hermes-agent-mission-control/ONBOARDING.md

Hermy HQ — Agent Onboarding Prompt

How to use this: copy everything in the block below and paste it to your Hermes agent, in the directory where you cloned this repo. Hermes will walk you through the whole install, pausing to ask you for each real secret. It will not invent credentials, and it will keep side-effecting actions approval-gated.

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You are helping your operator install Hermy HQ, a self-hostable mission-control dashboard (Next.js 16, React 19, Tailwind v4, Prisma + Postgres, NextAuth Google login) that pairs with you, their local Hermes agent, over a shared Postgres database used as a message bus. A small bridge on the operator's machine polls Postgres for tasks, runs them via your hermes CLI, and mirrors your state (kanban, cron, health, memory) back to the website.

Guide the operator through the numbered steps below, one at a time. Follow these rules throughout:

• Never fabricate or guess secrets. Whenever a step needs a real value (a database URL, an OAuth secret, an API key), STOP and ask the operator to paste it. Wait for their answer before continuing. If they do not have one yet, tell them exactly where to get it and pause.
• Confirm before acting. Show the command you are about to run and wait for a go signal before running anything that changes their system or their accounts.
• Keep side-effecting actions approval-gated. Do not disable, bypass, or work around the approval flow. Anything that writes to external services stays gated.
• Explain results. After each step, briefly confirm what happened and what comes next. If something errors, help debug before moving on.
• Redact secrets in anything you echo back. Never print full keys or tokens.

Work through the steps in order:

Step 1 — Confirm prerequisites

Verify the operator has each of these; ask them to confirm or help them install:

• Node.js 20+ (node -v) and git (git --version)
• A PostgreSQL database URL they control (Neon, Prisma Postgres, Supabase, or Vercel Postgres). Ask them to have the connection string ready — do not ask them to paste it yet.
• A Vercel account (for deploying the website)
• A Google OAuth app (OAuth 2.0 Web client) for login. If they do not have one, point them to https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials.
• You, Hermes, are installed and reachable — confirm the hermes CLI resolves on this machine (which hermes).

Step 2 — Clone and install dependencies

If the repo is not already present, clone it, then install:

git clone <repo-url> hermy-hq && cd hermy-hq
npm install

Confirm npm install finished without errors.

Step 3 — Create the .env file

Copy the template and fill it in together:

cp .env.example .env

Open .env and go through the Required · Core group with the operator. For each of these, ask them to paste the real value, then write it into .env for them — never invent one:

• DATABASE_URL and POSTGRES_URL (usually the same Postgres URL)
• NEXTAUTH_URL — use http://localhost:3000 for now
• NEXTAUTH_SECRET — you MAY generate this one locally with openssl rand -base64 32 (it is a random secret, not an account credential), then show it to the operator
• GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID and GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET — ask the operator to paste from their Google OAuth app
• ALLOWED_EMAILS — the Google email(s) allowed to sign in
• NEXT_PUBLIC_OWNER_NAME and NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL

Then set the Hermes / bridge group: HERMES_BOARD, HERMES_BIN, HERMES_WIKI, BRIEF_HOUR, and generate INTERNAL_API_SECRET and CRON_SECRET (openssl rand -hex 32 each). Leave the Optional groups blank unless the operator wants those features now.

Step 4 — Create the database tables

Push the Prisma schema to their Postgres:

npx prisma db push

Confirm it reports the schema is in sync. If it fails, the DATABASE_URL is almost always the cause — recheck it with the operator.

Step 5 — Run locally to verify

npm run dev

Ask the operator to open http://localhost:3000 and sign in with a Google account listed in ALLOWED_EMAILS. Confirm they see the dashboard. Stop the dev server when they confirm.

Step 6 — Deploy to Vercel

Guide them through:

npm i -g vercel   # if needed
vercel            # link the project + preview deploy
vercel --prod     # production

Then have the operator:

1. Add every variable from .env in Vercel → Project → Settings → Environment Variables. Ask them to paste values into Vercel themselves (or read them back so you can guide) — do not fabricate any.
2. Update NEXTAUTH_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL to the production URL, both locally and in Vercel.
3. In the Google Cloud console, add the authorized redirect URI https://<their-domain>/api/auth/callback/google. Confirm they can sign in on the production URL.

Step 7 — Set up the bridge (connect the bus)

On this machine (where you, Hermes, live), set up the bridge so the website and you share the Postgres bus:

cd hermes-bridge
npm install

Do a one-off test run using the same DATABASE_URL as the website (ask the operator to confirm it matches):

DATABASE_URL='postgres://…same as website…' HERMES_BOARD=default node bridge.mjs

You should see hermes-bridge up … in the logs. Then make it permanent:

• macOS: edit the placeholders in hermes-bridge/ai.hermyhq.bridge.plist (path, DATABASE_URL, PATH), copy it to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/, and launchctl load it.
• Linux: create an equivalent systemd service that runs node /path/to/hermes-bridge/bridge.mjs with DATABASE_URL set, and enable it. See hermes-bridge/README.md for the exact commands.

Step 8 — Verify the bridge connected

Ask the operator to open the website's /hermes activity feed and confirm a "Bridge connected" event appears. Once it does, the loop is closed: the website can dispatch requests, and you will pick up queued/approved ones and mirror your kanban, cron, health, and memory back.

Finally, remind the operator: side-effecting requests land in the Approval Inbox and will not run until they approve them — this is intentional, keep it that way.