Hermes Labs is Nous Research's label for experimental Hermes Agent plugins that Nous built but does not support, and my verdict is that it's worth installing as long as you treat it as a trial shelf rather than a supported product.
Three plugins carry the Hermes Labs name today, which are Inbox, Workflow Record and Telegram Business Mode.
Inbox earns the highest score from me, Workflow Record is the most ambitious, and Telegram Business Mode is the most niche.
The Hermes Agent v0.22.4 release notes, dated 21 October 2026, added Inbox and Workflow Record to the plugin catalog and moved Telegram Business into the Hermes Labs community tier.
This review goes feature by feature through every plugin, gives each a score, and ends with a clear verdict.
I want to be upfront that I haven't tested the Labs plugins hands-on on video, so my scores rate the documented features and limits from Nous Research's own READMEs rather than a benchmark run.
Hermes Labs Scores At A Glance
These are my scores for each Hermes Labs plugin, rated from the features and limits Nous documents.
| Plugin | What it does | Usefulness | Safety | Ease of setup | My score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inbox | It shows everything in flight for one profile in a read-only view. | 8/10 | 9/10 | 9/10 | 8.5/10 |
| Workflow Record | It records a browser task once so /learn can turn it into a skill. |
8/10 | 6/10 | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Telegram Business Mode | It drafts Telegram customer replies and waits for your approval. | 7/10 | 8/10 | 5/10 | 6.5/10 |
| Hermes Labs overall | It is a shelf of free, working, unsupported Nous plugins. | 8/10 | 7/10 | 7/10 | 3.5/5 |
The overall score loses points for one reason only, which is that Nous won't support these plugins.
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What Hermes Labs Is, And Who Makes It
Hermes Labs is a repo of plugins that Nous Research wrote for Hermes Agent and then chose not to maintain.
The Hermes Labs plugins repo describes them as "experimental plugins for Hermes Agent that Nous Research built but does not support."
Nous adds that they "started as Hermes features we decided not to put in the core."
The repo is MIT licensed, and every plugin has its own folder with a README and tests.
The official docs site doesn't define Hermes Labs on its own page yet, so this verdict leans on that README, the catalog entries and the release notes.
What "Unsupported" Means In Practice
Nous spells out exactly what you're signing up for, and it's the most important part of this review.
| Promise | What Nous says |
|---|---|
| Fixes | Nous gives no promise of fixes, and a bug report may sit. |
| Breakage | A core change may break a plugin before anyone notices. |
| Testing | CI runs every plugin against the current Hermes nightly, so breakage is at least visible. |
| Catalog tier | The catalog shows Labs plugins as community, not official, so nobody thinks Nous maintains them. |
| Ownership | Each plugin is up for adoption, and Nous will help move one to your repo if you open an issue. |
| Releases | Merging into the repo ships nothing, because the release is the catalog pin in hermes-agent. |
Supported first-party plugins live in the separate hermes-official-plugins repo.
I respect how transparent this is, because most tools don't tell you which features are on borrowed time.
Inbox Review: The Best Hermes Labs Plugin
Inbox adds the hermes inbox command, which shows everything Hermes has in flight for the active profile.
You install it with hermes plugins install inbox.
Inbox features
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Needs attention | It flags stalled delegations, dropped results, failed or paused cron jobs, orphaned processes and blocked kanban tasks. |
| In progress | It lists live background processes, running delegations and running kanban tasks. |
| Finished, not delivered | It shows delegations that completed but haven't reached their conversation yet. |
| Scheduled | It shows enabled cron jobs and their next five runs. |
| Open surfaces | It shows live CLI, TUI, Desktop and gateway chat sessions with their titles. |
| JSON output | hermes inbox --json prints the same snapshot for scripts and dashboards. |
| Other profiles | hermes -p work inbox reads another profile once the plugin is installed there too. |
| Read-only design | It opens SQLite databases read-only and never writes, repairs or prunes a store. |
Inbox limits
Inbox can't show pending approvals or clarify prompts, because those live only in the memory of the process that asked.
Process IDs inside a sandbox backend can't be probed, so those show as sandboxed.
Inbox verdict
Inbox gets 8.5 out of 10 from me, because it answers the single most useful question an agent operator has with zero risk.
Workflow Record Review: The Most Ambitious Hermes Labs Plugin
Workflow Record adds hermes record, which captures a browser workflow you demonstrate once.
You install it with hermes plugins install workflow-record.
It also adds a skill called workflow-record:replay-recording, which tells /learn how to turn a recording into a replayable skill.
Workflow Record features
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| CDP recording | It attaches to Chrome, Chromium, Brave or Edge over the DevTools protocol. |
| Captured steps | It stores clicks, final field values, Enter presses and top-frame navigations. |
| Named recordings | hermes record --slug shop-login saves a recording with a name you choose. |
| Listing | hermes record --list lists saved recordings. |
| Manual mode | hermes record --manual lets you type steps when CDP isn't available. |
| Custom endpoint | --cdp points it at another DevTools endpoint, such as port 9333. |
| Local storage | Recordings stay in <HERMES_HOME>/recordings and are never uploaded. |
| Two-layer masking | Password, one-time-code and card fields become {SECRET:name} in the page and again in Hermes. |
| Skill creation | /learn turns a recording into a skill that replays with Hermes's browser tools. |
Workflow Record limits
The README lists more limits for this plugin than for any other Labs plugin.
- It records only the one tab that was in front when recording started.
- A field you never left may be missing, so you should press Tab before
Ctrl-C. - Only password-like fields are masked, so an API key in a plain text field is recorded as typed.
