Since a shell is currently a github repo in concept, and hermit as a policy will never change the branch that you're on, it's possible to set up multiple different shells as being different checkouts of the same git repo.
This is pretty manual to set up right now though, since hermit doesn't help at all. The question is, can hermit provide enough value over git to make it worth it to wrap the checkout command?
Maybe all this deserves is a short guide on how to set it up.