Inspect a live Hermes sidecar's health, sessions, cron history, logs, and guard blocks. Trace what happened during a task, classify recurring failures, and check for updates using the sidecar's own records.
Hermes sidecar observability: health, failure triage, cron, guard blocks, logs, traces. USE WHEN hermes, sidecar, hermes failed, hermes task failed, iMessage task failed, message task failed, why did hermes fail, hermes not calling LifeOS, hermes status, hermes health, trace hermes, hermes session, hermes logs, hermes cron, guard blocks, triage hermes, sidecar broken, update hermes, upgrade hermes, is hermes up to date, keep hermes updated. NOT FOR mounting (LIFEOS/HERMES/Mount.ts), LifeOS services (Services.ts), messaging (the communication skill).
Run score Not tested
See how to installThis skill checks whether a running Hermes sidecar is healthy, which channels are available, and whether sessions load LifeOS settings. It examines task history, logs, and guard blocks to trace where a failure occurred and what caused it. It can group recurring failures and identify the configuration area responsible for a cause or fix. It also provides guidance for checking Hermes updates.
Use it when a message or task sent through Hermes fails, when you want to check the sidecar’s status, or when you need to review scheduled-run history and blocks. It can also help sort out repeated failures.
Diagnosis uses records from a running Hermes sidecar. The diagnostic checks do not change configuration or restart the sidecar. Updating Hermes is the operation in this skill that makes changes. If Hermes cannot be found, the skill reports it as absent.
This overview was written by AI (OpenAI Codex) from the public SKILL.md. Check the original below for the exact behavior.
AI checked the SKILL.md for operations that need care and for setup requirements. The score comes only from actually running the skill (hands-on test).
Not counted in the score. Rated by AI (OpenAI Codex) as of Oct 28, 2026. Treat it as a guide and read the original before installing.
Review the instructions the agent will receive before you install.
Observability over a mounted Hermes sidecar. The sidecar keeps its own records (session store, cron execution history, error logs, guard audit trail), and this skill turns them into answers: is it healthy, what failed and why, and exactly what happened inside one task.
Everything runs against the live install at $HERMES_HOME (default ~/.hermes) through deterministic tools in LIFEOS/HERMES/: Observe.ts status|failures|sessions|trace (the aggregator: sessions, failure classes, end-to-end traces), Health.ts (process health: up/degraded/flapping/down/absent, per-channel state), LogAnalysis.ts [--days N] (guard audit trail: hot rules, retry loops, taint findings) and Mount.ts --check (identity/config drift, report-only). Diagnosis mutates nothing: no config writes, no restarts, no cron edits. The Update intent is the one place the sidecar changes. Fixes route through Policy.ts + Mount.ts (the mount owns config), never hand-edits.
LIFEOS/HERMES/ tools, and success is judged from traces, never from an execution status.Policy.ts or soul sources plus a re-mount, the approval allowlist, or upstream Hermes) and the sidecar is never mutated by a diagnosis.| Intent | Trigger | File |
|---|---|---|
| Status | "hermes status", "is hermes healthy", "is the sidecar running LifeOS" | Intents/Status.md |
| Triage | "why do hermes tasks fail", "hermes failures", "triage hermes" | Intents/Triage.md |
| Trace | "trace that task", "what happened to my message", "show me that hermes session" | Intents/Trace.md |
| Update | "update hermes", "upgrade hermes", "is hermes up to date" | Intents/Update.md |
| File | Read when |
|---|---|
Setup.md | first-time setup: installing and mounting the optional sidecar the skill observes, and a read-only check |
The sidecar lives in $HERMES_HOME (default ~/.hermes); its mount config is LIFEOS/USER/CONFIG/hermes-trusted-domains.json and heartbeat.json. First-time setup is in Setup.md; without a sidecar the skill reports absent.
completed and sessions end cron_complete even when every meaningful tool call inside was blocked or died on approval. Judge success from the trace, never from the execution status.Observe.ts status as the soul-loaded check, never an ad-hoc system_prompt LIKE '[BLOCKED:%' query. When Hermes' safety scanner flags the persona file (SOUL.md) and does not load it, the session runs with no LifeOS constitution, identity, or skills routing, and nothing else about it looks wrong; the Update intent says how to read which pattern matched and decide whether the file or the pattern is at fault. A healthy gateway whose sessions all reject the soul is the worst state, because it looks fine. A blocked soul is the usual single upstream cause behind skill-routing failures: every downstream oddity in a trace (no skill routing, no identity, no output contract) usually follows from that one fact. Since the 2026-08-15 Hermes update the inline sessions.system_prompt column is blank and prompts live in the system_prompts hash store, so a raw query on that column reads green while the soul is blocked; Observe.ts resolves through the store. status --assert-lifeos exits 2 "unproven" when it saw no sessions or could not read the DB.blocked.jsonl carries no session id. Guard blocks correlate to sessions by time window only; concurrent sessions can cross-attribute. The agent error log ([session_id] tags) is the authoritative per-session record.state.db belongs to a live gateway; a stray write lock can wedge it. Observe.ts does this; ad-hoc sqlite3 must use file:...?mode=ro (and note the sqlite3 CLI sometimes refuses URI mode — prefer the tool).*31337/notify* etc.) enforce the no-terminal-no-voice rule for sidecar sessions — they are policy working, not a defect. Triage separates by-design blocks from false positives before recommending policy changes..env and auth.json appear in reports as size+mtime only — same rule the guard enforces on the sidecar.model.default does nothing to running channels until the gateway restarts (launchctl kickstart -k on its service label — never Hermes' in-process restart, which spawns the KeepAlive restarter loop). Verify the switch from the next session's model column, not from the config file./new from the user, or the session_reset policy). A session can look soul-loaded while running a weeks-old soul.Mount.ts --check re-runs their scanner and the --assert-lifeos Bunker row watches live sessions — the Update intent's post-update battery exists because of this class.Example 1: A task sent from a messaging channel failed
User: "My iMessage task to Hermes failed again — what happened?"
→ Trace intent
→ Returns: what was asked, every wall it hit (guard block / approval / soul state), where it died, the fix
Example 2: Recurring failures
User: "Hermes tasks keep failing — triage it"
→ Triage intent
→ Returns classified failure report with per-class root cause and concrete fix, worst first
Example 3: Health check
User: "Is the sidecar healthy?"
→ Status intent
→ Returns one-screen report: process state, whether sessions actually load LifeOS, mount drift, top failure classes
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