- Pages can see the recorder, so a hostile page could add fake steps.
- It doesn't capture scrolling, hovering, drag and drop, file uploads, canvas or shadow-DOM interactions, or iframe navigations.
- It only works with Chromium browsers, so Firefox and Safari need
--manual.
Workflow Record verdict
Workflow Record gets 7 out of 10 from me, because "show it once, then it does it" is exactly the right idea, but the masking gaps mean you must review every recording.
If you're comparing this with other browser agents, my Hermes Agent browser review covers the built-in browser tools it replays through.
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Telegram Business Mode Review: The Niche Hermes Labs Plugin
Telegram Business Mode turns your Hermes Telegram bot into an observe-with-approval secretary for your Telegram Business account.
You install it with hermes plugins install hermes-telegram-business, then restart the gateway with hermes gateway restart.
Telegram Business Mode features
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Drafted replies | Every customer message gets a drafted reply in your own DM. |
| Three buttons | Send delivers it, Edit replaces it with your text, and Discard drops it. |
| No auto-send | The README says no auto-send exists, even when the bot is allowed to reply. |
| Owner-only buttons | Callbacks are checked against the owner's user ID, and anyone else gets a refusal. |
| Draft expiry | Drafts expire after 24 hours by default. |
| Debounce | Messages within an eight-second window become one draft. |
| Owner controls | /biz, /biz pause, /biz resume, /biz off <chat_id> and /biz on <chat_id> manage it. |
| Persona | An optional owner_persona setting shapes the tone of drafts. |
| No extra key | Drafting uses your active Hermes model through the plugin LLM surface. |
Telegram Business Mode limits
It needs a Telegram Business subscription and Business Mode switched on for your bot in @BotFather.
Version 1 is text only, so customer photos, voice notes and documents are skipped, although captions still trigger drafts.
Each message is drafted without conversation history, and your edits don't train future drafts.
Telegram Business Mode verdict
Telegram Business Mode gets 6.5 out of 10 from me, because the safety design is excellent but the setup has the most steps and it only matters if you sell through Telegram.
How Hermes Labs Compares To Official Hermes Plugins
| Question | Hermes Labs plugins | Official Hermes plugins |
|---|---|---|
| Who builds them? | Nous Research builds them. | Nous Research builds them. |
| Who supports them? | Nobody promises fixes. | Nous Research supports them. |
| Where do they live? | They live in NousResearch/hermes-labs-plugins. | They live in NousResearch/hermes-official-plugins. |
| Which catalog tier? | They are listed as community. | They are listed as official. |
| Can you adopt one? | Yes, Nous will help move one to your repo. | No adoption process is described. |
The other trap is the name, because a separate org called hermes-labs-ai has a catalog plugin whose maintainer is listed as "independent of Nous Research."
If you want the wider plugin picture, my best Hermes Agent plugins ranking compares the catalog's strongest options.
How To Install Hermes Labs In Under A Minute
Update Hermes first with hermes update on a command-line install, or through the Store or the next bundled desktop release.
Then install the plugins you want.
hermes plugins install inbox
hermes plugins install workflow-record
hermes plugins install hermes-telegram-business
If you change your mind, hermes plugins disable my-plugin switches one off and hermes plugins remove my-plugin uninstalls it.
If you want help judging whether these plugins fit an SEO or agency workflow, you can book a free SEO strategy session with my team.
My Verdict On Hermes Labs
Hermes Labs earns 3.5 out of 5 from me as a whole.
The plugins are free, they come from the team that builds Hermes, and the documentation is unusually honest about their limits.
The score stops short of 4 because "unsupported" is a real cost, and a core update could break any of them.
Install Inbox today, trial Workflow Record on one low-stakes browser task, and only set up Telegram Business Mode if Telegram is a real sales channel for you.
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Related Reading
- Hermes Agent v0.22 reviewed feature by feature
- Hermes Import Agent reviewed, with what moves and what doesn't
- Hermes Agent dashboards compared
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 How to install every Hermes Labs plugin, step by step
- 🌐 Five business uses for the Hermes Labs plugins
- 🌐 A Hermes Labs quick start for your Agent OS
- 🌐 The models behind Hermes Labs skills, scored on GoldieBench
FAQ: Hermes Labs Review
What is Hermes Labs?
Hermes Labs is Nous Research's label for experimental Hermes Agent plugins that Nous built but does not support.
Is Hermes Labs worth installing?
Yes, it is worth installing for trials, as long as you re-check each plugin after every Hermes update.
What is the difference between Hermes Labs and official Hermes plugins?
Official plugins are supported by Nous Research, while Hermes Labs plugins carry no promise of fixes and sit in the community tier.
Does Hermes Labs need an API key?
No separate key is needed, because the plugins that call a model use the model you already run in Hermes.
Is Hermes Labs the same as the hermes-labs-ai organisation?
No, it isn't, because the catalog lists that organisation's maintainer as independent of Nous Research.
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About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an SEO entrepreneur, author and founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
- I've built a 7-figure SEO and link-building agency, Goldie Agency, with 70+ people in Bangkok.
- I've grown a YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
- I wrote the book "Link Building Mastery", which covers nine link building strategies.
- I run GoldieBench, where I score AI models on real one-shot builds.
If you'd like my team to look at where agents fit in your SEO business, book a free SEO strategy session and we'll go through it.
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My final verdict is that the plugins are free, honest about their limits and genuinely useful in the right places, so I'd give Hermes Labs a trial on your own setup.
