One hundred curated color themes, perfectly balanced 50 light / 50 dark, and every single theme has a light/dark twin — click ⇄ to flip the same vibe to the other polarity, or turn on Follow system to have the active theme flip automatically when macOS switches appearance. See the release notes and the full changelog.
100 curated color themes for Hermes Agent, organized into 7 categories, every one contrast-checked to WCAG AA. Drop them in and they appear across the CLI, the TUI, and the desktop app at once, because a Hermes skin themes every surface.
- 100 themes, 7 categories — Dark, Light, Vibrant, Nature, Minimal, Retro, and Community (10 themes ported from BeardedChop/hermes-skins-pack)
- WCAG AA contrast gate — every theme passes primary text at 6:1, accents and secondary text at 4.5:1 against its background, enforced by an independent test suite
- Themes every surface — one YAML skin repaints the CLI, the TUI, and the desktop app at once
- Theme Switcher desktop plugin — a Themes page in the app sidebar: every skin in one grid, light/dark grouping, search (including palette colors like "purple" or #7b2d8e), hover preview, one-click apply, undo, random, install-from-YAML, statusbar chip, ⌘K palette entry
- Built-in Appearance integration — pack themes appear in the desktop's native Appearance settings, Cmd-K, and
/skin(via THEMES_AREA) - Copy YAML to share — one click on any user theme card exports the raw skin YAML for sharing
- Add your own theme — paste YAML in the app, drop a file in
~/.hermes/skins/, or use the seed-palette generator - CI-enforced quality — every PR runs YAML validation, the WCAG test suite, generator drift checks, and plugin syntax checks automatically
- Community contribution guide — CONTRIBUTING.md walks contributors through the format, the contrast contract, and verification
In the desktop app, the Theme Switcher page lists every installed skin in a single view, with its real palette, one click to apply. It follows your active skin, so the same page looks like this in light and dark mode:
Light mode (default theme):
Dark mode (dark-charcoal):
| Category | Themes |
|---|---|
| Dark | dark-aubergine, dark-obsidian, dark-charcoal, dark-navy, dark-crimson, dark-dracula, dark-lcars, dark-plum, dark-bone, dark-mac, dark-lemon, dark-sage, dark-vanilla, dark-solarized, dark-gruvbox, dark-tokyo-night, dark-catppuccin, dark-nord, dark-rosepine, dark-one, dark-everforest, dark-kanagawa, dark-ayu, dark-github, dark-material, dark-vscode, dark-cozy-paper |
| Light | light-paper, light-frost, light-cloud, light-cream, light-mint, light-rose, light-sand, light-lavender, light-honey, light-sky, light-peach, light-sage, light-aqua, light-lilac, light-porcelain, light-denim, light-blush, light-grape, light-fern, light-vanilla, light-lemon, light-oat, light-melon, light-tide, light-mist, light-ash, light-dracula, light-lcars, light-stained-glass, light-neon, light-pacific, light-synthwave, light-sunset, light-solarized, light-gruvbox, light-tokyo-day, light-catppuccin, light-nord, light-rosepine, light-one, light-everforest, light-kanagawa, light-ayu, light-github, light-material, light-vscode, light-cozy-paper |
| Vibrant | vibrant-synthwave, vibrant-neon, vibrant-sunset, vibrant-pacific |
| Nature | nature-forest, nature-nordic, nature-desert, nature-ocean, nature-autumn |
| Minimal | minimal-graphite, minimal-bone, minimal-pearl |
| Retro | retro-terminal, retro-amber, retro-blue, retro-mac |
| Community | vaporwave-mall, stained-glass, shadow-thief, void-sunset, redwood, newsprint-noir, peach-fuzz, slate-mist, steel-thread, warm-ash — ported from BeardedChop/hermes-skins-pack |
Every theme with a light/dark counterpart is paired to the same vibe in the
opposite polarity. In the Theme Switcher, paired themes show ⇄ paired with <name> on the card, a ⇄ button applies the twin in one click, and the hover
preview shows both polarities side by side. The pack is 50 light / 50 dark;
every theme is paired — 50 pairs cover all 100 themes.
