Stop cooking everything in one profile.
Your work, business, family and 20 side projects all share one profile: one memory, one set of skills, one chat list. Pick your situation and get a ready-made setup.
Plan it. Copy it. Done.
Nothing is uploaded. Your plan stays in this browser, and you can share it as a link.
What best describes you?
This sets a starting point. You can change everything afterwards.
Not sure? Answer 4 quick questions
Your profiles
Each one is a separate Hermes with its own memory. Short lowercase names work best: a profile called work becomes the command work chat.
What does Hermes handle for you?
OptionalList projects, clients and life areas, one per line. We'll suggest which profile each belongs in. Skip this if you only want the profiles.
How will you use them?
Advanced options
Hermes' clone option copies memory too. The recommended choice clears the copy in each new profile so the mess doesn't follow you.
Four layers, four jobs.
Because memory is capped, splitting also gives each profile its own budget instead of one shared 2,200-character notebook. Two more files worth knowing: SOUL.md is the agent's personality (you write it); MEMORY.md and USER.md are what it has learned and knows about you (it writes them). All three are per profile. Which file does what →
Keep what it already knows.
Hermes' built-in memory is a short list of curated notes (by default about 2,200 characters of MEMORY.md and 1,375 of USER.md). Sort those few notes; your old chats live in session history and stay searchable.
Back up
hermes backup zips your config, skills, sessions and data (including every profile) to ~/hermes-backup-<timestamp>.zip. Large downloads like local models and browser profiles are left out. The planner includes it by default.
Let Hermes sort it
The Paste into Hermes tab reads its own MEMORY.md and USER.md, proposes where each entry goes, and waits for your OK before moving anything.
Slim the default
Keep default as a small generalist or router. Give it a name if you like: hermes profile rename default Jarvis.
Old chats stay put
Past sessions remain in the default profile and stay searchable there. You don't need to move them.
Switching takes one word.
If switching costs more than that, you'll drift back to the default.
Each profile gets a command in ~/.local/bin (make sure that's on your PATH): work chat, biz chat, or hermes -p work. Make one the default with hermes profile use work. The prompt shows work ❯ so you always know where you are.
The Bots tab lists every profile with an avatar, a persistent chat and unread dots. Group them into sections and attach recurring jobs as Routines.
One Telegram or Discord bot per profile. A single gateway serves them all, and each message lands in its own profile's memory and keys.
cd into the repo and run dev chat. Hermes loads the AGENTS.md from the folder you start in, and picks up nested ones as it works in subfolders. Twenty projects fit comfortably inside one coding profile.
In Bot Mode, drop several Bots into a group chat and @mention them: @research digs, @dev builds.
Six ways to get it wrong.
Two agents, one profile
Never point two running agents at the same profile. Both write memory and contaminate each other.
Sharing a bot token
Clones never copy bot tokens, on purpose. One bot per profile. Hermes blocks a duplicate token on Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp and Signal.
Treating profiles as sandboxes
They isolate Hermes state, not your disk. terminal.cwd sets a start folder; use a container backend for a real wall.
Expecting live edits
SOUL.md, AGENTS.md and memory load at session start. Start a new chat after changing them.
Assuming OAuth is copied
Claude, Codex and xAI logins are shared, not copied. For a separate account: <name> auth add <provider>.
Over-splitting
If two areas constantly need each other's context, they're one profile. Start with 3–4; --clone-from makes later splits cheap.
Questions people ask.
Should each of my 20 projects be its own profile?
Usually not. Group projects by who they serve (work, business, a client) and give each repo an AGENTS.md. A project earns its own profile only if it needs different keys, a different persona, its own bot, or strict separation, like a client under NDA. Pick “Needs its own profile” for those in step 3.
Do I lose anything by splitting?
Nothing is deleted: the default keeps its history and memory. But new profiles start with empty session history and no scheduled jobs, bot tokens are never cloned, and Claude/Codex/xAI logins stay shared. You can rebuild a profile any time with hermes profile create x --clone-from y.
Can profiles share knowledge?
Built-in memory is per profile by design. For shared memory, use an external memory provider. With Honcho (plugin plus an API key or self-hosted server), a cloned profile gets its own AI peer inside the same shared workspace. In Bot Mode, Bots can also message each other and share group chats, and Kanban coordinates work across multiple profiles.
Do I need a gateway per profile?
No. On current Hermes, one gateway started from the default profile serves every profile's bots, each with its own credentials and memory, and a named profile can't start its own without --force. Hermes turns this on automatically when it's safe (for example, no duplicate bot tokens); otherwise it serves only the default profile and warns you at startup.
How do I share my setup?
Use Copy share link in the planner to send someone your exact plan. To share the agents themselves, hermes profile export <name> produces a .tar.gz with keys stripped, or publish a profile distribution others install with hermes profile install.