Hermes x ECC Setup

Hermes is the operator shell. ECC is the reusable system behind it.

This guide is the public, sanitized version of the Hermes stack used to run content, outreach, research, sales ops, finance checks, and engineering workflows from one terminal-native surface.

What Ships Publicly

• ECC skills, agents, commands, hooks, and MCP configs from this repo
• Hermes-generated workflow skills that are stable enough to reuse
• a documented operator topology for chat, crons, workspace memory, and distribution flows
• launch collateral for sharing the stack publicly

This guide does not include private secrets, live tokens, personal data, or a raw ~/.hermes export.

Architecture

Use Hermes as the front door and ECC as the reusable workflow substrate.

Telegram / CLI / TUI
        ↓
      Hermes
        ↓
 ECC skills + hooks + MCPs + shared Memory Vault
        ↓
 Google Drive / GitHub / browser automation / research APIs / media tools / finance tools

Public Workspace Map

Use this as the minimal surface to reproduce the setup without leaking private state.

• ~/.hermes/config.yaml
  • model routing
  • MCP server registration
  • plugin loading
• ~/.hermes/skills/ecc-imports/
  • ECC skills copied in for Hermes-native use
• skills/hermes-generated/
  • operator patterns distilled from repeated Hermes sessions
• ~/.hermes/plugins/
  • bridge plugins for hooks, reminders, and workflow-specific tool glue
• ~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json
  • scheduled automation runs with explicit prompts and channels
• ~/.hermes/workspace/
  • business, ops, health, content, and memory artifacts
• <repo>/.ecc/memory/
  • shared project and team context for Hermes, Claude, Codex, and other agents
• ~/.ecc/memory/
  • user-scoped context that follows the operator across repositories

Shared Memory Across Hermes, Claude, And Codex

ECC Memory Vault provides one file-first handoff layer instead of a separate inbox or transcript store for every agent. Initialize it from the repository that the agents share. Skill-only, minimal, manual, and Claude plugin installs do not add the Memory Vault runtime to PATH; install it separately first:

npm install -g ecc-universal
ecc memory --help
command -v ecc-memory-mcp

Then initialize the vault:

ecc memory init --scope project --scope team

Normal search recall covers active project and team memories. Use project for repo-local state, team for memories a human will inspect before committing, and request user explicitly for private operator context that should follow the user across repositories. Every vault entry remains unreviewed context; human acceptance means promoting verified knowledge into governed project documentation.

Hermes can call the CLI directly or use the opt-in ecc-memory-mcp stdio server. Harnesses may share the same installed binary and vault storage, but each harness must launch its own server process with its own distinct lowercase ECC_MEMORY_HARNESS identity; they must not connect to one shared server process. Every process must launch from the same repository working directory or receive identical ECC_MEMORY_PROJECT_ROOT and ECC_MEMORY_USER_ROOT overrides.

A Hermes-to-Codex handoff can be written without putting the body in the process list:

printf '%s\n' 'Research is complete. Verify the cited sources and implement the parser.' |
  ecc memory handoff \
    --from hermes \
    --target codex \
    --title "Implement the research parser" \
    --tag research \
    --stdin

Codex can retrieve it with:

ecc memory search "research parser" --target-harness codex