Hermes Agent's Biggest Update: iMessage, Auto Background Agents, Skills Hub

Key Takeaways

• Native iMessage support via Photon. You can now chat with your Hermes agent from iMessage on your phone — it connects back to the Hermes running on your computer, so you can fire off commands on the go. Setup is a single natural-language prompt (see below); Photon is described as free and hands you a phone number that routes to your agent. Finn positions iMessage for quick on-the-go messages, Telegram for threaded deep work, and the desktop app for when you're at your computer.
• Background sub-agents are now automatic. Previously you had to flip a flag; now a sufficiently complex prompt makes Hermes spin up background sub-agents on its own, so you can keep chatting (and even add tasks) while they work instead of waiting out a long job in silence.
• New live sub-agent tree. A dashboard tree shows every spawned sub-agent, what it's focused on, and the tool calls it's running — in his demo, five agents running 28 tool calls for a research task — so you can track parallel work at a glance.
• Unreal Engine 5.8 MCP. Unreal Engine 5.8 added MCP support, so Hermes can drive a full 3D game engine — a step beyond browser-based three.js builds — to assemble more complex games.
• Revamped desktop app. Open any chat in its own window for side-by-side multitasking (right-click a session → New window), a quick model / thinking-level selector at the bottom instead of editing config files, and a built-in terminal so you never leave the Hermes window.
• Dashboard profile builder + skills hub. Hermes dashboard opens a profile builder to spin up multiple specialized agents (pick models and skills through an onboarding flow rather than hand-editing config), plus a skills hub to browse and install community skills — with a per-skill security scan. Finn's own habit is safer still: take a skill's skill.md, hand it to your agent, and have it write a reviewed, custom version rather than installing third-party code blind. We recommend the same — treat any downloaded skill as untrusted until you've read it.
• Smarter memory + richer Telegram. Hermes now creates and patches its own skills more aggressively (frequent "self-improvement review" passes), and Telegram messages render tables, lists, bold, and smoother word streaming.

Commands & Code Mentioned

Hook Hermes up to iMessage using Photon according to the best practices from the new update
Hermes dashboard