/automation in the chat composer) consolidates the three operational surfaces you use to direct long-running agent work: Kanban for task-level agentic workflows, Profiles for switching Hermes configurations, and Cron for scheduled recurring jobs. Navigate between them with Shift+Left / Shift+Right.
Kanban
The Kanban sub-tab is an agent work surface backed by Hermes Agent’s persistent task store. It renders all of your boards at once, with tasks organised into status columns that mirror the Hermes CLI’s ordering.Board columns
Tasks move through the following statuses from left to right:| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
triage | Newly created, not yet prioritised |
todo | Ready to be scheduled |
scheduled | Time-delayed park — dispatcher skips until unblocked |
ready | Queued for the dispatcher to pick up |
running | A worker process is active |
blocked | Waiting on a dependency or human input |
done | Completed |
Herm reads kanban data in a non-blocking mode alongside the Hermes dispatcher so browsing the board never interferes with running tasks.
Working with tasks
Browse the board
Use
↑ / ↓ to move between tasks within a column. Each task shows its title, priority, and status at a glance.Open task detail
Press
Enter on a task to open the task detail view. This shows the full task body, assignee, run history, diagnostics, linked parent and child tasks, comments, and the tail of the worker log.Diagnostics and dispatch
The task detail view surfaces diagnostics emitted by Hermes Agent’s rule engine (hermes kanban diagnostics). Diagnostic entries carry a severity level — warning, error, or critical — a title, a detail message, and suggested actions. Herm displays these per-task so you can spot stuck or failing agent runs at a glance.
Structured status transitions (complete, block, unblock, archive, assign, dispatch) are executed via the Hermes CLI (hermes kanban <verb>), which ensures all associated lifecycle steps fire correctly.
Multiple boards
Herm renders all boards simultaneously. The board selected by theHERMES_KANBAN_BOARD environment variable (or the default board if the variable is unset) receives focus on mount, but you can navigate to any board from there. Jump directly to the Kanban sub-tab with /kanban.
Profiles
The Profiles sub-tab lists every Hermes profile on disk — the default profile plus any named profiles under~/.hermes/profiles/. Switching profiles changes the model, system prompt, and tool configuration that Hermes Agent uses for new sessions.
Switch profile
Highlight a profile and press
Enter to switch the active gateway to that profile.Create profile
Press
n to create a new profile. Herm validates the name inline before handing off to hermes profile create.Delete profile
Press
d to delete the selected profile.Reload list
Press
r to rescan the profiles directory.- The profile name and whether it is currently active or sticky
- The configured model and provider
- Skill count
- A preview of the profile’s
SOUL.mdsystem prompt - Whether the gateway is currently running under that profile
Profile names
Profile names must match the pattern[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]{0,63}. Names like hermes, default, test, tmp, root, and sudo are reserved. All write operations (create, delete, rename, export, use) route through the Hermes CLI so validation, skill seeding, and wrapper alias management are handled authoritatively.
Cron
The Cron sub-tab lets you schedule recurring agent jobs — prompts that Hermes Agent runs automatically on a schedule you define.Create a cron job
Press
n to open the job creation dialog. Specify the prompt text and the cron schedule expression.~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json (or the equivalent path under the active profile’s home). The Profiles sub-tab shows a crons count for each profile so you can see at a glance which profiles have scheduled work.
Jump directly to the Cron sub-tab at any time with /cron.