Agent view of this page

hermes familiar // an open desk companion // third-party hermes plugin

BUILD A FAMILIAR

Your Hermes agent works all day — in chats, in cron jobs, in worker fleets — and all of it is invisible. A familiar is a small green-phosphor creature that sits on your desk and gives that workforce a body: it shows what the agent is doing the moment it happens, pulses when an approval needs you (tap ALLOW right on the screen), runs your actions from a button, and — with a speaker — talks.

Hermes Familiar animated face — a green phosphor portrait blinking and smiling
AWAKES 5
R 1
W 0

TOK48k
USBok
NETok
> RECENT TRAFFIC 10:41 u: ping my desk when the deploy is green 10:41 a: on it — watching the pipeline now 10:43 k: worker-2 claimed T-88 (migrate) 10:44 a: deploy is green. site is live. 10:44 !: DEPLOY finished — buildafamiliar.com 200
BRIEFSTANDUPLOOM INBOXDEPLOY2TAPGONITE2TAP
> CRON: 2 ACTIVE 17:17 mail watcher ok 09:00 morning digest ok — nightly backup next 02:00
> GATEWAY up 6h04m te:ok sl:ok S:5 tools:41 tok:48k familiar 192.168.100.82 usb+wifi
> DEVICE SD:122024MB TP:CST328 BAT:3.98V RTC:-- WiFi:192.168.100.82 rot:1 heap:211264 swipe L/R or tap tabs to navigate

↑ tap the tabs — this is her actual screen

What she does

  • Live state — thinking, tool activity, replies, across every platform your gateway serves (Telegram, Slack, cron, kanban workers)
  • Real approvals — when the agent blocks on a dangerous command, she pulses and chirps; your tap resolves it, same as /approve
  • She reaches out — the agent gets a familiar_notify tool: banner + chirp + optional speech when something needs your desk
  • A voice — replies and alerts spoken in your configured TTS voice, streamed over your LAN into her speaker
  • An evening ritual — once a day she speaks a digest of everything your agents did, composed by your own model

What it takes

~$30 of hardware (one touchscreen dev board, a microSD card, a tiny speaker), a USB-C cable to the machine running your Hermes gateway, and one plugin install. Firmware flashes from your browser — no toolchain. See BUILD for the full bill of materials and PLUGIN for the software side.

status  Docs preview — the public firmware release, browser flasher, and printable case files are landing now. Star the repo to follow along.

For your agent, not just for you

This site is agent-first: agent.md is a machine-readable setup runbook. Once your familiar is flashed and plugged in, tell your Hermes agent: "set up my familiar from buildafamiliar.com/agent.md" — and it installs its own body.

Agent handoff & support

Machine-readable surfaces are first-class here. Send your assistant to the exact route it needs, or open a support request in the project repo.

Support/contact: GitHub repository · open a support issue · AVL manifest

Agent View Layer discovery badge AVL 3.0 agent-readable surface