Hermes Agent Cron: Auto Daily Digest to Discord (2026)

You do not need a separate scraper repo to chase trends. Hermes Agent (NousResearch/hermes-agent, MIT) ships a built-in cron scheduler that turns plain-language instructions into recurring agent runs, then delivers the final answer to Discord (or Telegram, Slack, and others) without hand-writing five-field cron syntax.

Why Hermes cron beats manual trend hunting

Developers and indie hackers lose hours refreshing GitHub Trending, Hacker News, and overseas tech blogs—then still miss a monetizable angle until a competitor ships it.

Hermes closes that loop on a Mac or small always-on host:

• Natural-language scheduling — say “every day at 3am” instead of memorizing cron expressions.
• Gateway delivery — the agent’s final response routes to discord, discord:#your-channel, or origin without calling send_message in the prompt.
• Skills on schedules — attach blogwatcher or custom skills so the job inherits a repeatable workflow.
• Silent monitoring — successful runs can reply [SILENT] when nothing is new; failures still alert you.

If Hermes is not installed yet, complete Hermes Agent Mac setup first. For repo-local tools during digest generation, see Hermes MCP on Mac.

Quotable definition: Hermes cron is a gateway-backed scheduler that stores jobs in ~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json, ticks every 60 seconds, runs each due job in a fresh agent session, and delivers stdout or the model’s final message to configured chat platforms.

Architecture: scheduler, agent session, Discord delivery

External reference: Hermes messaging gateway for Discord bot tokens and home channel configuration.

Important constraint: Cron-run sessions cannot create nested cron jobs—Hermes disables cron management tools inside cron executions to prevent runaway loops.

Unlike a one-shot chat, each cron tick spawns a fresh agent session with the normal static tool list—web search, terminal, and optional MCP tools—so your 8am Discord message is generated from live sources, not a stale clipboard summary.

Seven-step runbook: 3am scan, 8am Discord brief

Step 1 — Install Hermes and verify the CLI

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

source ~/.zshrc then hermes doctor — must report Python 3.11 venv and PATH to ~/.local/bin/hermes.

Step 2 — Configure a model for unattended runs

Cron uses whatever provider hermes model selected. For hands-off OAuth: hermes setup --portal. Or set OpenRouter / OpenAI keys in ~/.hermes/config.yaml. Verify with hermes model and hermes portal status when using Nous Portal.

Step 3 — Wire Discord through the gateway

Run hermes gateway setup, add your Discord bot token and allowlist your user ID. Set DISCORD_HOME_CHANNEL=#daily-brief in .env. Test with hermes gateway start; for production use hermes gateway install as a user service.

Step 4 — Create the cron job in plain language

In the Hermes TUI or Discord DM, paste a schedule like: every day at 3:00 AM scan GitHub Trending and tech news; at 8:00 AM send a 5-bullet digest to discord:#daily-brief under 400 words. CLI equivalent:

hermes cron create "every day at 3:00" "Scan GitHub Trending; list 5 monetizable opportunities." --name morning-opportunity-scan

hermes cron edit morning-opportunity-scan --schedule "every day at 8:00" --deliver "discord:#daily-brief"

Step 5 — Attach skills for repeatable sourcing

hermes cron create "every day at 7:30" "Check configured feeds; summarize anything new." --skill blogwatcher --deliver "discord:#daily-brief" --name feed-prefetch

Step 6 — Verify schedule and force a test run

hermes cron list, hermes cron status, hermes cron run morning-opportunity-scan. Check ~/.hermes/cron/output/. Set cron.wrap_response: false in config to drop the wrapper header on Discord.

Step 7 — Keep the gateway alive (Mac mini or VPS)

Laptop sleep stops the scheduler. Disable sleep on a Mac mini and run hermes gateway install, or move the gateway to a $5 VPS. Use hermes cron pause <job> before travel. Light hosting note: an always-on Mac avoids missed 3am ticks; optional ProxyMac rental, not a Hermes requirement.

Example prompts you can paste today

GitHub + overseas tech (EN brief): Daily at 08:00 summarize GitHub Trending, Hacker News, and TechCrunch AI—exactly 5 opportunity bullets with sources to discord:#daily-brief. If nothing notable, reply [SILENT].

CN-friendly sources: 每天 8:00 抓取 GitHub Trending、Hacker News、The Verge AI，中文 5 条可执行商机，发到 discord:#daily-brief，无新内容则 [SILENT]。

Watchdog without LLM tokens (--no-agent): hermes cron create "every 5m" --no-agent --script disk-watchdog.sh --deliver discord --name disk-watchdog — scripts live in ~/.hermes/scripts/.

Troubleshooting

Jobs never fire at the scheduled time

Symptom: hermes cron list shows the job, but no output at 3am.

Fix: Confirm gateway is running. Scheduler ticks only inside the gateway. Run hermes cron tick manually. Check next_run_at in ~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json.

Discord stays silent but local output exists

Symptom: Files under ~/.hermes/cron/output/; Discord channel empty.

Fix: Verify DISCORD_HOME_CHANNEL or deliver="discord:#channel". Ensure bot post permission. Remember [SILENT] suppresses successful deliveries—remove it while debugging.

FAQ

Related reading

• 8B local model tuning: stop agent loops
• Hermes Trajectory Compressor: cut AI bills 10×