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Hermes Group Chat: Run A Council Of Bots Inside Your Agent OS With Five Copy-Paste Prompts

By Julian Goldie · 3 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Hermes group chat turns your Agent OS from a set of separate assistants into a council: two to six bots in one room, each on its own model, working a brief together in rounds.

Inside an Agent OS every specialist is already a Hermes profile, so a room simply seats the ones you have.

Hermes v0.22.6 (2 Nov 2026) lists Desktop group chat rename, disband, mentions and attachment paste.

This guide gives you a five-minute quick start, five prompts to paste into your agent, and a weekly routine for keeping rooms healthy.

Fancy a hand mapping your own council? Book a free SEO strategy session with my team.

Why A Council Belongs In Your Agent OS

Most Agent OS setups end up with a researcher, a writer, a builder and a reviewer living in separate chats.

You become the go-between.

A room removes that step: the bots read one shared thread, tag each other with @name, and tag you with @user only when a decision is yours.

The Bot Mode docs describe it as several bots deliberating together, which is exactly the job a council does.

Members of the AI Profit Boardroom get the installable Agent OS, so the profiles you'd seat are already in place.

Quick Start: Your First Room In Five Minutes

1. Open Hermes Desktop and switch the left sidebar to the Bots tab (it sits next to Sessions).
2. Make sure you have at least two bots; if not, use New Agent and give each a Name, Title and Description.
3. Open New Group Chat, tick two to six bots, name the room and, if you like, add a room picture.
4. Click the new room row; it opens as a tab in the main chat window.
5. Send a brief that names who goes first, for example @researcher gather facts, @reviewer check them.

Already have rooms? Right-click any local bot and choose Manage groups to drop it into several rooms at once or create a new one inline.

How The Room Decides Who Speaks

Each send is capped at 10 messages and 3 rounds, so a council can't talk in circles.

Not every bot will answer every time; the docs say a bot speaks only when it has something new to add.

Words like stop inside code, quotes or blockquotes are treated as content, so pasting a log never freezes a bot.

A held bot still receives every message it missed once you release it.

🔥 Want ready-built councils and the prompts that run them?

The AI Profit Boardroom gives you step-by-step video trainings, the installable Agent OS, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members sharing their bot setups.

→ Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Reading The Room Row At A Glance

Every council gets its own row in the Bots roster, styled like a Discord channel.

The row stacks the members' avatars, shows how many bots sit in the room, previews the latest line and carries a timestamp.

The needs you badge is the one to watch: it lights when a bot tags @user, when a question is waiting, or when a command needs approval.

Rooms and bots share one list, ordered by pins and then by recent activity, and a bot in three councils still has just one DM row.

To organise a busy Agent OS:

• Right-click a room → Pin to top for the council you open every morning.
• Right-click → Move to section, or drag the row onto a heading, to file rooms by client or project.
• Use the Move up and Move down arrows to set the order among rooms.

Pins, sections and room order are stored on that Desktop only, so set them up on each machine you use.

Renaming a room from Group settings carries its log, member sessions, memberships and picture, and a name already in use is refused.

Rooms themselves are mirrored to every gateway your Desktop is connected to, so a second Desktop on the same gateway sees the council and its history.

Prompt 1: Design The Council Seats

Give this to your main agent before you create anything:

I want a Hermes group chat for [task]. Propose 3 bots (max 6) for it.
For each: a Name, a one-line Title that says its job, a Description,
which skills/toolsets/MCP servers it needs (and which it must NOT have),
and whether it should pin a different model. Keep roles non-overlapping
so each bot passes when it has nothing new to add.

Titles matter: each bot's system prompt carries the teammate roster with names and roles.

Prompt 2: Write Each Seat's SOUL.md

Write a SOUL.md for the [Title] bot in my [room name] room.
Rules: reply briefly or pass; never repeat a teammate; tag @user for any
judgement call involving money, clients or deletions; tag the right
teammate with @name when a handoff is needed. Keep it under 200 words.

