Tutorial 18: Tools & Toolsets — AI's Hands

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.

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

Hermes ships with a toolbox full of built-in tools. 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	Opens a real browser, sees the screen	browser_navigate, browser_vision
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	ha_*, MCP tools

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

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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.

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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
• terminal — run commands on your computer
• file — read and edit files
• browser — automate a real browser
• vision — analyze images
• memory — remember things between chats
• cronjob — schedule tasks
• delegation — let Hermes spawn sub-agents

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

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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.

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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	Uses Singularity containers	HPC / scientific computing

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

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What’s Next?

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! 🚀