hermes-gondola-provider

Adds Gondola as a native model provider for Nous Research's Hermes Agent.

Gondola is a pay-as-you-go marketplace for Venice AI inference: each request is routed to the cheapest available supplier and settled in USDC on Base. One OpenAI-compatible endpoint, no subscription, no Venice account. Prompts and completions are never persisted.

What you get

A gondola provider in hermes model, hermes setup, and --provider gondola
Live model catalog from Gondola's public GET /v1/models, filtered to chat-capable models (the raw catalog also lists image and video models)
A Gondola row in hermes doctor's API Connectivity section
A curated fallback model list when the live fetch is unreachable

Get an API key

Mint a key at https://gondola-ai.com/wallet?tab=keys (format: gnd_...)
Top up USDC on Base once at https://gondola-ai.com/wallet
Setup guides for other tools: https://gondola-ai.com/guides

Recommended install

Clone straight into the directory Hermes scans for model-provider plugins:

macOS / Linux / WSL:

mkdir -p "$HOME/.hermes/plugins/model-providers"
git clone https://github.com/Gondola-Market/hermes-gondola-provider \
  "$HOME/.hermes/plugins/model-providers/gondola-provider"

Windows (PowerShell):

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\plugins\model-providers" | Out-Null
git clone https://github.com/Gondola-Market/hermes-gondola-provider `
  "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\plugins\model-providers\gondola-provider"

(replace the base directory with $HERMES_HOME if you set that variable)

Alternative: hermes plugins install

hermes plugins install Gondola-Market/hermes-gondola-provider

This path is tracked by hermes plugins list/update/remove, but the installer places model-provider plugins in a directory the provider registry does not scan, so one manual move is required afterwards. The on-screen after-install note (also in after-install.md) has the exact commands.

Configure

export GONDOLA_API_KEY=gnd_...   # or let the installer prompt and save it
hermes model                     # pick Gondola, then a model
hermes -z "hello" --provider gondola -m deepseek-v4-flash

Or pin it in ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

model:
  provider: gondola
  default: deepseek-v4-flash

Verify

Run hermes doctor. With the plugin in place, Gondola appears under API Connectivity; the probe is a GET /v1/models with your key as Bearer. Note that this endpoint is public, so the row proves reachability, not key validity: a wrong key still surfaces on the first paid request.

Models

Curated fallbacks: deepseek-v4-flash (default aux), claude-sonnet-5, kimi-k2-7-code, qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct-turbo, venice-uncensored-1-2. The live catalog (100+ text models incl. hermes-3-llama-3.1-405b, plus image and video via Gondola's other endpoints) is at https://api.gondola-ai.com/v1/models with per-model pricing, context windows, and capability flags.

Payments

The plugin authenticates with GONDOLA_API_KEY; each request is metered against your prepaid USDC balance. Separately, Gondola's API accepts accountless per-request x402 payments (HTTP 402 challenges, USDC on Base) for clients that speak the protocol natively; Hermes is not one of them, so the plugin always uses key auth.

Updating / removing

Installed via git clone: git pull in the plugin directory, or delete it.
Installed via hermes plugins install: hermes plugins update gondola-provider / hermes plugins remove gondola-provider manage the flat install location only; if you moved the directory per after-install.md, manage it with git directly.

Compatibility notes

Hermes' plugin manifest has no minimum-version field, so this plugin tracks ProviderProfile in providers/base.py on hermes-agent main. If a Hermes update renames profile fields, reinstall the latest version of this plugin.

License

MIT

gondola-provider

What it adds

Environment variables it needs 1

README