Hermes+Faro

Give your Hermes agent every paid tool — with one key.

Hermes runs the agent loop. Faro gives it web search, scraping, image & video generation, voice, and B2B data through a single credential and one prepaid balance — no new vendor to wire up each time.

Pay-as-you-go credits · Refunds on failure

~/.hermes/auth.json · credential_pool

Today

  • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
  • OPENAI_API_KEY
  • DATAMERGE_API_KEY
  • PREDICTLEADS_API_KEY
  • GOOGLE_API_KEY
  • APIFY_API_KEY

6 providers · 6 dashboards

With Faro

  • ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
  • FARO_API_KEY

2 providers · 1 ledger

Friction → Faro

Where Hermes hits the wall, Faro picks it up

The four highest-volume themes in the Hermes Agent issue tracker since launch (Feb 2026), paired with Faro's response.

The friction

credential_pool sprawl

The Hermes issue tracker carries 80+ open tickets about credential pools and per-provider keys silently desyncing between .env, ~/.hermes/auth.json, and config.yaml. Every new capability adds another entry to debug.

Faro's answer

One credential, no pool to debug

A single Faro plugin in ~/.hermes/plugins exposes every Faro tool through one FARO_API_KEY. No credential_pool entries to keep in sync, no auth.json drift.

The friction

One key per capability

Image generation needs FAL. Web search defaults to Firecrawl. Vision summarization falls back to OpenRouter. Each is a separate vendor account, a separate quota, a separate failure mode.

Faro's answer

All capabilities behind one credential

Image, video, search, scrape, enrichment, voice — every one of them lives behind the same Faro Bearer. Adding a capability is a marketplace search, not a new vendor relationship.

The friction

Self-improving skills hit upstream walls

Hermes can autonomously write its own skills — but the moment a skill needs an upstream provider it dies on “FAL_KEY not passed to tool execution context” or a 401 from a vendor gateway. The harness learns the workflow; the credential layer can't.

Faro's answer

Skills get a deep tool catalog

Once Faro is registered, every marketplace tool is callable by name. A learning skill that needs scrape, then image, then enrichment never trips on a missing vendor key. Failed calls auto-refund.

The friction

No unified spend visibility

Nous Portal only shows usage for tools routed through its gateway. Direct API keys are opaque. There's an open request to “show provider account limits in the TUI status bar” — until then, you reconcile invoices.

Faro's answer

One credit ledger, real-time

Every invocation shows up in one balance immediately. Set a cap once and the harness can't exceed it across providers.

Quick start

Three commands to the full marketplace

Clone faro-hermes-plugin into ~/.hermes/plugins, enable it, set one FARO_API_KEY. The harness sees every Faro tool on next start.

# 1. drop the plugin into your Hermes plugins directory
git clone https://github.com/poolside-ventures/faro-hermes-plugin \
  ~/.hermes/plugins/faro

# 2. install the runtime dependency
pip install httpx

# 3. enable + authenticate
hermes plugins enable faro
hermes config set FARO_API_KEY faro_...    # or: export FARO_API_KEY=...

# done — start Hermes; faro_search + faro_invoke are now in scope
hermes
Full reference: Faro CLI · REST · Hermes plugin docs · OpenAPI

What the harness can call on

Hermes plans it. Faro fetches it.

Each prompt routes through one credential. The harness keeps the memory; Faro keeps the catalog fresh.

Generate a 6-second product video of a violet aurora over a mountain at dawn

Resolved via google-veo

Get the latest news on Tesla's Q1 earnings

Resolved via brave-search

Scrape the pricing page at example.com and return the plans as JSON

Resolved via bright-data

Find a mobile phone number for the VP of Sales at Notion

Resolved via datamerge

Keep the harness. Lose the credential pool.

One Faro account. One credit balance. Every tool the harness will ever discover.