Donna Starter: guide and resource for Hermes Agent

Starter Hermes Agent profile with a persona, curated skills and a guided first-run setup

What Donna Starter does

The repository is itself the profile. It ships a SOUL.md persona described as a sharp, discreet, outcome-focused executive assistant, more than 70 curated skills covering Hermes configuration, plugin development, research, documents, GitHub workflows, Reddit, trip planning and local models, and a skin and avatar. No API keys, credentials, sessions or personal memory are included.

On the first conversation the hermes-starter-onboarding skill asks who you are and what your main jobs are, then walks through every Hermes toolset one at a time, including web search, memory, integrations and optional scheduled jobs. Nothing is enabled silently. It also bundles the Hermes Token Router plugin, which narrows the tool surface shown to the model on each turn, fails open when unsure, and is installed but disabled by default. For memory it recommends Mnemosyne, a local-first provider.

Key features

Executive-assistant persona defined in SOUL.md
More than 70 curated skills for configuration, research, documents, GitHub and more
Guided first-run orientation covering each toolset one at a time
Optional Hermes Token Router plugin, installed but off by default
Updates by running git pull in the profile directory

When to use it

Starting a new Hermes profile without building a persona and skill set by hand
Learning which Hermes toolsets exist by being walked through them
Trying the Token Router to reduce the tool schemas sent on each turn

Who it is for: Hermes Agent users who want a ready-made assistant profile as a starting point.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

It is built for Hermes Agent as a profile that lives under ~/.hermes/profiles and is started with hermes --profile donna chat.

How to install Donna Starter

These commands are copied from the project's README. Check the repository for the latest steps before you run them.

mkdir -p ~/.hermes/profiles
git clone https://github.com/AtlasOmnia/donna-starter.git ~/.hermes/profiles/donna
hermes setup
hermes --profile donna chat

Requirements: Hermes Agent installed and a model provider account (DeepSeek, OpenAI, Anthropic or a local server); macOS is recommended

Note: Several of the bundled skills are macOS-specific.

FAQ

What is Donna Starter?

Donna Starter is a ready-to-clone Hermes Agent profile with a persona, curated skills and a guided first-run orientation. It starts with generic community defaults and learns what you tell it.

Does Donna Starter work with Hermes Agent?

Yes, it is built for Hermes Agent and is cloned straight into ~/.hermes/profiles/donna. You then start it with hermes --profile donna chat.

How do I install Donna Starter?

Clone the repository into ~/.hermes/profiles/donna, run hermes setup to add a model provider key, then start chatting with hermes --profile donna chat. Later updates are a git pull in that folder.