Summary
- Nous Research has launched a pet feature for Hermes Agent, offering users access to over 3,200 animated mascot sprites.
- These pets respond to the agent's actions across six different states—idle, running, thinking, waving, celebrating, and failing—but do not influence tokens, caching, or the agent's behavior.
- The feature is available in the CLI, TUI, and desktop app, and can be displayed in a floating window that remains visible while working with the agent.
Nous Research has incorporated animated pets into its Hermes Agent, emphasizing in the documentation that these mascots serve no practical purpose. However, that doesn't imply they lack value; developers have been exploring this feature even prior to its official release by Nous.
The animated pets are small mascot sprites that appear in the terminal or desktop application, reflecting the agent's activities through a total of six states: idle when inactive, running during tool execution, thinking during model reviews, waving when a turn concludes successfully, jumping for celebration when a plan is fully executed, and displaying a failure state when an error occurs.
The sprites are sourced from petdex, an open-source community repository featuring over 3,200 sprites. Installing a pet is as simple as using the command hermes pets install boba --select, which adds the pet to your profile's directory and activates it. This feature is disabled by default and requires user initiation to activate, a sensible approach.
To switch pets, users can install a different one and use the command hermes pets select name to change mascots.
The rendering is compatible across CLI, TUI, and the official desktop app launched by Nous earlier this month. In the terminal, Hermes can render the sprite in full quality if the user's setup supports graphics protocols like kitty, Ghostty, or WezTerm. If not, it defaults to truecolor Unicode half-block rendering, which, while technical, simply means the pet will appear slightly less sharp, akin to a low-resolution GIF from 2003.
This feature adds a playful touch to an otherwise mundane terminal experience.
In the desktop version, the mascot floats on a canvas. Users can shift-click to detach it into a transparent, always-visible window that remains on top while Hermes is minimized. In this window, the pet displays a speech bubble with messages like "working...", "thinking...", or "your turn", alongside a mail icon when a task is completed while the user is away. It's reminiscent of Clippy, albeit without any expectation of usefulness, thus avoiding disappointment.
Nous Research clearly states that the pets do not impact prompt caching, tokens, or the agent's functionality. They are simply decorative elements included in the config under display.pet, enhancing the user experience without any side effects.
Hermes Agent, introduced by Nous Research in February 2026, has garnered over 180,000 stars on GitHub and continues to develop a rich ecosystem of community tools and integrations. The majority of the features released are substantial, including persistent memory, a self-improving skills loop, multi-agent support, and messaging gateways for platforms like Telegram, Discord, and Slack. The pet feature was introduced quietly alongside these major functionalities, nestled within the Media & Web section of the feature documentation, situated between Spotify integration and Voice & TTS. The petdex gallery is open to community contributions, ensuring the current collection of over 3,200 sprites will continue to grow.