# hermes-agent v2026.8.18 — Hermes Agent v0.20.4 (2026.8.18)

- Product: hermes-agent (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/hermes-agent)
- Vendor: NousResearch
- Date: 2026-08-18
- Version: v2026.8.18
- Original notes: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases/tag/v2026.8.18
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/hermes-agent/releases/v2026.8.18

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — Desktop glass/translucency surface work including matte glass and frost picker
- **added** — macOS pre-select capability for glass surfaces
- **added** — Tabbed SESSIONS|BOTS sidebar with per-bot hide/unhide functionality
- **added** — NVIDIA SkillEvaluator Tier 1 advisory scanning on skill installs with license and security checks
- **added** — Configurable timeout for cron media-send
- **added** — Manual-run attachments for cron media-send
- **added** — Kanban native OS notifications
- **fixed** — Bot Mode group-chat long-running member turns
- **fixed** — Markdown rendering in Bot Mode group-chat
- **fixed** — Cross-machine routing in Bot Mode group-chat
- **fixed** — SessionDB event-loop-thread contention issues
- **changed** — Improved hermes update honesty for parked-branch detection
- **changed** — Enhanced cron media-send missed-fire surfacing

#### Hermes Agent v0.20.4 (v2026.8.18)

**Release Date:** August 18, 2026

> Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~74 PRs merged since v0.20.3 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

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##### About this release

Since v0.20.3 (v2026.8.16.2, tagged August 17), this window landed **~146 commits** across **~265 files** (+21,697 / −2,217) — **~74 merged PRs** including the desktop glass/translucency surface work (matte glass, frost picker, macOS pre-select), the tabbed SESSIONS|BOTS sidebar with per-bot hide/unhide, Bot Mode group-chat fixes (long-running member turns, Markdown rendering, cross-machine routing), NVIDIA SkillEvaluator Tier 1 advisory scanning on skill installs (license + security checks), cron media-send hardening (configurable timeout, manual-run attachments, missed-fire surfacing), SessionDB event-loop-thread and contention fixes, `hermes update` parked-branch honesty, and kanban native OS notifications.

**Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0**, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

##### Updating

- `hermes update` from an existing install
- Fresh install: `curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash`

**Full Changelog**: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/compare/v2026.8.16.2...v2026.8.18