Optional Skills

Official skills maintained by Nous Research that are not activated by default.

These skills ship with the hermes-agent repository but are not copied to ~/.hermes/skills/ during setup. They are discoverable via the Skills Hub:

hermes skills browse               # browse all skills, official shown first
hermes skills browse --source official  # browse only official optional skills
hermes skills search <query>       # finds optional skills labeled "official"
hermes skills install <identifier> # copies to ~/.hermes/skills/ and activates

Why optional?

Some skills are useful but not broadly needed by every user:

• Niche integrations — specific paid services, specialized tools
• Experimental features — promising but not yet proven
• Heavyweight dependencies — require significant setup (API keys, installs)

By keeping them optional, we keep the default skill set lean while still providing curated, tested, official skills for users who want them.