Donna

Donna is a pre-configured Hermes Agent profile for people who want a capable, opinionated assistant without building one from scratch. Clone it, point it at a model provider, and a guided first-run orientation walks you through enabling exactly the capabilities you want.

She ships with:

• A persona — sharp, discreet, outcome-focused executive assistant (see SOUL.md).
• 72 curated skills — Hermes configuration, plugin development, research, documents, GitHub workflows, Reddit, trip planning, local models, and more (full list below).
• A guided first-run orientation — the hermes-starter-onboarding skill asks who you are, then walks you through every toolset one at a time, sets up web search, memory, and any integrations you choose. Nothing is enabled silently.
• The Hermes Token Router — an optional plugin that narrows the tool surface the model sees on each turn. Installed but disabled by default — turn it on during orientation (details below).
• A skin and profile avatar — skins/donna.yaml, assets/donna-profile.png.

No API keys, credentials, sessions, or personal memory are included. The profile starts with generic community defaults and learns what you tell it.

Requirements

• Hermes Agent installed (hermes --version — see the docs)
• macOS recommended; several skills are macOS-specific
• A model provider account (DeepSeek, OpenAI, Anthropic, a local server, …)

Install

mkdir -p ~/.hermes/profiles
git clone https://github.com/AtlasOmnia/donna-starter.git ~/.hermes/profiles/donna

This repository is the profile — clone it straight into your Hermes profiles directory under the name donna. Updates later are just git -C ~/.hermes/profiles/donna pull.

Then:

hermes setup                  # add your model provider key — or skip if another
                              # Hermes profile already has one (see step 4 below)
hermes --profile donna chat   # start chatting — Donna offers the orientation
hermes update                 # once: sync the standard Hermes skill library

The standard library (documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, email, travel, planning, and more) syncs into the profile automatically on hermes update. The curated Donna skills are tracked as user-modified and are never overwritten.

First-run orientation

On your first conversation, Donna offers a guided setup. Say yes (or just ask "help me set up my profile" any time) to run it.

It covers, in order:

1. Identity — what Donna calls you, what you call her, reply style.
2. Your main jobs — research, writing, coding, notes, organization, voice, etc., so she can point you at the capabilities and integrations that matter to you.
3. Toolset review — every CLI toolset is already enabled by default, so the profile works out of the box. Donna walks each one in plain language — web, browser, terminal, file, code_execution, computer_use, memory, session_search, delegation, skills, cronjob, todo, kanban, image_gen, video_gen, vision, tts, video, clarify — and you peel back only the ones you don't want. Toolsets that need a backend or key are not reported as working until that dependency is actually present.
4. Model provider — if you already have a provider working in another Hermes profile, Donna offers to reuse it (keys live in .env; a global key is picked up automatically, so there's often nothing to re-enter) instead of making you set one up from scratch. Otherwise you add one through hermes setup.
5. Web search backend — web needs a search provider. Choose self-hosted SearXNG (private, no key — you supply your own instance URL), a hosted search API (Brave / Tavily / Exa), or let hermes setup walk the choice. Verified with a real query before it's called working.
6. Memory — Donna asks whether you already have a memory provider. If not, she recommends Mnemosyne (local-first, profile-scoped, no external account — the provider her memory skills are written around) and sets it up, or uses your own.
7. Integrations — Obsidian, calendar, reminders, email, voice — only the ones you pick, each pausing at its own credential/permission gate.
8. Token Router (optional) — offered here; see the next section.
9. Optional scheduled jobs — daily briefing, wellness check-in, health reminders, stock quotes. None are created by default.

The Token Router (optional, off by default)

Hermes exposes a large tool surface, and every tool schema costs the model attention on every turn. The bundled Hermes Token Router plugin narrows that surface: on the first turn it predicts which toolsets your request needs and exposes only those, keeping the rest out of the prompt. It fails open (if unsure, it shows everything) and can recover a tool mid-session if one turns out to be needed.

It is installed but disabled by default, so the profile works identically to stock Hermes until you opt in. The orientation offers to enable it for you. To do it manually:

1. Add hermes-token-router to plugins.enabled in config.yaml.
2. Set enabled: true for your profile in plugins/hermes-token-router/config.yaml.
3. Start a fresh session.

It works best alongside a hosted provider API. Out of the box the router is fully deterministic (no network call) and already trims the surface, but its optional classifier — which resolves ambiguous requests the deterministic rules can't — is designed to run against a cheap hosted model. OpenRouter is the natural fit: one API key gives you access to many low-cost models for the classifier. Any OpenAI-compatible provider or a local endpoint works too. The classifier is opt-in (classifier.enabled in the plugin config); leave it off to stay fully deterministic.

Leave the router off entirely if you prefer the full tool surface always visible, or if you run a model that handles large tool contexts well.

What's loaded — the skill library

72 skills, organized by category. Each is a reusable procedure Donna loads when the matching task comes up — you do not call them by hand.

