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2026-05-02 — GitHub - hermes-agent-backup-skill - README

Dev · · 2 min read · github.com ↗

hermes-agent-backup-skill

hermes-agent-core-backup

Community skill for the Hermes Agent ecosystem

Automated daily backup for your Hermes agent's entire brain — memories, skills, config, scripts, and secrets — pushed to a private git repository with zero manual effort.

Why This Skill Matters

Your Hermes agent is more than software. Over time it accumulates:

  • Memories — learned preferences, long-term context, behavioral rules
  • Skills — custom workflows you built and tuned
  • State — the SQLite database tracking everything the agent has done
  • Config & secrets — API keys, integrations, environment variables

None of this lives in the Hermes installer. If your server crashes, your drive fails, or you move to a new machine — everything is gone unless you have a backup.

This skill solves that with a single shell script and one cron line. Once installed, backups run silently every night. Restore takes three commands.

What you lose without it

| Event | Without backup | With this skill | |-------|---------------|-----------------| | Server crash | All memories, skills, state lost permanently | Restore from last night's backup | | New machine / migration | Rebuild from scratch | Clone repo, unzip, done | | Bad config change | No rollback possible | Restore yesterday's config | | Accidental skill deletion | Gone | Pull from archive |

Files in This Repository

| File | Purpose | |------|---------| | hermes-agent-core-backup.md | The skill file — install this into your Hermes agent | | README.md | This document |

How to Install the Skill

Copy hermes-agent-core-backup.md into your Hermes skills directory:

cp hermes-agent-core-backup.md ~/.hermes/skills/hermes-agent-core-backup.md

That's it. Hermes will discover the skill automatically on the next session start.

How to Use It — Prompt Your Hermes Agent

Once the skill file is in place, give your agent one of these prompts depending on what you need:

First-time setup (automated daily backup)

Use the hermes-agent-core-backup skill to set up automated daily backups for
my Hermes installation.

My details:
- Agent name: YOUR_NAME
- Hermes directory: ~/.hermes  (or your custom path)
- Local backup staging: ~/hermes_backups
- Remote backup repo: git@github.com:YOUR_USER/hermes_backups.git  (PRIVATE)
- Data directory: ~/.hermes/data  (or remove if not needed)

Create the backup script, make it executable, and add the cron job to run at
01:00 every night. Then run the script once so I can verify it works.

Manual backup before a big change

Use the hermes-agent-core-backup skill to run a manual backup right now.
I'm about to make major changes and want a snapshot first.

Restore after failure or migration

Use the hermes-agent-core-backup skill to restore my agent from backup.

My backup repo: git@github.com:YOUR_USER/hermes_backups.git
Target backup date: YYYY_MM_DD  (or "latest")

Stop any running Hermes processes before restoring, then walk me through
the full restore procedure.

Verify backups are running

Use the hermes-agent-core-backup skill to check that my daily backups are
working correctly. Check the cron job, the last backup log, and confirm
the latest ZIP exists in the remote repo.

Security Note

The backup archive includes .hermes/.env (your API keys). This is intentional — keys must survive a restore. For this reason:

  • The backup repository must be private
  • Never share the repo URL or ZIP files publicly
  • If using GitHub, enable "Require authentication" on the repo

Requirements

  • Linux / macOS server running Hermes
  • git, zip, unzip available on the system
  • SSH key authorized on your backup repository host
  • A private GitHub, GitLab, or Gitea repository

Community

This skill was created for the Hermes community so every user can protect their agent with a reliable, standardized backup system.

If you improve the script or add support for S3 / rclone / other remotes, please share it back.

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