/Tech30d ago

Teknium defends Hermes Agent's out-of-the-box design after criticism of its pre-bundled Polymarket skill

AI Judge changed title after evaluation, original title: "Hermes creator Teknium defends pre-bundling a Polymarket tool after software creator Theo questions default agent skills"

T3 Stack creator Theo flagged the bundled Polymarket skill.

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#331

Original post

Theo - t3.gg@theo#1325inTech

wtf do you mean there's a pre-bundled Polymarket skill in Hermes Agent???

7:11 PM · May 30, 2026 · 130.7K Views

Sentiment

Users praise Hermes Agent's pre-bundled skills and maximalist out-of-box design for delivering immediate power and convenience, while some call it bloated or ineffective compared to leaner tools.

Pos

60.8%

Neg

39.2%

320 comments with sentiment.

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VIEWS461.1KREPLIES324

Theo - t3.gg@theo

Hermes Agent comes with a truly absurd number of skills pre-enabled. Over 100 of them. This is roughly half.

I get what they're going for - they want an agent that comes "ready out of the box".

I just don't get why every user has to have a polymarket skill, 3 baoyu art skills (? never heard of this), a headless Pokemon skill, and Minecraft modpack server skills, all available the first time they run it.

I guess Hermes Agent just isn't for me.

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

@theo They're nonsense for you maybe. We didn't make hermes just for you. If you want an empty soulless experience, not ready ootb for anyone, try openclaw

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BOOKMARKS1.2KLIKES4.1KRETWEETS254

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

Just want to make this clear:

We didn't make Hermes Agent to be a "starts with nothing, you work it all out" agent. This is not the minimalist, start from nothing, agent.

We want Hermes to work out of the box for most people. So you aren't spending weeks just getting the agent to work, or have the capabilities you need.

This means that yes, there are more built in things then something like nanoclaw or pi, which start with nothing, and you just have to figure it out.

That is an intentional design decision.

You can from the modest baseline that has capabilities that are likely broader than you need, but not egregious, take it from there if you want to tinker with it.

Run `hermes skills config` or `hermes tools` to disable whatever you want.

We even have a way to upload your whole "Agent" as a github repo, so you can install hermes fresh with your exact setup again later or share them.

We have a massive interface for extensions so you can tinker with it to infinity.

But if you don't want to become an agent engineer - with Hermes, you don't have to.

30d281.5K4.1K1.2K

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

@theo They're nonsense for you maybe. We didn't make hermes just for you. If you want an empty soulless experience, not ready ootb for anyone, try openclaw

Theo - t3.gg@theo

Just disabled 57 nonsense skills 🙃

30d352.7K79048

Theo - t3.gg@theo

OpenClaw is Arch.

Hermes is Omarchy.

I will not elaborate further.

Theo - t3.gg@theo

Hermes Agent comes with a truly absurd number of skills pre-enabled. Over 100 of them. This is roughly half.

I get what they're going for - they want an agent that comes "ready out of the box".

I guess Hermes Agent just isn't for me.

29d35.8K46427

Theo - t3.gg@theo

@Teknium Bro there was a baked in polymarket skill you can’t possibly justify this as user error

I don’t want an “empty soulless experience” I just didn’t expect a gambling skill to come along my super cool agent experience 🙃🙃

I heard yall are bad at feedback but Jfc this is absurd

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

@theo They're nonsense for you maybe. We didn't make hermes just for you. If you want an empty soulless experience, not ready ootb for anyone, try openclaw

30d23.1K55111

Theo - t3.gg@theo

Just disabled 57 nonsense skills 🙃

Theo - t3.gg@theo

wtf do you mean there's a pre-bundled Polymarket skill in Hermes Agent???

30d69.8K40824

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

And on this note, some very big things coming next week to further this goal of the agent that works for everyone 🤗😲

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

Just want to make this clear:

We didn't make Hermes Agent to be a "starts with nothing, you work it all out" agent. This is not the minimalist, start from nothing, agent.

