v2026.8.27

NousResearch/hermes-agentv2026.8.27Aug 27, 2026by teknium1

AI Summary

This patch release rolls up ~525 PRs featuring consent-gated real-profile Chromium browsing, a desktop Browser with OS window and managed SSH remote-update engine, and a large remote MCP catalog expansion with 50+ live-verified servers. It also includes TTL result caching, OS-keychain encryption for secrets, multi-query tool_search, and new models.

Key Highlights

  • Consent-gated real-profile Chromium browsing with Windows approval flow
  • Desktop Browser with its own OS window and managed SSH remote-update engine
  • Remote MCP catalog expansion (50+ live-verified vendor-hosted servers)
  • TTL result caching for web_search and web_extract
  • Opt-in OS-keychain encryption for stored secrets

New Features

  • Real-profile browsing with Windows close-with-approval flow
  • Desktop Browser OS window and managed SSH remote-update engine
  • Remote MCP catalog expansion (Cloudflare, Grafana Cloud, Better Stack, Railway)
  • TTL result caching for web_search and web_extract
  • Lean-tail compression as the default
  • Multi-query tool_search with stemming
  • OS-keychain encryption for secrets
  • Updaters pausing gateways over control socket instead of tree-killing
  • Image/package-managed installs refusing unsafe in-place updates
  • Cron durable-incident acks and clearer code-skew failures
  • Slack link-unfurl controls
  • Shared Docker container identities
  • Pluggable terminal environment backends
  • New models (GLM-5.3-Flash, MiniMax M3 free, MiniMax H3 Max video)

Full Release Notes

# Hermes Agent v0.20.6 (v2026.8.27)

**Release Date:** August 27, 2026

> Patch release. This tag rolls up the ~525 PRs merged since v0.20.5 into a stable tagged release for downstream consumers (Docker images, hosted deployments, fresh installs).

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## About this release

Since v0.20.5 (v2026.8.19, tagged August 21), this window landed **~1,313 commits** across **~1,557 files** (+177,113 / −21,682) — **~525 merged PRs** including consent-gated real-profile browsing (use your default Chromium profile for local browsing, with Windows close-with-approval flow); the desktop Browser getting its own OS window plus a managed SSH remote-update engine and fleet profile rail; a large remote MCP catalog expansion (50+ live-verified vendor-hosted servers incl. Cloudflare, Grafana Cloud, Better Stack, Railway); TTL result caching for web_search/web_extract; lean-tail compression as the default; multi-query tool_search with stemming; opt-in OS-keychain encryption for stored secrets (no more per-launch macOS Keychain prompts); updaters pausing gateways over the control socket instead of tree-killing them; image/package-managed installs refusing unsafe in-place updates (#91277 Phase 3); cron durable-incident acks and clearer code-skew failures; Slack link-unfurl controls; shared Docker container identities; pluggable terminal environment backends; and new models across the pickers (GLM-5.3-Flash, MiniMax M3 free, MiniMax H3 Max video).

**Full curated release notes for this window will ship with v0.21.0**, which will document everything from v0.20.0 onward — highlights, feature areas, and complete contributor credits. Nothing in this window is skipped.

## Updating

- `hermes update` from an existing install
- Fresh install: `curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash`

**Full Changelog**: [v2026.8.19...v2026.8.27](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/compare/v2026.8.19...v2026.8.27)