Hermes Gateway

hermes-gateway is the daemon layer that projects a single Hermes agent into messaging platforms such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal, Matrix, and email. It turns a terminal-native agent into a persistent multi-platform service without changing the underlying tool-using agent loop.

Core idea

The gateway separates two concerns:

agent cognition — the normal Hermes conversation loop, tools, memory, skills, and sessions
transport — how user messages arrive and where responses are delivered

Because the transport layer is separate, the same Hermes substrate can operate through many chat surfaces while preserving the same long-term context and tool access.

What the gateway does

receives inbound messages from a platform adapter
routes them into a Hermes session
runs the agent with its normal tools
returns the final response to the originating chat or configured home channel

This makes the gateway a kind of protocol bridge from messaging ecosystems into an agent runtime.

Distinguish gateway from tool gateway

Hermes has two different "gateway" ideas:

hermes-gateway — chat transport and daemonization
the Nous Tool Gateway — managed execution backends for tools such as web search, browser automation, image generation, and TTS

The first moves messages. The second moves tool calls.

Why it matters

Most assistants exposed on messaging platforms are reduced-capability bots. Hermes instead keeps the full agent intact:

the Telegram or Discord surface is not a separate toy bot
it is the same agent that could also run in the CLI
memory, skills, cron, and tool use remain available

So the gateway is what turns Hermes from "an assistant you launch" into "an agent that stays reachable."

Gateway as daemon substrate

The gateway is normally run as a background service. That matters because it also anchors other durable behaviors:

scheduled cron execution
long-lived platform authorization state
home-channel delivery
background messaging notifications

This makes hermes-gateway an instance of the daemon-design-pattern applied to an agent runtime.

Session continuity across surfaces

The important invariant is not that every platform shares one giant transcript, but that they share one context substrate:

common skills inventory
common memory store
common model/provider configuration
common tool layer
common durable state, unless isolated by profile

This means a Hermes gateway surface is best thought of as another entry point into the same agent environment, not as a separate bot implementation.

Profiles and isolation

When Hermes uses hermes-gateway with hermes-agent profiles, each profile can run its own gateway process and bot identity. That allows multiple independent long-lived agents on one machine without mixing sessions, skills, or memory.

References

Source: C:\Users\executor\AppData\Local\hermes\skills\autonomous-ai-agents\hermes-agent\SKILL.md
Source: C:\Users\executor\AppData\Local\hermes\hermes-agent\website\docs\user-guide\features\tool-gateway.md
Source: C:\Users\executor\AppData\Local\hermes\hermes-agent\website\docs\user-guide\profiles.md
Source: C:\Users\executor\AppData\Local\hermes\hermes-agent\website\docs\user-guide\features\cron.md