Welcome

An introduction to Hermes Switch UI and what you can do with it.

A browser-based shell for the Hermes Agent runtime — chat, sessions, files, terminals, and more, all running on your own machine.

Quick Start

New here? Start with Your first chat — it gets you sending prompts in five minutes.

What is Hermes Switch UI

Hermes Switch UI is the front-end for the Hermes Agent — a local AI assistant runtime. The app runs in your browser at http://localhost:3000 (by default) and talks to the Hermes Agent gateway on port 8642. From here on this guide refers to it as "the app".

Two paired processes work together:

Hermes Switch UI Port 3000

The web-based terminal-native app that you interact with. Houses the UI components, configurations, and user feedback controls.

Hermes Agent Port 8642

The local backend engine that manages AI provider API integrations, handles persistent session histories, hosts tool suites, and manages localized secure storage.

You configure your AI provider once and the app routes chats, tool calls, and streaming responses through the agent.

Architecture at a glance

The two processes talk to each other locally, and the agent is the only thing that talks to the outside world. Your provider choice, sessions, memory, and skills all live behind the agent on disk.

What happens when you send a message

A chat round-trip is fully streamed. You see tokens land as the provider emits them, and the agent persists the session as it goes.

Hermes Switch UI — Home [Matrix Dark Theme]

SYS::CONNECTED

User Input

Can you explain the main benefit of running Hermes locally?

Hermes Agent [Streaming...]

Running locally gives you 100% data privacy. All provider configurations, session histories, vector memory, and active tools reside on your local machine, keeping your workspace secure.

> Enter prompt...

SEND [⌘ENTER]

What you can do

Core Features

Chat

Conversations with your chosen AI provider, with streaming responses, sessions, and a context-window indicator.

Sessions

Browse past chats and resume them from your persistent local workspace storage.

Files

Read, write, and browse files that the agent has secure local file system permissions to access.

Terminal

Open a real, high-performance PTY terminal inside the browser shell app.

Dashboard

Monitor health, concurrent jobs, backend process logs, and network gateway connection status.

Extended Features

Boards

Kanban board for agent task queues (when the agent's kanban plugin is installed).

Workflows

Multi-step agent flows and logic graphs defined as interactive node networks.

Conductor

A higher-level mission-control surface for coordinating complex multi-agent runs.

Operations

Live operational view of agent system and network activity in real-time.

Matrix3D

A gorgeous, immersive 3D office visualization of running agents.

Profiles

Save, select, and customize agent personas with preloaded context.

Skills

Browse, customize, and edit skills that the agent can programmatically invoke.

MCP

Manage Model Context Protocol servers the agent connects to for additional tools and resources.

Memory

View, manage, and edit the agent's persistent long-term memory files.

Jobs

Track the background job queues, progress, and historical performance.

Tasks

Detailed tracking and checklists for multi-phase agent planning.

Agora

A vibrant community hub for discovering and sharing skills, agents, and presets.

Pages that depend on optional gateway or dashboard endpoints (Conductor, Tasks, MCP, etc.) detect missing capabilities at startup and degrade gracefully instead of erroring.

How it's structured

The sidebar on the left holds the page navigation. The main area in the center is the active page. Connection status and other ambient info show in the header or status panel where relevant.

The app probes the Hermes Agent on startup to figure out which features are available, then enables or hides pages accordingly. You can re-probe at any time from the connection status panel.