# hermes-agent v2026.8.19 — Hermes Agent v0.20.5 (v2026.8.19)

- Product: hermes-agent (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/hermes-agent)
- Vendor: NousResearch
- Date: 2026-08-21
- Version: v2026.8.19
- Original notes: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases/tag/v2026.8.19
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/hermes-agent/releases/v2026.8.19

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** — Bot Mode group-room threads
- **added** — Foldable conversation summaries
- **added** — Blob-face avatars
- **added** — PDF and file attachments with drag and drop support
- **added** — Keyless web tier with 5-vendor free rotation and ring failover
- **added** — Web search on fresh installs with zero keys
- **added** — Fuzzy /model picker in CLI
- **added** — Ctrl+P command palette in CLI
- **added** — hermes worktree list and prune commands
- **added** — Opencode-free zero-auth provider
- **added** — Multi-question clarify feature
- **added** — Persistent memory for cron jobs
- **added** — Per-job reasoning effort configuration for cron jobs
- **changed** — Enhanced /status command with richer output
- **changed** — Paint-first Bot Mode hydration for desktop performance
- **changed** — React Compiler integrated in both renderers
- **fixed** — Execution-discipline and runtime stall guards from Composio eval findings
- **changed** — hermes update now provides receipts
- **changed** — Fleet update includes --plan verification

#### Hermes Agent v0.20.5 (v2026.8.19)

**Release Date:** August 19, 2026

> Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~323 PRs merged since v0.20.4 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

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##### About this release

Since v0.20.4 (v2026.8.18, tagged August 18), this window landed **~746 commits** across **~1,250 files** (+111,500 / −20,701) — **~323 merged PRs** including Bot Mode group-room threads, foldable conversation summaries, blob-face avatars, and PDF/file attachments with drag & drop; the keyless web tier (5-vendor free rotation with ring failover, web search on fresh installs with zero keys); a CLI polish wave (fuzzy /model picker, Ctrl+P command palette, richer /status); execution-discipline and runtime stall guards from the Composio eval findings; `hermes update` receipts and fleet `--plan` verification; `hermes worktree list/prune`; the opencode-free zero-auth provider; multi-question clarify; desktop perf work (paint-first Bot Mode hydration, compositor spinners, React Compiler in both renderers); and cron jobs gaining persistent memory and per-job reasoning effort.

**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/v2026.8.18...v2026.8.19