Multi-Profile Architecture

Hermes supports isolated agent profiles, each with their own identity, memory, skills, config, and SOUL.md. This means “everyone has their own” — separate memory banks, separate namespaces, separate runtime behavior.

Why Profiles Matter

Running everything through a single agent creates cross-contamination: a Playground task could bleed into research memory, a PMO dispatch could conflict with dev toolsets. Profiles solve this by giving each use case its own sandboxed environment.

Our Profile Roster

Profile	Purpose	Model	Key Toolsets
`default`	General CLI conversations, daily tasks	GLM-5.1 (Ollama Cloud)	Full set
`development`	Software engineering, git workflows, CI/CD	Kimi K2.6 (Ollama Cloud)	terminal, file, skills, github, messaging
`f5-admin`	F5 BIG-IP platform administration, system config, cross-module coordination	Kimi K2.6 (Ollama Cloud)	terminal, file, skills, github
`f5-asm`	F5 ASM — WAF, security policies, attack prevention, bot detection	Kimi K2.6 (Ollama Cloud)	terminal, file, skills, github
`f5-gtm`	F5 GTM/DNS — global load balancing, failover, geographic routing	Kimi K2.6 (Ollama Cloud)	terminal, file, skills, github
`f5-ltm`	F5 LTM — virtual servers, pools, iRules, SSL/TLS, traffic optimization	Kimi K2.6 (Ollama Cloud)	terminal, file, skills, github
`playground`	NGINX site content, Royal Scribe persona	Kimi K2.6 (Ollama Cloud)	terminal, file, web, skills
`pmo`	Kanban orchestrator, task dispatch	Qwen3-8B (LM Studio local)	kanban, delegation, terminal
`research`	Deep research, market analysis, competitive intelligence	MiniMax-M2.7 (Ollama Cloud)	terminal, file, web, skills

How It Works

Each profile lives under ~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/ and contains:

config.yaml — Model selection, provider config, toolset restrictions, external skill directories
SOUL.md — Persona definition and behavioral rules (e.g., the Playground’s Royal Scribe persona)
skills/ — Profile-specific skills loaded via skills.external_dirs in config.yaml
memories/ — Isolated memory bank with its own bank_id
cron/ — Profile-scoped cron job artifacts (though the global scheduler is the source of truth)

Profile Families

The four F5 profiles (f5-admin, f5-ltm, f5-asm, f5-gtm) share the same toolsets and the f5-engineer-skills skill directory, but diverge in their SOUL.md persona — each is a domain specialist with focused expertise. f5-admin acts as the cross-module coordinator, dispatching to the LTM/ASM/GTM specialists when a task falls within their domain.

Key Decisions

Isolation over convenience. Each profile has its own memory bank so context doesn’t leak between roles.
workdir matters. Cron jobs must set workdir to the profile directory (e.g., /Users/hermes/.hermes/profiles/pmo) so the correct SOUL.md and config.yaml load at runtime.
Profile skill directories are only used when listed in skills.external_dirs in that profile’s config.yaml — simply placing files in ~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/skills/ is not enough.

CLI Commands

# Create a new profile
hermes profile create <name>

# List profiles
hermes profile list

# Switch active profile for a session
hermes -p <profile> chat

# Sync skills to a profile
sync-to-profile.sh <profile>