hermes-livekit: messaging bridge for Hermes Agent

Realtime voice gateway plugin for Hermes Agent with direct WebRTC and LiveKit room support

What hermes-livekit does

hermes-livekit serves an OpenAI-compatible direct WebRTC endpoint, with SDP signalling at POST /v1/realtime/calls, RTP audio and an oai-events data channel, and it can also join a LiveKit room as a Realtime Conference agent. Both transports transcribe speech through Hermes, run the same agent loop, return TTS audio and share one conversation event contract.

Direct WebRTC has no LiveKit dependency at runtime, while the Conference transport needs a reachable LiveKit server and an API key and secret. ffmpeg decodes TTS audio for the WebRTC publish path. The plugin is discovered through the hermes_agent.plugins entry-point group, so no edits to the hermes-agent source tree are needed, and it requires Hermes Agent 0.20.0 or newer. The README says to install it with pip into Hermes' own Python environment rather than with hermes plugins install, because that command does not resolve pip dependencies. A guide covers phone integration with Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking and LiveKit Cloud, but outbound dialing is not yet implemented.

Key features

OpenAI-compatible direct WebRTC endpoint at /v1/realtime/calls
Joins a LiveKit room as a Realtime Conference agent
Speech transcribed through Hermes with TTS audio returned
One shared conversation event contract across both transports
Auto-discovered through the hermes_agent.plugins entry point
Enabled with hermes plugins enable livekit

When to use it

Talking to a Hermes agent by voice from a browser over WebRTC
Putting a Hermes agent into a LiveKit conference room
Planning phone access through a Twilio SIP trunk using the design guide

Who it is for: Developers who want a realtime voice interface for Hermes Agent.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

A Hermes gateway plugin that attaches to an existing hermes-agent install and registers livekit and realtime platforms in config.yaml.

How to install hermes-livekit

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

python -m pip install git+https://github.com/kortexa-ai/hermes-livekit.git
hermes plugins enable livekit

Requirements: An existing hermes-agent install (0.20.0 or newer), ffmpeg on PATH, and a reachable LiveKit server with an API key and secret only for the Conference transport

Note: Outbound phone dialing is not yet implemented by this plugin.

FAQ

What is hermes-livekit?

hermes-livekit is a realtime voice gateway plugin for Hermes Agent. It offers a direct WebRTC endpoint and a LiveKit room transport, both running the same Hermes agent loop.

How do I install hermes-livekit?

Run python -m pip install git+https://github.com/kortexa-ai/hermes-livekit.git in the same Python environment as Hermes, then hermes plugins enable livekit. Enable the livekit and realtime platforms in config.yaml.

What do I need to run hermes-livekit?

You need an existing hermes-agent install at version 0.20.0 or newer and ffmpeg on your PATH. A LiveKit server with an API key and secret is needed only for the Conference transport.