We want Hermes to work out of the box for most people. So you aren't spending weeks just getting the agent to work, or have the capabilities you need.

This means that yes, there are more built in things then something like nanoclaw or pi, which start with nothing, and you just have to figure it out.

That is an intentional design decision.

You can from the modest baseline that has capabilities that are likely broader than you need, but not egregious, take it from there if you want to tinker with it.

Run `hermes skills config` or `hermes tools` to disable whatever you want.

We even have a way to upload your whole "Agent" as a github repo, so you can install hermes fresh with your exact setup again later or share them.

We have a massive interface for extensions so you can tinker with it to infinity.

But if you don't want to become an agent engineer - with Hermes, you don't have to.

30d14.3K4058

Theo - t3.gg@theo

Great community at least 🙃

Theo - t3.gg@theo

OpenClaw is Arch.

Hermes is Omarchy.

I will not elaborate further.

29d30.1K2893

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

You read the docs and didn't know that it is a read only skill - that cannot gamble, cannot use money, cannot place bids - it can only read the predicted outcome of events.

jfc I heard you were a troll of opensource prjoects (and bad at it given the ffmpeg scenario) but jfc this is absurd lmao

Theo - t3.gg@theo

@Teknium Bro there was a baked in polymarket skill you can’t possibly justify this as user error

I don’t want an “empty soulless experience” I just didn’t expect a gambling skill to come along my super cool agent experience 🙃🙃

I heard yall are bad at feedback but Jfc this is absurd

29d9.8K1647

Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞)@teortaxesTex

Hermes just has to add hierarchy of "basic skills" and "Inspector Gadget skills" and disable the latter by default.

Theo - t3.gg@theo

Hermes Agent comes with a truly absurd number of skills pre-enabled. Over 100 of them. This is roughly half.

I get what they're going for - they want an agent that comes "ready out of the box".

I guess Hermes Agent just isn't for me.

29d7.9K10617

Alex Volkov @ AI Engineer@altryne

So many people will learn about Hermes from this tweet lol. Pr win

Theo - t3.gg@theo

Hermes Agent comes with a truly absurd number of skills pre-enabled. Over 100 of them. This is roughly half.

I get what they're going for - they want an agent that comes "ready out of the box".

I guess Hermes Agent just isn't for me.

29d7.8K6213

Nick Dobos@NickADobos

Hermes going maximalist agent is a fun design choice Why not give it EVERY possible tool?

Core idea of it just working out of the box with no setup is nice. But can we assume as AI scales it can accurately handle 10,000+ tools?

Downside here is obvious UX overloading. For both humans and the agent. A classic problem of enterprise and opensource software that tries to do everything vs niche smaller apps doing a narrow task elegantly, or being very slim and customizable.

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

Just want to make this clear:

We didn't make Hermes Agent to be a "starts with nothing, you work it all out" agent. This is not the minimalist, start from nothing, agent.

We want Hermes to work out of the box for most people. So you aren't spending weeks just getting the agent to work, or have the capabilities you need.

This means that yes, there are more built in things then something like nanoclaw or pi, which start with nothing, and you just have to figure it out.

That is an intentional design decision.

You can from the modest baseline that has capabilities that are likely broader than you need, but not egregious, take it from there if you want to tinker with it.

Run `hermes skills config` or `hermes tools` to disable whatever you want.

We even have a way to upload your whole "Agent" as a github repo, so you can install hermes fresh with your exact setup again later or share them.

We have a massive interface for extensions so you can tinker with it to infinity.

But if you don't want to become an agent engineer - with Hermes, you don't have to.

29d5.7K378

Teknium 🪽@Teknium

I want anyone who wants to be a user being a user. But I don't want people to get the impression that being brutally minimalist is the only positive vector in the agents space.

I've seen it hundreds of times where everything expansive is "bloat" no matter what it is, because openclaw showed how to do expansive the wrong way.

But I also don't want to try to force you to be a user. You should decide based on the actual application, and if it's right for you. Not every software is right for everyone, and that's totally okay!

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