Monitoring Dashboard

Blue cyanotype-style monitoring instrument with a circular grid and pointer

A Hermes plugin with a Python hardware sampler and a desktop monitoring page. The sidebar opens Monitoring Dashboard; a statusbar chip shows estimated tok/s and temperature.

CPU clusters/cores, GPU activity and clocks, thermal and power readings.
Memory, swap, storage, disk and network I/O.
Live sessions, subagents, gateway events and token throughput.

Hardware data comes from this package's /api/plugins/hermes-monitoring-dashboard/metrics endpoint, not a core system.metrics RPC. Unreadable readings stay null. SIM is a labelled synthetic fleet for demos; it never supplies hardware readings.

Requirements

Hermes 0.21.5 or newer (requires_hermes: ">=0.21.5"): unified Python + desktop plugins and the desktop SDK's ctx.rest. No custom Hermes branch or rebuilt desktop bundle is needed.

The Python side uses psutil and FastAPI from the Hermes backend environment. Apple Silicon sensors use IOReport/HID through ctypes, without sudo. NVIDIA sensors use the installed driver's NVML library. Machines without those sensors still expose the available psutil readings.

The readings describe the backend host. For remote connections, install/enable the Python half on that host and the desktop half on the client. Installing only the UI does not add remote sensors.

Install

Install from the Hermes plugin catalog, or from this repository's plugin/ directory through Hermes's Install from Git dialog or the CLI:

hermes plugins install austinpickett/hermes-monitoring-dashboard#plugin --enable

Only plugin/ is installed; the repository's harness, scripts and tests stay out of the install.

Enable the desktop half in Capabilities → Plugins as well. Restart the backend after installing its Python API, and rescan desktop plugins. The two enable choices are separate.

Existing desktop-only installation

The old desktop-only installation was a symlink into desktop-plugins/hermes-monitoring-dashboard. This version is a unified package (plugin.yaml, dashboard/, desktop/, skills/) under plugin/. Move the old standalone desktop folder/symlink aside before rescanning. Hermes deliberately does not overwrite a marker-less standalone plugin with a package-managed copy. Keep your existing build assets; they are not part of the plugin installation.

The composition skill ships at skills/compose-monitoring-dashboard and is explicitly registered as hermes-monitoring-dashboard:compose-monitoring-dashboard. Native plugin skills are available through skills_list/skill_view, but are not automatically included in the model's startup skill index. For natural-language discovery ("create a blank dashboard"), add the installed package's skills directory to skills.external_dirs, preserving existing entries, then start a new chat. For a default installation that path is ~/.hermes/plugins/hermes-monitoring-dashboard/skills. Replace any obsolete entry pointing into the old desktop-only package with this path.

Configurable widgets

User configuration lives in ~/monitoring-dashboard/dashboard.json, outside the plugin installation, on the desktop device. See examples/dashboard.json and the composition skill for the version 1 schema and safe prompt-driven edits. A config alone reveals Monitoring Dashboard; it is polled every two seconds. Titles, accents, plain text/emoji, local clock/date, backend-host uptime, month calendar, existing monitoring panels, widths and order are configurable in one dashboard. No custom JavaScript runs.

A valid config takes precedence over legacy page.html / panel-*.html markers. Removing it returns to those markers. Invalid JSON/schema retains the last valid config in memory for this plugin session, with an error banner; on restart an invalid file falls back to marker mode until repaired. Unknown widget types get an unsupported card, not code execution. Demo Reset is disabled for configured/error states. The dashboard reads config but never rewrites user data.

Local clock/calendar belong to the desktop's timezone; uptime and hardware describe the backend host, which may be remote. The calendar has no synthetic events or connected accounts. Edits are currently through JSON or Hermes prompts, not an in-card form editor.

Safety and limits

The sampler shares one cached window across pollers, owns CPU counter snapshots across threads, and degrades unavailable sections independently. Native sample pointers are checked before use; reset/shutdown releases owned sensor resources. This is not a process sandbox: native bindings run inside the Python backend. Apple private APIs may change with macOS releases.

Apple Silicon live reads and fault/cleanup probes are exercised on a physical Mac. NVIDIA ABI and multi-die channel fixtures cover compatibility logic; they do not substitute for physical NVIDIA or Ultra hardware verification.