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The Best Hermes Agent Skills, And How They Plug Into Your Agent OS

By Julian Goldie · 7 October 2026 · agentos.guide

The best Hermes Agent skills are obsidian, google-workspace and claude-code, and all three ship free with Hermes.

A Hermes Agent skill is a reusable instruction pack, saved as a SKILL.md file, that the agent loads only when a job needs it.

I run Hermes inside my own Agent OS every day, so this ranking comes from use and not from a catalogue.

Here is the ranked list first, then a six-step quick-start, and then how to write a skill of your own.

The best Hermes Agent skills, ranked for Agent OS users

Here is my full ranking, with the part of an Agent OS that each skill feeds.

These rankings are my own picks from running Hermes inside my Agent OS, and they are not a measured benchmark.

I put obsidian first because every agent I run reads the same Obsidian vault, so memory is the layer that pays off most.

Google Workspace is second because email and calendar are where most of the daily work arrives.

Claude Code is third because it lets Hermes act as the manager while a specialist coding tool does the building.

What a Hermes Agent skill is

A Hermes Agent skill is a reusable instruction pack that Hermes loads only when a task needs it.

Each skill is a folder with a file called SKILL.md inside it, and that file holds the steps, the commands and the pitfalls for one kind of job.

Hermes Agent is free and open source from Nous Research, and its bundled skills cost nothing.

The official docs describe skills as on-demand knowledge documents that follow the open agentskills.io standard.

Skills solve one problem, which is that an agent without them has to work out the right method from scratch every time.

Skills, plugins and tools are three different layers

People mix these three up all the time, so here they are side by side.

In short, tools and plugins give Hermes abilities, and skills give Hermes the know-how to use those abilities well.

I rank the other two layers in my best Hermes Agent plugins list and my best Hermes Agent tools list.

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Quick-start: install and enable your first skill

This is the six-step route, and it takes a few minutes in a terminal.

Most of my top ten are already installed, because Hermes copies its bundled skills into ~/.hermes/skills/ when you set it up.

Every hub install goes through a security scan before Hermes asks you to confirm.

The Skills Hub page in the official docs also has an "Install in Hermes" button, which hands the same install to the desktop app.

You can keep installed skills current with hermes skills check and hermes skills update.

How to use a skill inside your Agent OS

Every installed skill becomes a slash command, so /humanizer followed by your text is all it takes.

You can stack up to five skills at the start of one message, and Hermes loads them all before it reads your instruction.

You can also ask in plain English, because Hermes sees a short list of skill names and descriptions and picks the right one.

The docs call this progressive disclosure, and they put that short list at roughly 3,000 tokens.

Hermes only opens a full skill when it needs it, which is why a long skill list does not slow down every message.

If you always use the same set together, hermes bundles create groups several skills under one command.

If you want a skill loaded from the first message, start Hermes with the -s flag and the skill name.

In my Agent OS, the same skills work from the chat window, from scheduled jobs and from messaging apps, because they all run through the same Hermes install.

The top three skills in more detail

1. obsidian

The obsidian skill works straight on the note files, so there is no API and no account to connect.

You tell Hermes where your vault lives, and it can then read a note, search the vault, create a new note or add to an existing one.

I run seven agents on one shared vault, and my Hermes second brain guide shows exactly how that vault is laid out.

2. google-workspace

The google-workspace skill reaches Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Contacts, Sheets and Docs through a sign-in that Hermes manages.

It includes a daily brief procedure that pulls together your schedule, clashes, meeting prep and urgent email.

I would start by asking it for summaries and drafts, and only let it send once you trust the results.

3. claude-code

The claude-code skill teaches Hermes how to hand a coding job to the Claude Code CLI and check the result.

Hermes bundles a codex skill and an opencode skill as well, so you can delegate to whichever coding tool you already use.

The skill is free, but Claude Code itself needs a Claude plan or an API key.

🔥 Want the exact Hermes Agent skills setup I run inside my Agent OS?

Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.

→ Get access here

The rest of the list, and where each one fits

The youtube-content skill pulls a transcript and reshapes it into chapters, summaries, threads or blog posts.

