followup-chips

Follow-up chips — chosen state with ✓

Clickable follow-up suggestion chips for Hermes desktop replies. 54-second demo: demo.mp4 (also posted with the contest entry).

What it does

End any reply with a directive:

::followups{q1="First suggestion?" q2="Second one?" q3="Third?"}

The plugin renders each qN as a clickable chip under the message. One click sends that question as the next user turn — no typing.

Interaction model

Hover — Hermes' signature arc-border travelling-light ring (two-layer masked ring, themed to --dt-primary), subtle tint on border/background, 160 ms fades. Never a plain box-shadow.
Chosen, while the agent answers — the arc keeps running on the chosen chip; the chip shows ✓ and the unchosen chips dim.
Answer complete — the arc rests (driven by the real message.complete / message.start gateway events, no timers).
One active arc — only the most recent choice ever runs; older blocks keep their ✓ but rest.
Persistent — choices survive window reloads via ctx.storage (keyed hermes.plugin.followup-chips.choices).
Per-block isolation — every ::followups block is keyed sessionId::directive-source, so a new block always starts blank and never inherits an earlier choice.
Any count — q1..qN parsed in numeric order, no hard limit.

Why a plugin (and not a prompt/skill)

A skill can emit text; it cannot render interactive UI in the transcript, wire click→composer-submit, host a state machine per directive instance, subscribe to gateway events, or persist UI state across reload. This is transcript-directive rendering + session-scoped state — desktop-plugin territory.

Files

plugin.js — the entire plugin (single file, default export { id, register })
followup-chips-contest.mp4 — 54 s demo, 1920×1080, English VO

Install (dev)

Copy plugin.js to %LOCALAPPDATA%/hermes/desktop-plugins/followup-chips/plugin.js and reload Hermes (Ctrl+R).

Catalog entry (plugin-catalog/followup-chips.yaml)

name: followup-chips
description: >-
  Clickable follow-up question chips under assistant replies. One click sends
  the question as the next turn; Hermes arc-border hover; choice persists per
  block across reload. Single-file desktop plugin, no native components.
repo: https://github.com/nuonrg/hermes-plugin-followup-chips
sha: <40-char commit SHA of the pinned release>
capabilities: []

No self-updating code, no core patches, no native binaries — capabilities list is empty by design; the plugin only uses the public desktop SDK (TRANSCRIPT_DIRECTIVE_AREA, host.composer.submit, ctx.storage, ctx.onEvent).