Skills speak in actions ("dispatch a subagent", "create a todo", "read a file"). On Hermes Agent these resolve to the tools below.
| Action skills request | Hermes tool |
|---|---|
| Read a file | read_file |
| Create a new file | write_file |
| Edit a file (targeted patch) | patch |
| Run a shell command | terminal |
| Search file contents | search_files |
| Find files by name | terminal with find |
| Fetch a URL / read a webpage | web_extract(urls=[...]) |
| Search the web | web_search(query=...) |
| Dispatch a subagent | delegate_task(goal=..., context=..., toolsets=[...], role="leaf") |
| Task tracking | todo tool |
| Invoke a skill | skill_view("skill-name") |
When a skill mentions "your instructions file," on Hermes Agent this is AGENTS.md in the project directory, or SOUL.md globally at ~/.hermes/SOUL.md.
Hermes Agent has a skills toolset with skill_view and skills_list tools.
To invoke a superpowers skill, use:
skill_view("brainstorming")
skill_view("test-driven-development")
If skill_view cannot find a superpowers skill (it may not appear in the catalog
until the plugin fully registers it), fall back to reading the SKILL.md directly:
read_file(path="~/.hermes/plugins/superpowers/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md")
This fallback is the same mechanism used by other harnesses without native skill loading.
Use delegate_task to spawn isolated subagents for parallel or sequential workstreams:
delegate_task(goal="...", context="...", toolsets=[...], role="leaf")
If delegate_task is unavailable, do the work inline rather than inventing tool calls.
Use the todo tool for task tracking within a session. For multi-agent task boards, use hermes kanban CLI if available. Treat older TodoWrite references as the task-tracking action.