Hermes Themes Pack

All Omarchy themes as Hermes skins, plus one command to switch them: /theme. A skin is Hermes' single theme unit: the CLI, the TUI and the Desktop app all repaint from it within a second. Optionally Hermes follows the Omarchy theme: pick a theme in Omarchy and Hermes switches with it.

No core patches, monkeypatches, load-time side effects, network calls or remote fonts. MIT licensed. Independent community package, not an upstream Hermes or Omarchy product. Replaces the separate hermes-tokyo-night and hermes-jade-horse packages.

Requires Hermes 0.22.5 or newer. Works without Omarchy too: the Omarchy parts (/theme omarchy, /theme follow) are optional.

Compared with Omarchy's own omarchy skin

Omarchy already renders one generic omarchy skin from the current theme. This pack adds a separate, named skin for every theme (so all of them show up in /skin and Desktop Appearance at once, also on machines without Omarchy), hand-tuned Tokyo Night and Jade Horse skins, banner art recolored per theme, and one /theme command that works in every Hermes surface.

Commands

/theme                 current skin, Omarchy theme, follow state and the list
/theme <name>          switch every Hermes surface (e.g. /theme nord, /theme "Tokyo Night")
/theme omarchy         match the current Omarchy theme once
/theme follow on|off   follow Omarchy theme changes automatically
/theme install         install/update all pack skins without selecting one
/theme uninstall       remove the pack's managed skins (selection unchanged)

/theme works in the CLI, the TUI, the Desktop composer and messaging gateways. The same verbs are available as hermes theme ... in a shell when plugins.isolation is in_process (Hermes wires plugin CLI subcommands only then); otherwise use /theme or python3 ~/.hermes/plugins/hermes-themes-pack/installer.py.

Switching always goes through Hermes' own writer (hermes config set display.skin <name>), which updates the active profile and makes the running gateway broadcast the change to every surface.

Install

From the Hermes plugin catalog:

hermes plugins install hermes-themes-pack
hermes plugins enable hermes-themes-pack

Straight from GitHub:

hermes plugins install seppegadeyne/hermes-themes-pack --no-deps
hermes plugins enable hermes-themes-pack

Then in any session: /theme nord, or /theme follow on.

From a local clone use hermes plugins install "file://$(pwd)" --no-deps. --no-deps keeps a plugin disabled until the explicit enable (the package has no dependencies).

Following Omarchy

/theme follow on installs a small hook at ~/.config/omarchy/hooks/theme-set.d/50-hermes-themes-pack. Omarchy runs it after every theme switch with the theme slug; it calls this package's installer, which selects the matching pack skin. A theme that is not in the pack (for example osaka-jade, which ships no palette, or a theme you installed from git) falls back to Omarchy's own generated omarchy skin. The hook does nothing when the package is removed, and /theme follow off removes only an unmodified copy.

Following is per user and covers every profile: Omarchy runs the hook without a HERMES_HOME, so it switches the default home (~/.hermes) and every profile under ~/.hermes/profiles/ that has the pack installed, in parallel. Homes without the pack are skipped. A profile that should not follow: remove the pack there.

Omarchy itself also writes an omarchy skin on every theme switch and activates it only when Hermes is on default/omarchy, so it never overrides a pack skin.

What it does on your system

What you should know before installing. Nothing happens at plugin load; every change below is caused by a /theme command you run.

