SkillOpt: skill pack for Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent skill that optimizes other skills with a kanban pipeline and held-out validation gates

What SkillOpt does

SkillOpt is a Hermes Agent skill that optimizes other skill documents through a six-phase pipeline that judges execution rather than the skill text. It is derived from Microsoft Research's SkillOpt paper, which the README cites as reporting improvement in 52 of 52 settings across 7 models, 6 benchmarks and 3 agent harnesses. The pipeline runs on Hermes Agent's built-in kanban system, so it needs no extra daemons, databases or APIs.

The phases are rollout, reflect, propose, validate, merge, and a slow meta step that learns from rejected edits every four epochs. An edit is accepted only if it improves or maintains performance on held-out tasks, where pass or fail is the hard primary gate, followed by a weighted mix of output quality, completion speed and token efficiency. Each phase writes structured JSON to disk for the next phase to read. You start by asking Hermes to optimize a named skill, and it helps you define a test suite. Helper scripts seed the board, run a phase and archive a run.

Key features

Six-phase pipeline: rollout, reflect, propose, validate, merge and slow/meta
Runs on Hermes Agent's built-in kanban system with no new infrastructure
Validation gate using separate training and held-out task sets
Multi-objective acceptance: pass/fail first, then quality, speed and token efficiency
JSON artifact contracts between phases
Scripts seed-board.sh, run-phase.sh and archive-run.sh

When to use it

Improve a skill such as a vault-note skill by testing proposed edits against real tasks
Shrink a skill's token footprint without changing its behavior
Keep a record of accepted and rejected skill edits across optimization epochs

Who it is for: Hermes Agent users who maintain their own skills and want measured, test-driven improvements instead of judging edits by reading them.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

Built for Hermes Agent as a skill that uses its kanban board to orchestrate the optimization pipeline.

How to install SkillOpt

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

git clone https://github.com/magnus919/hermes-SkillOpt \
~/.hermes/skills/skillopt

Requirements: Hermes Agent with its built-in kanban system

FAQ

What is SkillOpt?

SkillOpt is a Hermes Agent skill that optimizes other agent skills through a six-phase, validation-gated pipeline. It evaluates how a skill performs on tasks instead of judging the skill by reading it.

Does SkillOpt work with Hermes Agent?

Yes, it is built for Hermes Agent and uses its kanban system to run each phase. The README says it is model-agnostic and works with any LLM you would normally use with Hermes.

How do I install SkillOpt?

Clone the repository into ~/.hermes/skills/skillopt, then tell your Hermes agent which skill you want to optimize. The agent loads the methodology and helps you define a test suite.