After 10 turns, it updates my user profile. After 15 tool calls, it updates my skills. While I just chat.
I didn’t have a proper way to talk to my Obsidian on the go.
I wanted an agent I could set and forget. Reliable, with isolated Discord channels for different areas of my life.
As a bonus I didn’t expect, this agent has been learning from me.
This is a Hermes agent. You can run the same setup yourself.
The bonus I didn’t expect
I’ve been running it for the last week. A few things happened I didn’t expect.
It wrote 7 entries into my user profile on its own.
I was working with the agent on some task. On its own, it created the skill at the end of the workflow once I finished. I haven’t seen that anywhere else in any agent. Truly novel.
What happened: I was searching for YouTube videos for sources, going to import them into NotebookLM. Once I finished, Hermes in the background captured the pattern and created a skill for me.
It happened again with my evening review. Here is the receipt:
I didn’t even have to tell it anything to do that. We create skills on our own. Here the agent just does the job for us.
How the learning works
Here is the key feature. The agent has a self-improvement loop.
Three triggers, running in the background:
- After 10 user turns, a memory review agent updates my USER.md.
- After 15 tool iterations, a skill review agent updates my skills.
- When a session has been untouched for a couple of days, at 4 AM Hermes runs a final pass and learns from it.
I dug into the source code. The exact file is the prompt the agent uses for each pass.
Inside one cycle the loop looks like this. I chat with Hermes. Back and forth. After 10 turns, a separate agent (you can think of it as a learning Hermes) gets the transcript. It reads the chat. Asks itself: anything about Artem worth remembering? It writes to USER.md, MEMORY.md, or skills. If there is nothing worth saving, it stops. The main chat never sees the learning Hermes. I just keep going.
That is a key innovation. I haven’t seen that anywhere.
One persona per Discord channel
If you use Discord, there is also a config file where you can set up skills per channel.
If I want to do a coding task, I do it in a build channel. If I want to do content, I do it in a content channel. I specifically limit the set of skills per channel. Very handy to limit the scope and the focus.
There is also a great addition: you can set the personality of the agent.
For my vault channel (where I interact with my Obsidian), I prompt the agent with a persona. Where my daily notes go. Always use wikilinks. Here is my vault structure.
I think of it as a CLAUDE.md for my Discord channel. I define the scope of what is happening there to help the agent.
Very flexible. You can create a multi-agent setup. Discord channels, one for each area of your life.
Where Hermes fits, and where Claude Code fits
From my phone, in Discord, I can ask: give me a list of my home feed videos.
I can be anywhere. Just on my phone, through Discord. I can run all of the skills I developed the last year. Just one command. In real time, I get my home feed videos.
I can ask anything about those videos. Put them into NotebookLM. Run them through my familiar workflows. That’s a huge unlock.
Capture on the go. Braindump. Research. Things I can run reliably while I work on something else.
When I want to do real work (pair with an agent, review the plans, be very strict to avoid AI slop), I switch to Claude Code with my Obsidian side by side. Just a new tab. Claude Code, my Obsidian vault. Really be a human in the loop.
Hermes is my capture inbox and the start of fuel into my world.
Try it
Watch the full walkthrough: Hermes Agent + Obsidian on YouTube
Install it yourself: the Hermes Agent quickstart
Really exciting times to start using it.
Cohort 3 of the Claude Code x Obsidian Lab starts May 5.
We integrate AI agents with our context in Obsidian to build a personal operating system. Five weeks of live sessions.
This cohort I have capacity for 10 people. Early bird price now, before it goes up next week.