Getting the most out of Hermes

• hermes-starter-onboarding — the guided first-run setup (orientation)
• hermes-agent — configure, extend, and troubleshoot Hermes itself
• hermes-config-editing — change settings, compression, providers safely
• hermes-context-optimization — trim startup/context cost
• hermes-session-maintenance — manage session history and storage
• hermes-self-evaluation — audit and optimize your own setup
• hermes-overnight-autonomy — unattended continuity and watchdogs
• hermes-plugin-development / hermes-plugin-evaluation / hermes-desktop-plugins — build and vet plugins
• hermes-themes — author color themes
• hermes-mnemosyne / mnemosyne-maintenance — the memory provider
• messaging-gateway-troubleshooting — Telegram/Discord/etc. adapter issues
• skill-auditor — grade and review skills
• hermes-nightly-self-check-decisions — record self-check decisions

Research & verification

• source-verification — separate what a source says from what you infer
• hf-model-card-research — benchmark and quality metadata for models
• local-model-selection — pick local LLMs by VRAM tier and use case
• external-model-review — reproducible independent plan/code reviews
• daily-news-digests — scheduled news/research digests
• dynamic-content-extraction — pull data from JS-heavy sites
• site-mapping — map a website's full structure
• local-discovery — find local events and venues
• marketplace-purchase-vetting — vet Marketplace/Craigslist listings
• evidence-based-replies — check a claim against its cited source

Documents & productivity

• google-workspace — Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets
• notion — Notion via API/CLI
• obsidian / daily-note-wrapup / vault-organization — notes, vault structure (PARA) & cleanup
• office-document-review — proofread office documents
• maps — geocoding, POIs, routes, timezones
• domestic-trip-planning / destination-trip-planning — trip research
• discord-connect — put Hermes on Discord
• session-artifact-indexing — index what a session produced

Coding & GitHub

• github-workflows / github-auth / github-issues / github-pr-workflow / github-code-review / github-pre-push-gates / github-readme-maintenance / github-repo-management — the full GitHub lifecycle
• codebase-inspection — inspect repos with pygount
• local-app-github-publishing — publish local apps safely
• subagent-driven-development — delegate coding to sub-agents
• coding-worktree-recovery — recover interrupted/overlapping agent work
• specification-compliance-review / application-security-review — audit implementations and security
• stale-patch-reconciliation — rebase stale patches onto a moved checkout
• cross-browser-typography-qa / inspecting-hermes-desktop-dom — web/desktop debugging
• hermes-agent-skill-authoring — write new skills
• opencode — delegate coding to the OpenCode CLI
• dogfood — exploratory QA of web apps

Computer use & macOS

• computer-use — drive the desktop GUI in the background
• macos-app-automation — AppleScript, URL schemes, System Events
• macos-storage-management — free space, move files to SSDs
• apple-reminders — Apple Reminders
• imessage — send/receive iMessage/SMS
• notes-automation-workflows — bulk Apple Notes automation

Creative & community

• content-style — write for r/hermesagent and similar communities
• claude-design — one-off HTML artifacts (landing pages, decks, prototypes)
• marketing-collateral-design — design/critique/export collateral

Social

• reddit-browse-and-post — browse, read, and post to Reddit
• xurl — X/Twitter
• meta-business-posting — publish to a Facebook Page
• publication-link-audit — verify every outbound link before publishing

Health & personal

• meal-tracker — log meals and calories from a photo or description

Competitive analysis

• product-competitor-analysis — codebase-grounded competitor assessments

Note: hermes update adds the standard library (docx, xlsx, pdf, email, plan, and more) on top of these. The full inventory any time: hermes --profile donna skills list

Notes

• Memory starts empty and generic. Donna ships with neutral style and operating-practice seeds in memories/ (no personal data) and builds a profile-scoped Mnemosyne store as you work.
• Credentials live in .env. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in the keys you need. Never commit it — .gitignore already excludes it.
• Approvals & autonomy. Donna is written to act, not pester — she executes routine, reversible, in-scope work without asking and only pauses for destructive, external, payment, or credential actions (see AGENTS.md and SOUL.md). Separately, Hermes's own tool-approval prompts ship as approvals.mode: manual in config.yaml, so the first few file writes or terminal commands may ask for a y/n. If you want her to run those without asking, set hermes --profile donna config set approvals.mode auto — that's a trust setting you choose, not one we ship.
• Provider. The default model provider is deepseek — direct calls only. (The optional Token Router classifier is a separate, opt-in place where OpenRouter is a natural fit; see that section.)

License & credits

• Profile: MIT — see LICENSE.
• The Donna persona is an original assistant archetype inspired by the character Donna Paulsen from Suits (operating style only — no dialogue, catchphrases, or copyrighted material is reproduced).
• The profile avatar was generated for this project; swap in your own if you prefer.
• Skills and tooling were battle-tested by the r/hermesagent community.