| Dark | Light | Dark | Light |
|---|---|---|---|
| dark-aubergine | light-lavender | nature-nordic | light-frost |
| dark-ayu | light-ayu | nature-ocean | light-tide |
| dark-bone | minimal-bone | newsprint-noir | light-paper |
| dark-catppuccin | light-catppuccin | peach-fuzz | light-peach |
| dark-charcoal | light-cloud | redwood | light-cream |
| dark-cozy-paper | light-cozy-paper | retro-amber | light-honey |
| dark-crimson | light-rose | retro-blue | light-denim |
| dark-dracula | light-dracula | retro-terminal | light-mint |
| dark-everforest | light-everforest | shadow-thief | light-lilac |
| dark-github | light-github | slate-mist | light-mist |
| dark-gruvbox | light-gruvbox | stained-glass | light-stained-glass |
| dark-kanagawa | light-kanagawa | steel-thread | light-ash |
| dark-lcars | light-lcars | vaporwave-mall | light-aqua |
| dark-lemon | light-lemon | vibrant-neon | light-neon |
| dark-mac | retro-mac | vibrant-pacific | light-pacific |
| dark-material | light-material | vibrant-sunset | light-blush |
| dark-navy | light-sky | vibrant-synthwave | light-synthwave |
| dark-nord | light-nord | void-sunset | light-sunset |
| dark-obsidian | light-porcelain | warm-ash | light-oat |
| dark-one | light-one | nature-autumn | light-melon |
| dark-plum | light-grape | nature-desert | light-sand |
| dark-rosepine | light-rosepine | nature-forest | light-fern |
| dark-sage | light-sage | minimal-graphite | minimal-pearl |
| dark-solarized | light-solarized | dark-vanilla | light-vanilla |
| dark-tokyo-night | light-tokyo-day | dark-vscode | light-vscode |
./install.shOr manually: copy the .yaml files from themes/ into your Hermes skins folder, ~/.hermes/skins/ (profile-aware: $HERMES_HOME/skins/).
The desktop app picks up new skins automatically via the backend skin sync. If they don't appear right away, restart the gateway or reload the desktop app.
hermes config set display.skin dark-aubergineOr in the app: /skin in the CLI, or Appearance → theme in the desktop app. Every surface repaints live within about a second.
Three ways — and if you want to contribute your theme back to the pack, see CONTRIBUTING.md for the full walkthrough:
- In the app: open Themes, click + Add theme, paste a skin YAML, and it installs instantly. The backend validates the shape and rejects malformed input, duplicates, and unsafe names.
- By hand: drop a
.yamlfile into~/.hermes/skins/(profile-aware:$HERMES_HOME/skins/) and it appears everywhere, CLI, TUI, and desktop. - With the generator: add a seed palette to the
THEMESlist at the top ofscripts/generate_themes.pyand re-run it. The generator derives the full color set and enforces the contrast gate for you.
A minimal hand-written skin:
name: my-theme
description: My custom look
colors:
background: "#1a1a2e"
ui_accent: "#ffd700"
banner_text: "#f5f5f5"
banner_dim: "#8a8a8a"
banner_border: "#333355"Contrast is your job in the first two options and the generator's job in the third. For hand-written skins, keep primary text at 6:1 and accents at 4.5:1 against the background.
Every theme is generated from a seed palette by scripts/generate_themes.py, which:
- Derives the full skin color set: background, text hierarchy, accent, borders, status colors, diff colors, syntax colors, completion menu
- Enforces WCAG AA contrast: primary text at 6:1, secondary text and accents at 4.5:1 against the background
- Keeps success, warning, and error recognizable as green, amber, and red
- Uses only
#rrggbbhex, valid for every surface
Re-run the generator to regenerate all skins and the preview gallery, or edit any .yaml by hand and reload.
The pack also ships a Theme Switcher desktop plugin: a "Themes" entry in the app's left sidebar (like Achievements) that lists every installed skin, marks the active one, and applies a new one with one click. No terminal needed to flip themes.
Features:
- Every skin in one view — all installed skins in a compact grid, grouped by category, each card showing the real palette (accent line, name, swatches, description)
- Light / dark symbols — ☀ marks light-based themes, ☾ marks dark-based, computed from the background luminance
- Light and dark groups — themes are sorted into a ☀ Light group and a ☾ Dark group with counts, so the first decision is the polarity one
- Search and filters — type to find a theme, filter by ☀ light / ☾ dark, or by category
- Hover preview — hover any card to see a mockup of the app rendered in that theme's real colors before you apply it
- One-click apply — every surface repaints live through the canonical config writer
- Undo — a banner appears after every apply; click Undo to snap back to the previous theme
- Random — the 🎲 button applies a random theme from the current filter
- Add a theme — paste a skin YAML and it installs into your skins folder and appears on the page instantly (bad YAML, duplicates, and unsafe names are rejected)
- Statusbar chip — the bottom bar shows the active theme with its color dot; click to open the Themes page
- Command palette — ⌘K → "Themes: Open"
Install the backend and desktop plugin:
# backend plugin
mkdir -p ~/.hermes/plugins/theme-switcher
cp -R plugins/theme-switcher/* ~/.hermes/plugins/theme-switcher/
hermes plugins enable theme-switcher
# desktop plugin
mkdir -p ~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/theme-switcher
cp desktop-plugin/theme-switcher/plugin.js ~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/theme-switcher/Restart the app once so the backend mounts, then open Themes from the sidebar.
python3 scripts/generate_themes.py # regenerates themes/*.yaml + docs/preview.html
uv run pytest tests/ -q # invariant checks: structure, WCAG gate, idempotency, installer (installs pytest + pyyaml)
open docs/preview.html # browse the galleryThe seed palettes live at the top of the generator script. Add a palette, re-run, and you have a new theme.
MIT.
See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.