Paste the result into the Custom SOUL.md field under Advanced when you create the bot.

Prompt 3: Write The Room Brief

Turn this goal into a group chat brief for my council: [goal].
Name the lead with an @mention, say what "done" looks like in one line,
and list what each bot should hand off and to whom. Keep it short enough
to fit in one message.

Short briefs suit rooms: each turn carries only room messages since that bot's last turn, up to about 200 messages or 32,000 characters.

Prompt 4: Summarise Before It Gets Long

Read the last stretch of our [room name] room and write a 10-line
summary: decisions made, open questions, who owns each next step.
Post it as a single message so the room can continue from it.

Pair it with the Compress history button in Group settings (the gear in the room header) when a member starts giving empty replies.

That button runs the same compression as /compress on the member's hidden room session; compress one member at a time.

Prompt 5: Audit The Room Weekly

Review my Hermes group chats. For each room: is every member still
pulling its weight, is any bot always passing, are there unresolved
failures in Activity, and should anyone be added or removed via
Manage members? Give me a keep / change / disband call for each.

Disband with care: it removes the room permanently on every client, and recreating the name gives you a fresh room.

A Weekly Council Workflow

1. Monday: post the week's brief from Prompt 3 into the room.
2. Daily: check the roster for the needs you badge and answer approvals in place with once, session, always or deny.
3. Midweek: run Prompt 4 and compress any member that has gone quiet with empty replies.
4. Friday: run Prompt 5, then use Manage members to re-seat the room; added bots read recent history on their first turn.

Want a scheduled job to feed the room? Routines are Hermes cron jobs and can post into a member's room session; see the Hermes agent cron job guide.

Keep The Council On One Gateway

When every member sits on the same gateway, that gateway runs the turns through a durable driver, so the room carries on after you close Desktop.

The multi-connection Desktop guide keeps bot mentions and delegation gateway-local by default, since crossing machines changes files, credentials and trust.

New Group Chat respects that by only offering bots on the active connection for gateway-managed groups.

For bigger councils on server-hosted rooms, the configuration reference documents hosted_rooms.discussion.max_rounds and max_messages in the root config.yaml; restart the processes after changing them.

📞 Want your council reviewed by people who run them?

Book a free SEO strategy session and my team will look at your bots, your rooms and where they fit your business.

→ Book a free strategy session

Updating To v0.22.6

The v0.22.6 release notes say the CLI updates with hermes update and the Microsoft Store app through the Store.

Desktop installed from the .exe or .dmg installer gets no change in this release and updates with the next bundled one.

The Desktop docs note the app checks for updates in the background and offers a one-click update when one is ready.

A separate note: group chats on Telegram, Discord or Slack run through the messaging gateway and its group_sessions_per_user setting, not through Bot Mode rooms.

For step-by-step trainings on building every seat, join the AI Profit Boardroom.

FAQ

Can my agent create the group chat for me?

The docs describe creating rooms in Desktop through New Group Chat or Manage groups. Use your agent to design the seats and briefs, then create the room yourself.

How do I stop one bot without stopping the room?

Write stop, halt or pause right next to its mention, such as stop @builder. Mention it again, or address @all, to release it.

Do room conversations clutter my Sessions list?

No. Bot Mode sessions, including every group chat member session, stay out of the global Sessions sidebar and live in the Bots pane.

Can I reorder my rooms?

Yes. Pin a room to the top, file it into a section, or use the Move up and Move down arrows. That order is saved on the Desktop you set it on.

Final word on Hermes Group Chat

Paste Prompt 1 into your agent now, seat the council it proposes, and book a free strategy session if you want help shaping your Hermes group chat.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ Hermes Delegation: Run Subagents In Your Agent OS

→ Hermes Webapp: Run Your Agent OS From A Browser

→ Hermes Agent Cron Job: Schedule, Stop And Recover Jobs In Your Agent OS With 5 Copy-Paste Prompts

→ The Best Hermes Agent Plugins: My Top 10, And Where Each One Fits In Your Agent OS

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