Getting started

In this guide you'll create your first Hermeum agent: a daily standup summarizer. Every weekday at 9am it summarizes yesterday's GitHub commits and open PRs and posts a standup-ready digest to Slack.

You don't need to be a Hermes expert — you can describe what you want in plain language and Hermeum will generate the configuration for you.

Before you start

• You can sign in to a running Hermeum instance.
• You have a Slack workspace where you can install a Slack app (you'll need a bot token and an app-level token). If you're not sure how, follow the Slack setup guide.
• You have a GitHub personal access token with repo scope for reading commits and PRs.

Step 1 — Create the agent

1. Sign in to Hermeum and open the Agents page.

2. Select New agent.

3. Describe what you want in the AI config generator chat, for example:

   Every weekday at 9am, summarize yesterday's GitHub commits and open PRs, and post a standup digest to Slack.

   Hermeum generates the name, soul, full configuration, and the scheduled cron job for you.

Step 2 — Add the Slack secrets

The agent connects to Slack via Socket Mode. If you haven't created a Slack app yet, follow the official Slack bot setup guide to get the bot token and app-level token, then add the following credentials as environment variables on the agent. In the agent's Env section, add each with sensitive toggled on where noted:

Name	Value	Sensitive
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN	xoxb-...	yes
SLACK_APP_TOKEN	xapp-...	yes
SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS	U01ABC2DEF3	no
SLACK_HOME_CHANNEL	C0123456789	no

What these do:

• SLACK_BOT_TOKEN / SLACK_APP_TOKEN — the credentials Slack generated when you created the app. The bot token (xoxb-...) lets the agent post messages; the app-level token (xapp-..., scope connections:write) opens the Socket Mode WebSocket connection.
• SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS — comma-separated Slack member IDs allowed to talk to the agent. Without it, the agent denies all messages by default.
• SLACK_HOME_CHANNEL — the channel ID the cron job posts the digest to. Channel IDs start with C; look them up in Slack under channel details → About.

Step 3 — Add the GitHub token

The agent reads commits and pull requests from GitHub using the gh CLI. In the agent's Env section, add your GitHub token with sensitive toggled on:

Name	Value	Sensitive
GITHUB_TOKEN	ghp_...	yes

The gh CLI reads GITHUB_TOKEN automatically, but Hermeum filters this env var out of the agent's runtime for security reasons, so the agent can't use it directly. You need to ask the agent to sign in manually by reading the token from the .env file.

Once the agent is running, send it a message:

install gh command at /opt/data/.local/bin and sign in with a token stored at .env file.

This authenticates the gh CLI by reading GITHUB_TOKEN from .env, so the cron job can pull repository activity on the next run.

Step 4 — Save and start the agent

Select Create. Hermeum provisions the agent, connects to Slack, and schedules the standup cron. The agent's page shows its status as Running and lists its connected platforms.

Step 5 — Verify the schedule

Ask the agent to confirm the cron is scheduled, for example:

Is the daily standup cron scheduled?

You can also trigger it once to test the output before the next 9am:

Run the daily standup cron now.

The digest will be posted to your SLACK_HOME_CHANNEL. Check Slack to confirm it arrived.

Where to go next

• Creating an agent — the full agent model: soul, config, env, skills, crons, and lifecycle.
• Messaging platforms — connect agents to Discord, Microsoft Teams, webhooks, or the OpenAI-compatible API server.
• Skills — add more capabilities to your agent, such as reading project trackers or filtering by repository.