Hermes Agent Wallpapers & Skins — Theme Guide

Just like swapping your phone’s wallpaper to match your mood, Hermes Agent lets you re-skin its entire command-line look in seconds.

Skin ≠ Personality: Two Different Things

Hermes cleanly separates what the AI says from how the terminal looks:

Personality controls tone and word choice — polite, blunt, poetic, whatever you prefer.
Skin changes only the visual layer: border colors, loading animations, even the brand name displayed.

This means you can keep your AI assistant sounding professional while the interface goes full neon-dark or crisp daylight-bright.

Is a Wallpaper Change What You Want?

If you went looking for a new wallpaper for your Hermes Agent, a skin is the thing that changes how the interface looks — the interface itself is re-themed instead of an image sitting behind your icons. Type /skin to see the current look and every available one, and remember that a custom skin is just a YAML file full of hex colors.

Switching Skins: Three Commands

Inside any Hermes conversation, just type:

/skin                # show current skin + list all available
/skin ares           # switch to the built-in "ares" skin
/skin mytheme        # load a custom skin from ~/.hermes/skins/mytheme.yaml

Want a skin applied automatically every time? Edit ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

display:
  skin: default

Now Hermes boots straight into your chosen look.

Built-in Skins: From “Golden Cute” to “Volcano Eruption”

Skin	Vibe	Highlights
`default`	Gold + kawaii	Classic Hermes look, warm gold borders, cute emoji in loading text
`ares`	Deep red + bronze	War-god style; verbs like “forging” and “marching,” plus sword-and-shield ASCII art
`mono`	Pure grayscale	Zero color — perfect for minimal terminals or screen recordings
`slate`	Cool blue	Developer-focused, royal blue borders, calm and professional
`daylight`	Light theme	Dark text + blue borders, designed for white backgrounds
`warm-lightmode`	Warm brown light	Parchment tones for users who like cozy bright themes
`poseidon`	Sea-god teal	Deep ocean gradients, “probing depth” loading text, trident ASCII art
`sisyphus`	Grayscale + persistence	Boulder theme; loading text says “pushing the rock uphill”
`charizard`	Volcanic orange	Flame gradients, “measuring burn” loading text, dragon ASCII art

Skins in the Desktop App

The Desktop app lists your CLI skins next to its own themes in Settings → Appearance, with a few differences worth knowing:

default (and /skin default) means the Desktop default theme, Nous. A stock display.skin: default therefore never repaints Desktop, and a runtime switch to default from the CLI/TUI or config.yaml moves a Desktop pick back to Nous.
The classic gold look is a separate Desktop theme named classic (Classic Hermes). Pick it in Appearance, or run /skin classic, /skin gold or /skin hermes in a Desktop chat. It follows the light/dark toggle: gold on navy in dark mode, the CLI’s light-terminal goldenrod palette in light mode.
classic is a reserved Desktop theme name, like the other Desktop built-ins (mono, slate, …). A user skin file with one of those names keeps the Desktop palette there; its customCSS still applies.

Custom Skins: Every Color Is Yours

All skins are built around a colors: block. You can tweak any value using hex codes:

colors:
  banner_border: "#CD7F32"   # banner border color
  banner_title: "#FFD700"    # title text color
  banner_accent: "#FFA500"   # section heading color

Configurable keys include banner borders, titles, accent text, status bars, and tool-activity prefixes. Just drop a new YAML file into ~/.hermes/skins/ and you’ve got your own personal theme.

Raw `customCSS`

For selector-level styling that colors can’t express — font sizes, spacing, pseudo-elements, animations — drop raw CSS into customCSS. The desktop app and web dashboard inject it as a <style> tag while the skin is active and remove it when you switch to a skin without it.

name: myskin

colors:
  background: "#1a1030"
  ui_accent: "#ff5fd2"

customCSS: |
  .chat-input { font-size: 16px; }
  .status-bar { background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5); }

The field is capped at 32 KiB and applies to GUI surfaces only — the CLI and TUI ignore it. Because it lives in your skin YAML under ~/.hermes/skins/, it survives app updates (no more hacking app.asar).

Summary & Practical Tips

The skin system makes Hermes feel genuinely yours — whether you want beauty, focus, or better readability on camera.

Pro tip: If you often use your terminal outdoors in bright sunlight, go straight for daylight or warm-lightmode. And if you’re recording a tutorial, mono keeps viewers’ eyes on the commands, not the rainbow. Start with a built-in skin to get a feel, then experiment with your own colors — it’s the easiest way to make Hermes truly yours.