# Daily Hermes + AI Research Brief — 2026-05-25

## Important updates

- **Hermes v0.14.0 is the big local-agent upgrade to study.** The May 16 release claims PyPI install support, ~19s faster cold start, 180× faster browser CDP calls, native Windows beta, LINE/SimpleX support, LSP diagnostics on write, prompt caching, `/handoff`, `computer_use`, and a local OpenAI-compatible proxy for OAuth-authed providers. This directly maps to Atlas goals: faster cron/gateway loops, cross-tool provider routing, and better spawned-agent ergonomics. [Source: GitHub releases](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases)
- **Hermes provider/tooling surface is expanding beyond “chat agent” into router/proxy glue.** The release notes highlight xAI SuperGrok OAuth, Grok 4.3 1M context, `x_search`, Microsoft Teams plumbing, Zed ACP registry integration via `uvx`, OpenRouter Pareto Code router, and `huggingface/skills` as a trusted tap. For Will, this is a reason to treat Hermes/Atlas as a control plane for heterogeneous model/tool backends rather than a single CLI. [Source: Hermes v0.14.0 release](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases)
- **OpenAI is pushing Codex toward durable, cross-app agent work.** Codex now has background computer use, an in-app browser, image generation, 90+ plugins including MCP servers, multiple terminals, SSH devbox support, reusable automation threads, scheduling, and preview memory. This is highly relevant because it validates the same design space Atlas is using: cron + memory + tools + multi-agent task carryover. [Source: OpenAI](https://openai.com/index/codex-for-almost-everything/)
- **Agent governance is becoming an infra layer, not an afterthought.** Databricks’ Unity AI Gateway release adds MCP governance, on-behalf-of permissions, LLM/MCP observability, cost attribution, model fallback/rate-limit/guardrail policies, and consistent controls across OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/open-source models. Practical takeaway: Atlas/Hermes should log model+tool calls as first-class audit events, especially for Pi swarm and GPU/k8s agents. [Source: Databricks](https://www.databricks.com/blog/ai-gateway-governance-layer-agentic-ai)
- **MCP is continuing to standardize enterprise tool use.** Red Hat’s MCP guidance frames MCP as the layer for tool discovery, policy, and auditable actions, moving beyond one-off RAG/tool-call glue. This supports investing in MCP-compatible wrappers for local services instead of bespoke integrations. [Source: Red Hat Developer](https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2026/01/08/building-effective-ai-agents-mcp)
- **vLLM v0.21.0 has inference changes worth tracking for local/GPU backends.** The release includes KV offload + Hybrid Memory Allocator work, speculative decoding that respects reasoning/thinking budgets, new Blackwell attention backend work for DeepSeek/Kimi-style models, more model/tool-parser support, and a breaking C++20 build requirement. This matters for any CoreWeave-style or home GPU inference path. [Source: vLLM releases](https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm/releases)

## Actionable ideas for us

- **[quick]** Check whether the running Hermes install is already on v0.14.0; if not, schedule a manual upgrade window and verify cron/gateway after restart.
- **[quick]** Add a short “agent audit event” note/template for Atlas: model, provider, tool/MCP server, data touched, outcome, and cost/latency where available.
- **[experiment]** Prototype Hermes’ local OpenAI-compatible proxy with one external coding tool (Codex/Aider/Cline/Continue) to see if Atlas can centralize provider auth and routing.
- **[watch]** Track vLLM v0.21.x adoption notes before upgrading any production-ish inference service because C++20/Transformers v5 changes may break builds.

## Worth ignoring

- Generic “2026 agent landscape” listicles unless they include reproducible implementation details or protocol/tooling changes.
- Consumer-only Codex/Claude comparisons without concrete workflow, eval, or infra takeaways.

Saved to Obsidian: Atlas/Daily Research/2026-05-25 - Hermes AI Brief.md
