google_meet

When to use

The user says any of:

• "join my Meet at <url>"
• "take notes on this meeting"
• "summarize the meeting and send followups"
• "sit in on my standup"
• "be a bot in this call and speak up when X"

Two modes

Mode	What the bot does
transcribe (default)	Joins, enables captions, scrapes a transcript. Listen-only.
realtime	Same as transcribe PLUS speaks into the meeting via OpenAI Realtime. The agent calls meet_say(text) and the bot's voice comes out of the call.

Pick realtime only when the user actually wants the agent to speak. It costs real money (OpenAI Realtime is pay-per-audio-minute) and requires a virtual audio device set up on the machine running the bot.

Two locations

Location	When
Local (default)	Gateway machine runs the Playwright bot directly.
Remote node (node="<name>")	Bot runs on a different machine that has a signed-in Chrome and (for realtime) a configured audio bridge. Useful when the gateway runs on a headless Linux box but the user's real signed-in Chrome lives on their Mac.

Prerequisites the user must handle once

Easiest path — run the built-in installer:

hermes plugins enable google_meet
hermes meet install                 # PM dependencies + Chromium (transcribe only)
hermes meet install --realtime      # + pulseaudio-utils / brew blackhole+ffmpeg
hermes meet auth                    # optional; skips guest-lobby wait
hermes meet setup                   # preflight checks

hermes meet install --realtime prompts before running sudo apt-get (Linux) or brew install (macOS). Pass --yes to skip the prompt. It will NOT touch your macOS default-input setting — you have to select BlackHole 2ch in System Settings yourself before starting a realtime meeting.

For manual realtime audio setup:

#   Linux:  sudo apt install pulseaudio-utils
#   macOS:  brew install blackhole-2ch ffmpeg
#           → System Settings → Sound → Input → BlackHole 2ch
#   Then set OPENAI_API_KEY or HERMES_MEET_REALTIME_KEY in ~/.hermes/.env

For a remote node:

# on the user's Mac (where Chrome is signed in):
hermes plugins enable google_meet
hermes meet install
hermes meet node run --display-name my-mac    # persistent server
# copy the printed token

# on the gateway:
hermes meet node approve my-mac ws://<mac-ip>:18789 <token>
hermes meet node ping my-mac                   # confirm reachable

Run hermes meet setup to preflight local prereqs.

Flow

1. Join — call meet_join(url=..., mode=..., node=...). Returns immediately.
2. Announce yourself — no auto-consent. Say (in whatever channel the user is watching): "A Hermes agent bot is in this call taking notes."
3. Poll — meet_status() for liveness, meet_transcript(last=20) for recent captions. Don't re-read the whole transcript every turn.
4. Speak (realtime only) — meet_say(text="...") queues text for TTS. The speech lags by ~2s. Don't spam it.
5. Leave — meet_leave() when done, or set duration="30m" on meet_join for auto-leave.
6. Follow up — read meet_transcript() in full, summarize, and use regular tools to send the recap, file issues, schedule followups.

Tool reference

Tool	Parameters	Use
meet_join	url, mode?, guest_name?, duration?, headed?, node?	Start bot
meet_status	node?	Liveness + progress
meet_transcript	last?, node?	Read captions
meet_leave	node?	Close bot
meet_say	text, node?	Speak in realtime meeting

node? on all tools: pass a registered node name (or "auto" for the sole node) to operate a remote bot instead of a local one. Omit for local.

Important limits

• Captions are only as good as Google Meet's live captions. English-biased, lossy on overlapping speakers.
• Guest mode sits in the lobby until a host admits. Warn the user; hermes meet auth avoids this.
• Lobby timeout: if the host doesn't admit the bot within 5 minutes (configurable via HERMES_MEET_LOBBY_TIMEOUT env), the bot leaves and meet_status reports leaveReason: "lobby_timeout".
• One active meeting per install per location. A second meet_join leaves the first.
• Windows not supported.
• Realtime mode needs a virtual audio device. If the audio bridge setup fails, the bot falls back to transcribe mode and flags it in meet_status().error.
• meet_say requires mode='realtime' on the originating meet_join. Calling it against a transcribe-mode meeting returns a clear error.
• Barge-in is best-effort. When a caption arrives attributed to a real participant while the bot is generating audio, the bot sends response.cancel to OpenAI Realtime. Captions take ~500ms to show up, so the bot will talk over the first second or so of a human interruption.

Status dict reference

meet_status() returns (subset shown, there are more):

Key	Meaning
inCall	Past the lobby. False while waiting for admission.
lobbyWaiting	Clicked "Ask to join", waiting on host.
joinAttemptedAt / joinedAt	Timestamps for lobby-click and actual admission.
captioning	Caption observer is installed.
transcriptLines / lastCaptionAt	Transcript progress.
realtime / realtimeReady	Realtime mode provisioned / WS connected.
realtimeDevice	Audio device name the bot is feeding (e.g. hermes_meet_src).
audioBytesOut / lastAudioOutAt	How much PCM the OpenAI session has produced.
lastBargeInAt	Timestamp of the most recent response.cancel sent.
leaveReason	duration_expired, lobby_timeout, denied, page_closed, or null.
error	Last error (soft — bot may still be running).

Transcript location

Local:

$HERMES_HOME/workspace/meetings/<meeting-id>/transcript.txt

Remote node: transcript lives on the node host's disk. Use meet_transcript(node=...) to read it over RPC.

Safety

• URL regex: only https://meet.google.com/... URLs pass.
• No calendar scanning. No auto-dial.
• Remote nodes use bearer-token auth; tokens are generated on the node (32 hex chars, persisted in $HERMES_HOME/workspace/meetings/node_token.json) and must be copied to the gateway via hermes meet node approve.
• meet_say text is rate-limited by the OpenAI Realtime session; spam-protection is the bot's problem, not yours, but still — don't queue hundreds of lines.