Best Hermes Skills in 2026:
The 17 I Would Install First
A raw install is smart. A skilled install is unfair. Explore the verified 17-skill modular setup with live GitHub star counts, copyable commands, day-one installation order, and context budget rules.
17
Skills Analyzed
482K+
Verified Stars
05
Day-One Stack
$0
Total Tooling Cost
If I wiped Hermes today, I would not open a blank chat and figure it out. I would install skills first. The seventeen below cover almost every real job I hand an agent: research, engineering, security, video, browser control, writing cleanup, repo memory, and loop discipline.
Agent-Reach (web access), addyosmani/agent-skills (engineering gates), Humanizer (writing cleanup), Defuddle (clean web input), and Minions (parallel task mission control).By Muhammad Shadab Shams
AI Automation Consultant running production agent clusters across live properties. Every GitHub star count, owner, and install path was re-verified live via the GitHub API on August 27, 2026.
Install These Five on Day One
Loading all 17 skills immediately will cause you to spend your first week debugging your setup and blowing your context window. These five form the optimal zero-cost stack covering input, process, and output.
addyosmani/agent-skills
Production engineering lifecycle skills (define, plan, build, verify, review, ship) that force senior developer habits onto coding agents.
Agent-Reach
A CLI and skill pack giving your agent direct read access to the public internet across X, Reddit, YouTube, GitHub, Bilibili, and XiaoHongShu with zero paid API keys.
Humanizer
De-slop writing skill that strips recognizable AI tells (hype adjectives, uniform lists, structural cliches) based on Wikipedia's AI-detection markers.
Defuddle
Clean web content extractor by Kepano (Obsidian CEO). Takes messy web URLs and returns pure article Markdown, stripping ads, cookies, and boilerplate.
Minions
Kanban mission control dashboard for Hermes and autonomous agents. Live tool call streaming, human sign-off gates, and local SQLite persistence.
Explore All 17 Hermes Skills
Matt Pocock skills
mattpocock/skills
The most-starred skill pack on GitHub by a wide margin, built on small, composable, editable skills rather than one giant opaque framework.
addyosmani/agent-skills
addyosmani/agent-skills
Production engineering lifecycle skills (define, plan, build, verify, review, ship) that force senior developer habits onto coding agents.
Agent-Reach
Panniantong/Agent-Reach
A CLI and skill pack giving your agent direct read access to the public internet across X, Reddit, YouTube, GitHub, Bilibili, and XiaoHongShu with zero paid API keys.
OpenMontage
calesthio/OpenMontage
An open-source agentic video production system packing 12 production pipelines, 100+ tools, and over 700 skill and knowledge files.
codebase-memory-mcp
DeusData/codebase-memory-mcp
High-speed MCP server that indexes your repository into a persistent knowledge graph across 158 languages with sub-millisecond queries.
Humanizer
blader/humanizer
De-slop writing skill that strips recognizable AI tells (hype adjectives, uniform lists, structural cliches) based on Wikipedia's AI-detection markers.
Anthropic Cybersecurity Skills
mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills
817 structured cybersecurity playbooks across 29 security domains, mapped to MITRE ATT&CK, NIST CSF 2.0, D3FEND, and NIST AI RMF.
Defuddle
kepano/defuddle
Clean web content extractor by Kepano (Obsidian CEO). Takes messy web URLs and returns pure article Markdown, stripping ads, cookies, and boilerplate.
make-interfaces-feel-better
jakubkrehel/make-interfaces-feel-better
Specialized UI polish skill focusing on micro-interactions, optical alignment, typography scales, hit areas, hover states, and elevation shadows.
SkillClaw
AMAP-ML/SkillClaw
Evolutionary agent skill system that digests past sessions, refines procedures you actually use, and prunes unused skills automatically.
Minions
agent37-platform/minions
Kanban mission control dashboard for Hermes and autonomous agents. Live tool call streaming, human sign-off gates, and local SQLite persistence.
youtube-skills
ZeroPointRepo/youtube-skills
YouTube video transcript extractor, channel scanner, and playlist analyzer that bypasses cloud IP bans without yt-dlp blocks.
oh-my-hermes
witt3rd/oh-my-hermes
Multi-agent orchestration framework built natively for Hermes primitives: enforces research -> interview -> ralplan -> ralph execution cycles.
Resemble AI Detect
resemble-ai/detect-skill
Media safety verification skill detecting AI-generated or manipulated audio, synthetic voices, and deepfake video clips using Resemble's enterprise detection model.
Composio skills
composiohq/skills
Tool router, auth management, and production session patterns connecting agents safely to 200+ SaaS platforms (Slack, Gmail, GitHub, Hubspot).
Browser Harness
Category Recommendation
Architecture pattern where an agent navigates your logged-in browser session and accumulates reusable site helpers for future runs.
Loopy / Loop Library
Category Recommendation
Loop discipline framework: enforces explicit success checks, hard stop conditions, and strict iteration caps for autonomous loops.
The Context Budget Problem Nobody Mentions
Skills consume context when they are available, not just when they execute. Descriptions, parameter schemas, and system triggers all occupy the prompt token window before your task even begins.
Cybersecurity Library
Overwhelms prompt memory if loaded on general frontend or copywriting tasks.
OpenMontage Pack
Consumes vast context budgets; only load inside dedicated video pipelines.
Matt Pocock & Day-One
Small composable skills loaded per repo keep agent attention sharp.
- Install per project, not globally: A video project does not need red-team security playbooks.
- Prune what never fires: If a pack hasn't triggered in 30 days, it is paying rent with your scarce prompt tokens.
- Favor composable packs: Prefer smaller, editable skill modules over giant monolithic frameworks.
Omitted Foundational Giants
The two largest skill repos on GitHub were excluded from this list because they are foundational base frameworks rather than external add-on skills:
obra/superpowers
Core foundational agent harness
anthropics/skills
Official Anthropic reference skills
Notable External Mentions
High-value specialized skill packages worth exploring for specific workflows:
How to Choose in 60 Seconds
Failure-driven installation beats aspirational installation every single time.
What breaks most often?
Install only the skill for that exact failure point and test it for one week. Stop installing speculative toolchains.
Repetitive or Exploratory?
Repetitive work needs loops & mission control (Minions, codebase-memory). Exploratory work needs Agent-Reach & Defuddle.
Is output public-facing?
If code or copy is published publicly, Humanizer is mandatory to strip synthetic formatting and match your genuine voice.
Glossary of Agent Terms
Agent Skill
A written procedure an agent loads on demand when a task matches it. Adds consistency, not raw capability.
Hermes Agent
The Nous Research agent runtime these skills target, though most work across Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor too.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
The standard connectivity protocol for exposing tools and structured data to AI agents.
Knowledge Graph
A structured map of entities and relationships used to understand codebases without token-heavy file reads.
Context Window
Working memory available for a task. Loaded skills consume context whether they execute or not.
Skill Pack
A packaged repository containing multiple related procedures installed as a modular suite.
Harness
The runtime wrapper handling agent tools, system prompts, memory, execution gates, and error recovery.
Agent Loop
A cycle where an agent plans, executes, checks results, and repeats until a defined stop rule is satisfied.
AI Tells
Predictable phrasing patterns marking text as machine-written (hype adjectives, rigid parallelism, vague abstractions).
Dual-Use Tooling
Techniques usable for defense or attack (security playbooks) requiring strict operational authorization.
Frequently Asked Questions
Detailed answers on context window impact, runtime compatibility, licensing, and installation.
Need Custom Multi-Agent Architecture?
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