Channel3 for Hermes Agent

Shop from Hermes. Search 100M+ products across thousands of US retailers, compare every store's price, and switch variants (color, size) right in the chat.

This is a Portable Agent Plugins v1 package with three parts:

Part	What it does
mcp.json	Connects Hermes to the hosted Channel3 MCP server (https://mcp.trychannel3.com/). No account or API key.
skills/channel3-shopping/	Teaches the agent how to search well and how to show results as product cards.
desktop/plugin.js	Hermes Desktop transcript directives that render product cards inline.

Install

hermes plugins install channel3-ai/channel3-hermes-plugin --enable

Start a new session so the MCP tools load, then ask for something: "find me a pair of Craighill scissors", "compare running shoes under $150".

Product cards (Hermes Desktop)

The agent writes a directive carrying product ids only:

::channel3-products{ids="LZeQAgT,RsMjV5x,AybWRtH"}
::channel3-product{id="LZeQAgT"}

• channel3-products: a row of compact cards with image, price, store and color swatches. Hovering a swatch previews that color; clicking a card opens its detail view in place.
• channel3-product: one detailed card with an image gallery, every variant option, key features, the description, and a comparison of every store's price with a Buy button for each.

The cards load product data themselves and resolve a variant when the user picks a color or size, so variant switching never goes through the model. Outside Desktop (CLI, TUI, messaging platforms) the directive shows as plain text, and the skill has the agent add a one-line text summary.

What this plugin sends where

• Search queries (and any image URL for visual search) go to the Channel3 MCP server at mcp.trychannel3.com when the agent calls search_products.
• Product ids and variant selections go to the same server when a card loads or the user switches a variant (get_products, get_details).
• Product images load from cdn.trychannel3.com. Buy buttons open buy.trychannel3.com links in your browser, which redirect to the store.
• The free tier is rate-limited per IP address. Nothing identifying you is sent by the plugin, and it stores no credentials.

The server also exposes UI-only tools (browse_products, get_details, get_similar, get_price_history) that are marked for app use under the MCP Apps spec. Hermes does not yet honor that marking, so the model sees them; the skill tells it to use only search_products and get_products.

Develop

Link a checkout into a Hermes home so Desktop picks up edits:

ln -s "$PWD" "$HERMES_HOME/plugins/channel3"
hermes plugins enable channel3

Then in Desktop: Capabilities → Plugins → Rescan (or restart the app).

Admission checks for the plugin catalog:

hermes plugins validate "$PWD"

License

MIT