-editor, reviewer, verifier, wonderer, writer, curator
• C-Suite: CEO, CTO, CFO, COO, CPO, CMO, Chief of Staff, CLO, CHRO

Setup Path

Using a profile requires cloning the repository and symlinking the desired profile into ~/.hermes/profiles/, then invoking hermes --profile <name>. Skills are bundled within each profile — no separate install step is needed. The README specifies that profiles must work on a vanilla Hermes install and must not depend on agent-specific infrastructure such as council or cashew.

Portability Tradeoff

The README explicitly distinguishes between the two layers: profiles (SOUL.md + profile.yaml) are Hermes-specific and unlikely to work in other harnesses, while the skills (methodology directories with SKILL.md + references) follow an open standard and are designed to be portable across the broader ecosystem of coding agents. This makes the skills layer a reusable contribution to the wider agent tooling community even for non-Hermes users.

Current Status

The repository was created in June 2026 and last updated in August 2026, with 125 stars and 15 forks on GitHub. It is actively maintained under the MIT License and accepts community contributions via issues and pull requests.