Hermes profiles: separate personal and work agents

This guide assumes that Hermes is already installed and that you are working through the terminal. If the hermes command does not run yet, start with installing and initially configuring Hermes Agent. The names personal and work below are illustrative examples, not anyone's actual working settings.

You can find additional instructions in the Ailoot documentation.

What is stored in a separate Hermes Agent profile?#

A profile is a separate folder containing Hermes settings and data. It holds config.yaml, the .env key file, SOUL.md instructions, memory, sessions, skills, and scheduled tasks. An agent is a running assistant that uses this data.

Suppose you need one set of preferences for personal activities and another for work tasks. Separate profiles let you store them separately. If only the question changes, while settings and memory should remain shared, there is no need to create a profile for every conversation.

Use different profiles for two agents working independently. The official documentation warns that two agent processes using the same profile folder can accumulate shared memory and pick up each other's entries when sessions start.

What a profile separates and what it does not protect#

OAuth means signing in through a provider account. The documentation separately explains shared logins for Anthropic, OpenAI Codex, and xAI: a full clone does not copy single-use refresh tokens as separate, independent credentials. If a profile needs its own OAuth login, configure it separately.

The working folder is not a protection boundary either. The terminal.cwd parameter sets where commands start, but does not prevent access to other directories. An instruction in SOUL.md such as “do not enter the personal folder” guides the model's behaviour rather than enforcing an access restriction. If the task is specifically to protect files, separating profiles alone is not enough.

Profiles help keep context separate by task.

Check existing names before creating profiles#

Open the terminal and run:

hermes profile list
hermes profile

The first command lists profiles; the second shows the current profile, its path, model, and messenger connection status. If personal or work already exists, first check what that profile is:

hermes -p personal profile
hermes -p work profile

Do not delete an existing profile to free up a name for the example. Choose other available names and use them in every command that follows. This guide assumes that both names are available.

You will need access to the selected model provider to configure each profile. Creating a folder does not confirm that the model is connected. Do not copy keys into a conversation or ask the agent to display the contents of .env for verification.

Create two profiles without cloning#

Run the commands one after the other:

hermes profile create personal
hermes profile create work

Without additional options, Hermes creates fresh profiles with a built-in set of skills, so their folders will not be empty. Keys, the model, and messenger connections are configured in the next step.

Do not add --clone to speed up this guide. That option copies not just settings from the current profile, but also instructions, skills, and the memory files memories/MEMORY.md and memories/USER.md. Cloning is unsuitable for separating personal and work context with a clean start.

When cloning, also check the settings of external memory services. For example, the documentation warns that a cloned external memory configuration in local_embedded mode continues to use the original process and memory bank until the copy has its own profile and bank_id configured. Creating a new name does not automatically fix that shared configuration.

Check that the profiles were created:

hermes profile list
hermes -p personal profile
hermes -p work profile

Both names should appear in the list, and their details should show different paths. In a standard installation, these are ~/.hermes/profiles/personal/ and ~/.hermes/profiles/work/. The ~ symbol represents the user's home folder. With a non-standard HERMES_HOME, use the actual path reported by the command rather than this example.

Configure the model separately and explicitly start the profile you need#

Configure the personal profile first, then the work profile:

hermes -p personal setup
hermes -p work setup

Go through the setup wizard for each. Model and provider settings are stored in the corresponding profile's config.yaml, and keys in its .env. This does not guarantee that all logins are independent: OAuth logins and accounts in external programs can remain shared, as noted in the table above.

After setup, open the personal chat:

hermes -p personal chat

Start the work chat with a different command:

hermes -p work chat

At startup, check the Profile: personal or Profile: work line; the command prompt also shows the profile name. Do not run two independently working agents with the same -p.

Hermes creates a short command for a profile, such as personal chat. Here we use the full form with -p so the choice is visible in the command itself. You do not need to change the default profile every time you start a chat.

The hermes profile use work command has a different effect: subsequent plain hermes calls start selecting work. If you have already used it and want to restore the standard profile, run:

hermes profile use default

How to check the result without personal data#

First check the state using Hermes itself, rather than asking the model “are you definitely the work agent?”.

Then you can run an illustrative behaviour check: in a new personal conversation, ask for a list of things to take on a walk, and in a work conversation, ask for a document review plan. Do not use real data. Different answers alone do not prove isolation; this check only establishes that both chats start and respond. Cross-check the result against the selected profile and its folder.

If you need different work procedures after setup, add them to the appropriate profile. The order for installing and creating skills is explained in the Hermes Agent skills guide.

Mistakes that cause context to become shared again#

The profile was created using --clone. Old built-in memory may have been copied into it. Do not delete it blindly: first check how the profile was created and the files in the relevant profile. To repeat this guide with a clean start, use a new available name without cloning options.

Starting plain hermes and forgetting the default profile. Check hermes profile and use an explicit -p personal or -p work in startup commands.

Different profiles use the same external memory. Check the service's own settings. Its data does not have to be separated in the same way as local Hermes files; the example above illustrates exactly this issue.

Two profiles use the same messenger bot. Configure different bot tokens for independent connections. A token identifies the platform's bot, while a profile name identifies Hermes data; changing one does not create the other. The connection is explained in detail in the Telegram guide for Hermes Agent.

Expecting a profile to prevent reading other folders. On the local executor, access rights remain those of the OS user. Neither the name work, a separate SOUL.md, nor a working folder replaces filesystem restrictions.

Start with two new profiles without cloning, and explicitly select the profile at startup. Connect work data after checking the names and paths, and check external memory, bots, and accounts separately. For the next step in working with AI, see the Ailoot documentation.

Official documentation#

Hermes Agent profiles: creation, switching, and separation boundaries. This guide was checked on 24 September 2026 against this pinned version of the official document.

For further work with models, you can go to Ailoot.