◆ Sparround

Operating it: updates, backup, logs, services

Once installed, the agent lives less like a program and more like a small system: it updates, writes logs, runs a background process and keeps state on disk. Day-to-day maintenance comes down to four things — updating, backups, reading logs and managing the service.

TaskCommandNote
Update`hermes update`Detects the install method itself; not available in Docker
Backup`hermes backup` / `hermes import`Zips config and state into an archive and restores it
Logs`hermes logs`Agent, gateway, error and GUI logs; secrets are redacted
Diagnostics`hermes doctor`, `hermes dump`The first repairs, the second prepares a summary for support
Service`hermes gateway install/start/stop/status`systemd (Linux) and launchd (macOS)
Analytics`hermes insights`Tokens, cost and activity

The gateway as a service. If the agent must be up 24/7 on messaging platforms, you install the gateway as a service. On Linux there are two options: a user service (hermes gateway install) and a system service (sudo hermes gateway install --system, started at boot). The docs warn against running both at once — two processes connected to the same platform duplicate messages.

On macOS the same commands go through launchd, and logs are written to ~/.hermes/logs/gateway.log.

After an update, make two steps a habit: hermes doctor (repairs a config that has gone stale) and hermes config check (shows newly added options). In a fast-moving project, a mismatch between an old config and a new version is the single most common problem.

Practice. Create an archive with hermes backup, look inside it (unzip -l) and note which files it contains. Then ask yourself: if this archive holds secrets, where may it be stored? Done means: you can list the archive's contents and have decided where it may live.

📚 Sources and documentation