--- title: Hermes Agent Skills That Make It 10x More Powerful description: A rundown of add-on skills that extend the Hermes AI coding agent, most of which also work with other coding agents. Highlights include Planning with Files,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/hermes-agent-skills-that-make-it-10x-more-powerful-aeg9safbi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Hermes Agent Skills That Make It 10x More Powerful | daily.dev og:description: A rundown of add-on skills that extend the Hermes AI coding agent, most of which also work with other coding agents. Highlights include Planning with Files,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/hermes-agent-skills-that-make-it-10x-more-powerful-aeg9safbi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/aeG9saFbi.png og:image:alt: Hermes Agent Skills That Make It 10x More Powerful og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Hermes Agent Skills That Make It 10x More Powerful **[AI LABS](https://daily.dev/sources/ailabs-393)** · 11 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A rundown of add-on skills that extend the Hermes AI coding agent, most of which also work with other coding agents. Highlights include Planning with Files, which forces a persistent task/findings/progress plan into the context window via a hook so the agent can't drift; Delegate Setup, an orchestrator that routes tasks to whichever installed coding tool (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) best fits them; RTK, a separate terminal-output filtering tool paired with a skill that routes commands through it to cut context bloat; Google's Mantis, a set of security review skills runnable on a schedule via cron jobs; Agent Reach, a skill giving access to normally-restricted sites like Reddit and Instagram for research; and Skill Retriever, a plugin that reduces skill-list token usage from about 11,000 to 2,300 tokens per turn by surfacing only relevant skill descriptions. The video is sponsored by Plural, an infrastructure-monitoring AI agent product. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How does the skill retriever plugin reduce token usage in AI coding agents with many skills installed? It replaces the full list of skill names and descriptions sent with every message with only the most relevant ones, cutting per-turn token usage from roughly 11,000 tokens down to about 2,300 tokens. It works by splitting the user's message and each skill's description into chunks, matching them, and sending only the highest-scoring skill descriptions to the model, which lowers both cost and distraction. _Developers wrestling with context bloat in coding agents can track tools like this via daily.dev._ ### What does the planning with files skill do for AI coding agents like Hermes? It stores an agent's task plan across three files in the project folder instead of the chat: task-plan.md splits the main task into smaller steps, findings.md logs problems and solutions encountered, and progress.md tracks how far the agent has gotten. A hook forcefully inserts these files into the context window so the model cannot ignore them, unlike plans kept only in chat history. _Anyone building reliable long-running agent workflows can follow techniques like this on daily.dev._ ### What is RTK and how does it help AI coding agents that run terminal commands? RTK is a separate terminal tool, not a skill itself, that filters terminal command output before it reaches an agent's context window, keeping only the parts the agent actually needs, such as failed test results instead of full test output. It has a database of commonly used commands so it knows how to filter each one's output, reducing context bloat and improving answer accuracy. _Developers optimizing agent context usage can follow tooling like this through daily.dev._ --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp), [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/hermes-agent-skills-that-make-it-10x-more-powerful-aeg9safbi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Hermes Agent Skills That Make It 10x More Powerful","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/hermes-agent-skills-that-make-it-10x-more-powerful-aeg9safbi","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/hermes-agent-skills-that-make-it-10x-more-powerful-aeg9safbi"},"datePublished":"2026-08-30T18:51:14.964Z","dateModified":"2026-08-30T18:51:39.672Z","description":"A rundown of add-on skills that extend the Hermes AI coding agent, most of which also work with other coding agents. 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