Hermes Agent Integration

Keep provides a memory provider plugin for Hermes Agent. Once configured, Hermes gets persistent reflective memory across sessions — semantic search, conversation versioning, and agent prompts.

If you have Ollama running locally, it will be auto-detected. For other providers, put the appropriate API keys in your Hermes environment first. Supports multiple independent profiles.

Install

curl -sSL https://keepnotes.ai/scripts/install-hermes.sh | bash

This finds your Hermes installation, installs the plugin, and runs the setup wizard. Choose your embedding and summarization providers when prompted.

Or manually: 

# 1. Copy the plugin into Hermes
cp -r hermes-plugin /path/to/hermes-agent/plugins/memory/keep

# 2. Run the setup wizard — installs keep-skill, configures providers
hermes memory setup

# 3. Start a new Hermes session
hermes

When Hermes starts, ask it:

"Follow the keep instructions in your system prompt."

What the agent sees

The agent's system prompt is framed by a Hermes-specific wrapper (.prompt/agent/system-hermes) that renders alongside the built-in memory tool and the USER PROFILE / MEMORY blocks. It positions keep as the cross-session working memory (now) and long-term store, sitting above Hermes' pinned-essentials layer. The wrapper then includes the generic reflective-memory practice (.prompt/agent/system), so the same core instructions are available in any host.

On first session, the context includes step-by-step instructions to read the practice guide (keep_help), read the library (keep_flow get), and reflect (keep_prompt reflect). After the agent completes this and updates now, subsequent sessions show its own working context instead.

Three tools are available: keep_flow (all operations), keep_help (documentation), keep_prompt (context-injected prompts).

For keep_flow, the normal form is always state + params: 

keep_flow(state="get", params={"id": "now"})
keep_flow(state="list", params={"prefix": ".library", "include_hidden": true})
keep_flow(state="put", params={"id": "now", "content": "updated intentions"})

keep_flow(state="get", ...) returns the requested note in note-first form, including its tags and body, with contextual sections such as similar notes, related/meta sections, parts, and version navigation when available. It is not a bare exact-fetch API.

state_doc_yaml is available, but it is an advanced escape hatch for genuinely custom inline flows. Hermes agents, especially lighter models, are more reliable when examples stick to state + params.

Agent behavior

Once the agent completes the initial practice (reading, reflecting, updating now), it typically generates its own workflow or checklist for using reflective memory effectively. This self-generated practice tends to be more durable than the initial instructions.

Keep datastore

By default, the setup wizard creates the store at $HERMES_HOME/keep (e.g. ~/.hermes/keep). This is written to $HERMES_HOME/.env as KEEP_STORE_PATH.

If KEEP_STORE_PATH is already set in the environment when Hermes starts, the provider uses that path instead. This allows sharing a store across profiles or pointing to an external store, but it overrides the per-profile default.

Using keep CLI with the Hermes store

To use the keep standalone CLI, set KEEP_STORE_PATH to point at the store: 

export KEEP_STORE_PATH=~/.hermes/keep
keep find "recent work"
keep get now
keep flow stats

Architecture