Hermes for Tern

What Hermes for Tern does

Hermes for Tern connects two existing protocols: Hermes owns the agent and Tern owns the drawing. Inside Tern, running hermes renders the session with native Markdown, tool rows, subagents, buttons and a docked composer. In any other terminal the original Hermes interface starts as usual. The README states that it does not patch Hermes, scrape ANSI output or embed a web chat.

The installer saves your existing launcher as hermes.before-tern and installs a small wrapper. It leaves the Hermes repository, dependencies, credentials and approval configuration untouched. The visual design follows Tern's Console chat style, with a monospace grid, a three-cell gutter for glyphs, muted gold on graphite in dark mode and ivory in light mode, and a startup screen with the HERMES wordmark. Previews were rendered by Tern itself from a scripted turn, so the events shown are illustrative and no model was called. You can try it without the wrapper by running uv run hermes-for-tern inside Tern.

Key features

• Native Markdown, tool rows, subagents, buttons and a docked composer inside Tern
• Falls back to the normal Hermes interface in other terminals
• Wrapper installer that backs up the existing launcher as hermes.before-tern
• Does not modify the Hermes repository, dependencies, credentials or approvals
• Try-before-install mode with uv run hermes-for-tern
• A doctor command, --doctor, to check the setup

When to use it

• Using Hermes Agent inside Tern with native panes instead of terminal text
• Following subagents and tool activity in a structured view
• Keeping a plain terminal Hermes experience outside Tern with the same command

Who it is for: Tern users on macOS or Linux who run Hermes Agent and want it drawn natively in their workspace.

How it fits with Hermes Agent

Built for Hermes Agent as a frontend adapter: it wraps the hermes launcher and uses Hermes's existing protocol.

How to install Hermes for Tern

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/thefullctx/hermes-for-tern.git
cd hermes-for-tern
uv sync --frozen
uv run hermes-for-tern --install

Requirements: macOS or Linux, Python 3.11+, Git, uv, Tern with Surface Protocol v1, dock and the native component vocabulary, and a working Hermes Agent installation

Note: It is an unofficial community frontend and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nous Research or Stencil.

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