Nous Research Updates Hermes Agent With a Blank Slate Mode That Pins Toolsets via platform_toolsets.cli and disabled_toolsets

Nous Research has added a Blank Slate setup mode to its open-source Hermes Agent. It inverts the usual onboarding. Instead of a fully loaded default, you start with almost nothing.

Hermes Agent is the self-improving agent framework from Nous Research. It runs on your own machine. The team announced the new mode on X . Blank Slate now joins two existing options: Quick Setup and Full Setup .

On a fresh install, hermes setup now offers three mode s. The choice sets your starting surface area.

The disabled list is explicit. Off by default: web, browser, code execution, vision, memory, delegation, cron, skills, plugins, and MCP servers. Compression, checkpoints, smart routing, and memory capture are also disabled.

Hermes Agent has a new Blank Slate setup mode. The default Quick/Full setup modes work great for most, but if you would rather build your agent from the ground up you can now start with just a provider, model, file operations, and terminal, then manually add in anything else. pic.twitter.com/EiFm7tW3Ws

Blank Slate does not stop at the baseline. After the minimal baseline is applied, you choose one of two paths.

Pick Blank Slate when you want a minimal, fully-controlled agent. The point is to enable exactly what you need and no more.

Blank Slate does not just toggle features at runtime. It writes the decision to disk.

The mode writes an explicit platform_toolsets.cli list. It also writes agent.disabled_toolsets . Together, these two keys pin your agent’s surface.

The effect is durable. Nothing you did not choose ever loads. That holds even after hermes update . An update cannot silently re-enable a toolset you left off.

Hermes also separates secrets from settings. Tokens live in ~/.hermes/.env . Non-secret settings live in ~/.hermes/config.yaml . The CLI routes each value to the correct file.

Here is a minimal flow. Install, run setup, choose Blank Slate, then finish now.

Later, add one capability when a task needs it.

Hermes Agent requires a model with at least 64,000 tokens of context. Smaller windows are rejected at startup. Most hosted models meet this easily.

Local models need an explicit context size of 64K. For example, use --ctx-size 65536 for llama.cpp. A minimal Blank Slate agent on a local model still has to clear this floor.