The grounded-citations skill uses a small ledger script to number its sources, so the citations come from pages Hermes actually fetched.

The humanizer skill is based on Wikipedia's "Signs of AI writing" guide, which gives it a real checklist to work through.

The github skill runs repository chores through the free gh command-line tool.

The himalaya skill handles mailboxes that are not on Google, and it needs the separate Himalaya CLI installed first.

The competitor-news-monitor skill is set up once in chat and then runs on a schedule.

The duckduckgo-search skill is a fallback, so it appears when the main web search tool is not configured.

Two more bundled skills deserve a mention, because hermes-agent teaches Hermes about itself and llm-wiki builds a linked markdown knowledge base.

How to write your own Hermes Agent skill

The skill that helps most is usually one that holds your own process, and there are three ways to make it.

The /learn route is the one I recommend first.

You type /learn and then a path, a link or a plain description of what you want Hermes to learn.

Large sources such as a book become a knowledge-base skill, with a short index and one file per chapter that Hermes opens only when needed.

My Book Brain Engine guide shows a real run where Hermes turned a whole book into a skill.

If you write one by hand, the file starts with a short header that holds a name, a description and a version.

The body then has four sections called When to Use, Procedure, Pitfalls and Verification.

Keep the description short and specific, because that one line is what Hermes reads when it decides whether to load the skill.

You can add references, scripts and templates folders next to the file for longer material.

When your skill is ready to share, hermes skills publish sends it to a registry.

How skills fit an Agent OS workflow

An Agent OS has four moving parts, which are a model, tools, memory and scheduled work.

Skills are the glue between them, because they tell the model how to use the tools for a job.

A memory skill such as obsidian means every session starts with context instead of a blank slate.

A scheduled skill such as competitor-news-monitor pairs well with recurring jobs, and my Hermes loop guide covers the command that keeps an agent checking on its own.

Delegation skills such as claude-code turn one agent into a manager of several specialists.

Because skills are plain files, you can copy the same folder to a second machine and get the same behaviour there.

Limits and common mistakes

A skill is only instructions, so it cannot add an ability that your tools do not already have.

Several skills depend on an outside command-line tool, and they will not work until you install it.

A weaker model follows a long procedure less faithfully, and that is my experience rather than a measured result.

Installing every skill you can find is a mistake, because a shorter list is easier for the model to choose from.

Community skills are instructions your agent will obey, so read them with hermes skills inspect before you install.

Skills that live inside a cloned project stay off until you run hermes skills trust, which is a sensible default.

FAQ

What are the best Hermes Agent skills?

My top three are obsidian for memory, google-workspace for Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sheets, and claude-code for delegating coding work. All three are bundled with Hermes Agent and free.

How do I install a Hermes Agent skill?

Run hermes skills search with a keyword, preview the result with hermes skills inspect, then run hermes skills install with the identifier, such as official/research/duckduckgo-search. Hermes scans every hub install before it asks you to confirm.

What is the difference between a Hermes skill, a plugin and a tool?

A tool is a function the model can call, and a plugin is installed code that adds tools, hooks or integrations. A skill is a markdown instruction file that teaches Hermes how to use those tools for one kind of job.

How do I write my own Hermes Agent skill?

The fastest way is the /learn command, which writes a skill from a folder, a web page, a PDF or a workflow you just ran. You can also create a folder in ~/.hermes/skills and write the SKILL.md file by hand.

Do Hermes Agent skills work with any model?

Yes, because a skill is plain text that any model can read. In my experience stronger models follow long procedures more faithfully, so test your key skills on the model you plan to use.

Final word on the best Hermes Agent skills

Start with obsidian, google-workspace and claude-code, because they cover memory, admin and building.

Then use the learn command to capture one process of your own, and you will be getting real work out of the best Hermes Agent skills.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ The Book Brain Engine: Hermes /learn

→ Hermes AI + Obsidian: The Second Brain

→ Hermes /loop: The Command That Watches Your Business

→ The Hermes Command Desk

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