How-To Series · Module 2: Daily Driver
Troubleshooting · Agent Quality
A seven-step diagnostic checklist for when your Hermes agent suddenly feels less capable than it did yesterday.
After this videoYou can diagnose why your agent feels dumber and fix it in minutes
When Hermes seems less sharp than before, there is usually one specific, checkable cause. Work through seven steps in order: check which model the session is actually on, check context usage, verify the detected context length, understand the frozen memory snapshot, remember memory is bounded and curated not a transcript, confirm skills and tools are loaded, and account for compression side effects. Each step has a symptom, a check, and a fix.
About these resources. This episode explains how to troubleshoot agent quality in Hermes. The Sources block names the Hermes docs page that backs every claim.
New words here · Plain English
one sentence each · full glossaryFrozen memory snapshotMemory is written to disk mid-session but only appears in the system prompt at the next session start.
Context compressionSummarizing older conversation history to free up the context window, trading fine detail for headroom.
Session searchA tool that queries all past sessions to find things discussed weeks ago, even when not in active memory.
Sources · What this video distills
1 docs page · every command below traces to one of themCommands shown · Copy and paste
each shows the source doc it came from/model/usage/compress/new/skills/tools list/reload-skills