Key idea: Back up your ~/.hermes directory regularly. Use hermes backup for a full snapshot, or hermes backup --quick for just the critical files. Store the zip somewhere safe.
You’ve heard it a thousand times — back up your data. I run mine daily. Here’s why it matters:
Hermes stores its core memory, persona, and configs in ~/.hermes/.
The built-in CLI creates a complete, timestamped archive:
hermes backup
You’ll see something like:
hermes backupScanning ~/.hermes ...Backing up 4579 files ... 500/4579 files ... ... 4500/4579 files ...
Backup complete: /home/jeff/hermes-backup-2026-06-01-101955.zip Files: 4579 Original: 311.7 MB Compressed: 129.1 MB Time: 14.8s
Excluded directories: checkpoints/ hermes-agent/ node/lib/node_modules/ skills/autonomous-ai-agents/hermes-agent/
python
Restore with: hermes import hermes-backup-2026-06-01-101955.zip
Pro tip: If you only need the essentials — config, sessions, API keys, and auth — use the --quick flag. It's way faster and skips the full file scan:
hermes backup --quick
The native command uses SQLite’s backup() API under the hood, so it works safely even when Hermes is running.
If you want to roll your own backup script, grab these files:
The native hermes backup command already handles all of the above. But if you're scripting it yourself, or you want extra control over what goes where, these are the critical pieces.
Custom skills sometimes dump their output (generated articles, images, etc.) into ~/.hermes/skills/ or ~/.hermes/cache/ if the skill didn't specify an output directory. This is easy to miss — you might not even find those files after the job finishes. Check both directories if you're looking for something a skill produced.
You probably don’t need to back up the database if you just chat. But if you care about your conversation history — say you want to search past sessions or build a semantic index — then definitely keep a copy. Here’s what’s inside:
The database holds:
From the official docs, the schema has:
If you do decide to back it up, always use SQLite’s online backup API instead of a direct file copy — that keeps the database consistent. The native hermes backup command already handles this for you.
So go run hermes backup and store that zip somewhere safe.
Backup Hermes Agent was originally published in Dev Genius on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.