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Open-source contributions / Nous Research

Hermes Agent

The small runtime details behind a long-running agent.

My role

Open-source contributor

Period

2026

Focus

Python · Session state · Context management

My public contributions to Hermes focus on what happens as an agent conversation gets longer: routing messages, resuming state, managing large tool outputs and preserving continuity.

The work, in brief

Public pull requests with concrete failure cases and proposed fixes. The linked PRs show the implementation, discussion and current upstream status.

On this page+

01

Why runtime behavior matters

An agent can produce a good answer in one turn and still struggle over a longer session. Old state may reappear when a conversation resumes; a large tool response can crowd out useful context; intermediate messages can interfere with final delivery.

I work on these boundaries because they affect the usefulness of the whole system. They also lend themselves to concrete engineering questions: which state belongs to this session, what must be preserved, and which message should reach the user?

02

Session isolation and message delivery

One submitted fix addresses sanitizing resumed session history to prevent context leakage. Another examines a gateway path where interim assistant messages could suppress delivery of a final tool result.

The aim is to trace the failure through the runtime, identify the boundary that was crossed, and express a change that can be reviewed in the context of the existing project.

Resumed-session history proposalFinal tool-result delivery proposal

03

Large outputs and continuity

I also submitted an opt-in approach for compacting large tool results. A separate proposal addresses including compression lineage when reconstructing conversation continuity across interfaces.

These changes concern what information remains available after a long session has been shortened or restored. The public PRs are the best place to inspect the exact approach and its review status.

  1. 01Tool output & messages
  2. 02Session state / compression
  3. 03Resumed context
Large tool-result compaction proposalCompression-lineage proposal

04

Working in public

Open-source work makes the reasoning inspectable. A contribution needs a clear problem description, an implementation that fits the surrounding code and enough evidence for another developer to review it.

I describe these as submitted fixes and proposals. Submission, review and upstream adoption are distinct stages; the links below retain that history.

Links & further reading

Have a project, research question or collaboration in mind?

peterhpywk@gmail.com