{"slug": "how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github", "title": "How to Install a Custom Hermes Skill from GitHub", "summary": "A developer published a guide on installing custom Hermes skills from GitHub, detailing a workflow to copy a SKILL.md file into ~/.hermes/skills without requiring a separate registration command. The post includes steps for downloading, verifying, and running the skill, as well as automating it with cron. The guide aims to reduce trial and error for users.", "body_md": "This guide walks through a tested end-to-end workflow: copy a custom SKILL.md from GitHub into ~/.hermes/skills, confirm it shows up, run it, and optionally automate it. Hermes does not require a separate register or install command for that layout.\n\nI published a custom SKILL.md on GitHub and wanted a dependable installation path for Hermes. After reading several docs without finding a single operational narrative, I ran through the procedure with an AI assistant and captured the result here.\n\nThis article is the cleaned-up version of that session so you can repeat the same steps with less trial and error.\n\nShell examples below were validated in a real environment; substitute your repo, path, branch, and local skill slug where indicated.\n\nOriginal ask to the assistant:\n\ni’ve written a customSKILL.mdthat has been published at my Github account. Please guide me how to install it either through chat here or in command line\n\nWhat the session covered:\n\nThe source repo: [https://github.com/j3ffyang/ai-custom-skills](https://github.com/j3ffyang/ai-custom-skills)\n\nYou need two things before copying into ~/.hermes/skills:\n\nThe example below uses one of my own custom SKILL.md files.\n\nDownload to a staging directory, then install (§2):\n\n```\nmkdir -p /tmp/hermes-skillcurl -sL -o /tmp/hermes-skill/SKILL.md \\  \"https://raw.githubusercontent.com/j3ffyang/ai-custom-skills/main/hermes/ai-newsletter-prompt/SKILL.md\"\n```\n\n**Clone alternative:** If you use git clone, copy SKILL.md from the working tree with cp instead of curl — handy for private repos or when you want sibling files next to the skill.\n\nCopy SKILL.md into ~/.hermes/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md. That is the whole install: Hermes loads skills from this directory and does not need an extra CLI step to register a local custom skill. In this example the slug is ai-newsletter-daily, so the path is ~/.hermes/skills/ai-newsletter-daily/SKILL.md.\n\nRun:\n\n```\nhermes skills list\n```\n\nThe custom skill should appear in the output.\n\n```\nhermes skills list                         Installed Skills                                   ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┓┃ Name                  ┃ Category   ┃ Source  ┃ Trust   ┃ Status  ┃┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━┩│ ai-newsletter-daily   │            │ local   │ local   │ enabled │\n```\n\nIf you install a skill only by copying it under ~/.hermes/skills, hermes skills inspect does not cover that local skill, so you cannot use inspect to verify required_environment_variables or related metadata.\n\nThe example SKILL.md used here does not define required_environment_variables in the file. Runtime keys still depend on what the skill actually calls; set them from the prose in SKILL.md, your README, or your own notes.\n\nFor ai-newsletter-daily you need:\n\nPersist these in your shell profile (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, etc.) or export them in the session where Hermes runs.\n\n```\nexport BRAVE_API_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxexport FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy\n```\n\nHermes routes user intent to skills from both the terminal UI and bridged chat apps. You do not need a special syntax unless your deployment or bridge defines one.\n\n**Hermes TUI**\n\n**Messaging channels (e.g. WhatsApp, Telegram)**\n\n**If the skill does not run**\n\nTo generate and deliver output on a schedule (for example a daily newsletter), wire a Hermes cron job or an external scheduler that invokes the same workflow you use interactively. Exact flags depend on your Hermes version and channel setup; use hermes — help and your install docs for cron-specific syntax.\n\nRe-fetch the raw SKILL.md (§1), replace the file under ~/.hermes/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md, then confirm with hermes skills list.\n\n[How to Install a Custom Hermes Skill from GitHub](https://blog.devgenius.io/how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github-c9ee50494bfb) was originally published in [Dev Genius](https://blog.devgenius.io) on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github", "canonical_source": "https://blog.devgenius.io/how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github-c9ee50494bfb?source=rss----4e2c1156667e---4", "published_at": "2026-07-07 12:31:59+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-07 13:03:59.587868+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": ["Hermes", "GitHub", "Dev Genius", "Medium"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-to-install-a-custom-hermes-skill-from-github.jsonld"}}