How-To Series · Episode 06 / 59 · Module 1: Get Running

Updating Hermes · Safely

One command does the pull, the deps, the config migration, and the gateway restart. With a preview mode and a rollback path.

After this videoYou can now update Hermes without losing your config or your running gateway.

hermes update is the whole story. It pulls latest code, runs uv pip install -e ".[all]", detects new config options and prompts you to add them, and restarts running gateways. --check previews without modifying anything. --backup snapshots HERMES_HOME first. The updater survives terminal drops (SIGHUP ignored, output mirrored to ~/.hermes/logs/update.log) and refuses to clobber a running hermes.exe on Windows. Validate after with hermes doctor, hermes version, hermes gateway status. Rollback is a git checkout (or nix profile rollback).

About these resources. Every command in this video comes from the Updating doc. The Nix doc is cited only for the Nix-specific update path (nix flake update + nixos-rebuild switch).

Sources · What this video distills

2 docs pages · every command below traces to one of them
Primary · hermes update, --check, --backup, terminal-drop safety, Windows guard, rollback
Updating & Uninstalling
Read ↗
The Nix-specific update path
Nix & NixOS Setup · Updating
Read ↗

Commands shown · Copy and paste

each shows the source doc it came from
Preview only · no changesfrom Updating ↗
hermes update --check
Update with full HERMES_HOME backupfrom Updating ↗
hermes update --backup
Post-update validationfrom Updating ↗
hermes doctor && hermes version && hermes gateway status
If terminal dropped mid-updatefrom Updating ↗
tail -f ~/.hermes/logs/update.log
Nix install updatefrom Nix & NixOS Setup ↗
nix flake update hermes-agent && sudo nixos-rebuild switch

Going deeper · Related Hermes docs

further reading · not sources of facts shown above
Checkpoints & rollback
The snapshot system hermes update writes into. Useful when you need to recover state, not just code.
hermes doctor
What the post-update health check actually validates.

Next in the series · Episodes that build on this

E02
One-Line Install
E05
Hermes via Nix
E07
The Five Slash Commands