The practical shift: durable work queues, safer restarts, faster search, richer skills/MCP, stronger gateway/Docker foundations. For us, it reinforces the split we already use: Telegram as control surface, Mission Control as source of truth, and Hermes cron as outside watchdog.
The headline is not one single feature. It is a platform maturation wave: kanban becomes a real multi-agent substrate; cron/skills/MCP/dashboard get more operational; session search becomes cheap and instant; security/gateway/Docker become safer for unattended agents.
For Luci + MC, this means we should use Hermes primitives around Mission Control, not replace MC. MC remains the business workflow board. Hermes cron/watchdog and Hermes kanban become supporting infrastructure for agent operations, experiments, and specialist side lanes.
Installed Hermes Agent v0.15.1 is live and current with origin/main.
Healthy Gateway, Telegram, cron, MC watchdog, and board shepherd are active.
Note Optional provider/tool warnings are expected and not blockers.
Auto-decomposition, swarm topology, parallel workers, gated verifier/synthesizer, per-task model overrides, task scheduling, worker visibility endpoints.
Moved away from aux-LLM dependency to fast FTS discovery/scroll/browse modes.
Skill-backed jobs, script-only jobs, workdir/profile knobs, delivery routing, cron docs/troubleshooting.
Skill bundles, hub health, freshness badges, huge catalog indexing fix, better skill docs and pages.
Interactive MCP picker, approved catalog, credential prompts, HTTP/SSE/TLS client cert support.
Topic binding fixes, media delivery fixes, restart/drain work, gateway log rotation recovery.
Supervised gateway mode, persistent containers, orphan reaper, logs, UID/GID fixes, safer Docker update guidance.
Promptware scanning, memory/tool result delimiters, file-safety guards, Bitwarden Secrets Manager bootstrap, stricter API/webhook requirements.
Session control API, SSE chat, skill/toolset API endpoints, multi-session TUI orchestrator, dashboard polish.
Pluggable context engine docs, safer compression fallbacks, memory providers receive completed-turn context.
v0.15.0 could reload forever in loopback mode because `/api/auth/me` 401 was expected but treated as stale auth. v0.15.1 fixes it.
Binding to non-loopback no longer implies insecure mode. Use `HERMES_DASHBOARD_INSECURE=1` deliberately.
Bare `npx`, `npm`, `node` resolve correctly in Docker.
SIGTERM actually kills workers; images referenced in task bodies are attached to vision-capable workers.
`.md` file delivery restored; web URLs no longer get over-redacted in useful ways.
`/model` and `hermes model` list alignment; `/yolo` now changes session bypass, not only env.
Control/status/escalation. Keep it lightweight; do not turn it into the workshop.
Classifies intent: direct answer, delegate_task, MC ticket, Hermes cron, or background runtime.
MC owns business workflow truth. Hermes provides outside watchdog, cron, skills, MCP, and optional kanban side lanes.
Hermes kanban is now much stronger, but MC already encodes Elmar/Luci workflow, ticket URLs, runtime rows, board CTA, and Luci-specific review gates. Do not migrate the operational board just because kanban improved.
The new cron/gateway stability makes our watchdog pattern better: Hermes looks at MC from the outside and alerts only when the controller is unhealthy or a human decision is required.
Telegram = control/status; MC = source of truth; Hermes cron = outside observer. Keep this as the default mental model.
Bundles worth adding: mc-ops, research-html-report, email-triage, audio-briefing. This reduces repeated skill loading and steering.
Evaluate Bitwarden Secrets Manager for stable provider credentials and workflow tokens. Keep Google/NotebookLM auth wall separate because browser sessions remain human-owned.
Before installing random external tools, check whether the official MCP catalog has a vetted server and install with explicit filters.
For work not needing MC visibility, use kanban lanes. For Elmar-visible deliverables, create MC tickets.
If we use Hermes kanban for everything, we split visibility from MC. Rule: MC for Elmar-visible business work; kanban for profile-native coordination and experiments.
Completed-turn context can now be sent to memory providers. Keep built-in memory unless a provider has a clear privacy contract.
The catalog makes installation easier. Still require explicit purpose, filters, and rollback plan.
Docker/non-loopback exposure no longer implies insecure mode. Good for safety, but deployments must set auth/insecure flags deliberately.
Compiled from official release notes and website docs after updating Luci to v0.15.1.