• Files written, only inside the active profile's HERMES_HOME: skins/<name>.yaml for the pack's 23 skins and the receipt theme-packages/hermes-themes-pack.json. Personal or edited skins with the same name are skipped, never overwritten (unless install --replace, which backs them up into the receipt and restores them on uninstall).
• Commands run: hermes config set display.skin <name> and hermes config get display.skin (Hermes' own config writer, 60-second timeout). The pack never edits config.yaml itself.
• Files read outside HERMES_HOME: ~/.local/state/omarchy/current/theme.name (the current Omarchy theme) and the pack's own hook file below (to show the follow state), for /theme, /theme omarchy and /theme follow.
• Only with /theme follow on: one executable hook script at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/omarchy/hooks/theme-set.d/50-hermes-themes-pack (default ~/.config/...). Omarchy runs it on each theme switch; it runs python3 <home>/plugins/hermes-themes-pack/installer.py omarchy <slug> --home <home> for ~/.hermes and each ~/.hermes/profiles/<name> that has the package installed (90-second timeout each), which installs the pack skins in that home and selects the skin through the first hermes on PATH (else ~/.local/bin/hermes). Homes without the package are skipped. /theme follow off removes it only if it is unmodified.
• No network calls, no background processes, no Hermes tools, hooks or middleware, no credentials, no telemetry, no self-updater. Updates come only through hermes plugins update.

Themes

Every Omarchy stock theme with a palette (23). Desktop built-in names are avoided because a backend skin with such a name never paints in the Desktop app: catppuccin → catppuccin-mocha, everforest → everforest-dark. Tokyo Night and Jade Horse use hand-tuned skins; the others are generated from the theme's colors.toml with recolored banner art.

Add a theme: create themes/<slug>/colors.toml (copy an Omarchy theme's file), optionally skin.yaml (hand-made, wins) and meta.json ({"skin": "...", "label": "..."}), then run python3 tools/build.py and commit skins/. The slug should equal the Omarchy theme slug so following works.

Live repaint per surface

The TUI (hermes --tui) and the Desktop app repaint within a second after any switch: /theme, /skin, hermes config set display.skin or an Omarchy follow.

The classic CLI (hermes / hermes chat without --tui) does not watch for skin changes: it reads the skin at start-up, and only /skin <name> typed in that same window repaints the prompt, rules and status bar there (the banner and earlier output keep the old colors until the next start). So after /theme, an Omarchy theme switch or a switch from another window, a running classic CLI keeps its old colors. Start a new session, or run /skin <name> in it. This is a Hermes core limitation that a plugin cannot fix through public APIs; upstream tracks it in https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/pull/58932.

Desktop

There is no separate desktop half: the Desktop app converts the active skin into its own palette, so /theme (or Appearance) covers it. Light themes paint light. Desktop appearance is per profile; a switch from /theme is applied to the profile it runs in.

Uninstall

/theme follow off
/theme uninstall

hermes config set display.skin default
hermes plugins remove hermes-themes-pack

The installer keeps a receipt at $HERMES_HOME/theme-packages/hermes-themes-pack.json. It never overwrites a personal skin with the same name (/theme install --replace backs it up and restores it on uninstall), and it leaves skins you edited alone.

Development and tests

python3 tools/build.py
~/.hermes/hermes-agent/venv/bin/python tools/preview.py   # docs/ images (needs Chromium)
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v
HERMES_REPO=/path/to/hermes-agent "$HERMES_REPO/venv/bin/python" tests/hermes-integration.py
hermes plugins validate .

The integration test uses a temporary HERMES_HOME and XDG_CONFIG_HOME.

Changelog

• 1.2.0: the Omarchy follow hook switches every profile under ~/.hermes/profiles/ that has the pack installed, not only the default profile. Re-run /theme follow on to refresh an installed hook.
• 1.1.1: README documents that a running classic CLI does not repaint on a skin switch (Hermes core, upstream PR #58932); the TUI and Desktop do.
• 1.1.0: declare requires_hermes >=0.22.5; catalog banner and screenshots (docs/, rendered from the skins by tools/preview.py); README disclosure; follow on notes that the hook switches the default profile; a hung hermes config call reports an error instead of a traceback; --replace applies only to install; uninstall ignores unknown receipt names.
• 1.0.0: 23 Omarchy skins, /theme, Omarchy follow hook.

Credits

Palettes from the Omarchy stock themes by David Heinemeier Hansson and theme contributors (MIT), https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy. Jade Horse: https://github.com/dhh/omarchy-jade-horse-theme.