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Hermes Official Tutorials · Part 188/9/2026

Tutorial 18: Tools & Toolsets — AI's Hands

Tutorial 18: Tools & Toolsets — AI's Hands — easy-to-understand guide based on official docs

This is part of the Hermes Agent official tutorial series. View all tutorials

Imagine giving your assistant a Swiss Army knife — each tool is a different blade, and a toolset is the little case that keeps the blades organized. That’s exactly what Tools & Toolsets do for Hermes Agent: they give your AI “hands” to actually do things, not just chat.

Tools & toolsets: the AI’s hands

Step 1: Meet the Tools (Your AI’s Fingers)

Hermes ships with a broad built-in tool registry covering web search, browser automation, terminal execution, file editing, memory, delegation, scheduled tasks, and more. Plugins add more tools — for example Home Assistant device control comes from the homeassistant catalog plugin.

Here’s the cheat sheet:

Category What it does Examples
Web Searches the internet, reads pages web_search, web_extract
Terminal & Files Runs commands, edits files terminal, read_file, patch
Browser Drives Chromium with Python over CDP, screenshots included browser_exec, browser_cdp, browser_dialog, browser_vault
Media Looks at images, makes art, speaks vision_analyze, image_generate, text_to_speech
Agent orchestration Plans, asks questions, writes code todo, clarify, execute_code, delegate_task
Memory Remembers past chats memory, session_search
Automation Schedules tasks cronjob
Integrations Talks to smart home, MCP servers, plugins ha_* (from the homeassistant catalog plugin), MCP tools

Beginner tip: Don’t memorize these. Just know they exist. You’ll pick the ones you need as you go.

Note on memory: Honcho cross-session memory is not a built-in toolset. It’s a memory provider plugin from the plugin catalog you install with hermes plugins install honcho. See Memory Providers for details.

Step 2: Turn Tools On (Like Flipping a Light Switch)

Tools are grouped into toolsets — think of them as pre-packed kits. You enable them per chat session or per platform (like Telegram vs. your computer).

Here’s how to control them:

# Use specific toolsets in a chat
hermes chat --toolsets "web,terminal"

# See every available tool (interactive menu)
hermes tools

# Configure tools for a specific platform
hermes tools

What you’ll see: When you run hermes tools, you get a friendly menu. Just press space to toggle tools on/off. It’s like choosing toppings for a pizza — pick what you want, leave the rest.

Step 3: Know the Common Toolsets (Your Go-To Kits)

You don’t need to remember all of them, but these are the ones you’ll use most:

  • web — search and read websites
  • search — general search tools
  • terminal — run commands on your computer
  • file — read and edit files
  • browser — automate a real browser
  • vision — analyze images
  • image_gen — generate images
  • skills — load and use skills
  • tts — text-to-speech
  • todo — plan and track tasks
  • memory — remember things between chats
  • session_search — search past sessions
  • cronjob — schedule tasks
  • code_execution — run code safely
  • delegation — let Hermes spawn sub-agents
  • clarify — ask you questions
  • messaging — send messages
  • discord — Discord tools
  • discord_admin — Discord admin tools
  • debugging — debug helpers
  • safe — safe-mode tools

Example: Want Hermes to research something and save notes to a file? Use --toolsets "web,file" and you’re set.

Step 4: Special Tools (The Hidden Gems)

Two cool extras worth knowing:

1. X (Twitter) Search — Search posts on X, but it’s off by default. You need xAI credentials (SuperGrok or XAI_API_KEY). Turn it on via hermes tools → 🐦 X (Twitter) Search.

2. Tool Gateway — If you’re a paid Nous Portal subscriber, you get web search, image gen, TTS, and browser automation without separate API keys. Just run:

hermes model

Then enable individual tools with hermes tools.

Step 5: Pick Your Terminal Backend (Where Commands Run)

The terminal tool can run commands in different places:

Backend What it does Best for
local Runs on your machine (default) Trusted tasks, development
docker Runs in isolated containers Security, testing
ssh Runs on a remote server Keeping the agent away from its own code
singularity (plugin) Uses Singularity containers HPC / scientific computing
vercel Runs in a Vercel sandbox Cloud deployments, long-running hosts

Beginner tip: Start with local. Switch to docker when you’re worried about safety.

Note on Singularity: The singularity backend is now an official plugin, formerly built in. Install it with hermes plugins install singularity (hermes update installs it for profiles that already use it).

Vercel sandbox backend

If you want commands to run in a Vercel sandbox, install the dependency and pick the image with:

python -c "import pm; pm.sync_venv(['vercel'], explicit=True)"
hermes config set terminal.backend vercel_sandbox
hermes config set terminal.vercel_image vercel/sandbox/universal:latest

Authenticate with all three of VERCEL_TOKEN, VERCEL_PROJECT_ID, and VERCEL_TEAM_ID. This access-token setup is the supported path for deployments and normal long-running Hermes processes on Render, Railway, Docker, and similar hosts. Fresh sandboxes start from terminal.vercel_image (default vercel/sandbox/universal:latest; the legacy vercel_runtime presets are deprecated by Vercel); Hermes defaults to /vercel/sandbox as the remote workspace root.

Next up: we’ll dive into the Skills System — how to teach Hermes new tricks that fit your workflow perfectly.

You now know how to give Hermes its “hands.” Next up, we’ll dive into how to create your own custom tools — so you can teach Hermes brand-new tricks that fit your workflow perfectly.

Stay tuned, and happy automating! 🚀

📖 Official Docs

This article is based on the official Hermes Agent documentation:Official docs › user-guide/features/tools

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