caspase-hermes 0.1.0a0

Caspase apoptosis plugin for Hermes Agent — install once, your agent never runs away again

caspase-hermes

Caspase apoptosis supervision for Hermes Agent. Drops in as a plugin: Caspase watches every tool call and LLM turn in your Hermes session and terminates the agent cleanly if it enters a runaway loop, exceeds its cost/token cap, runs past a wall-clock deadline, or calls a tool outside the policy allowlist.

Install

pip install caspase-hermes

Then drop the plugin into Hermes:

python -c "
import caspase_hermes, pathlib, shutil
src = pathlib.Path(caspase_hermes.__file__).parent
dst = pathlib.Path.home() / '.hermes' / 'plugins' / 'caspase'
shutil.copytree(src, dst, dirs_exist_ok=True)
print('installed →', dst)
"

Configure

export CASPASE_API_KEY=sk-...
export CASPASE_BASE_URL=https://your-control-plane.example.com  # optional
export CASPASE_AGENT_NAME=my-coding-agent                       # optional display name
export CASPASE_POLICY=coding-default                            # optional policy

Or add the same keys to ~/.hermes/.env.

Run

hermes

Caspase activates automatically. Every session is queryable via the operator CLI (caspase agents list).

What it does

Condition	What happens
Agent calls the same tool 5× in a row with identical inputs	Kill (loop)
Cumulative LLM cost exceeds policy cap	Kill (token_runaway)
Session runs longer than policy wall-clock cap	Kill (wall_clock)
Agent calls a tool not in the policy allowlist	Kill (tool_scope_violation)
Operator issues caspase kill <agent_id>	Kill (manual_kill)
Operator issues a grant	Suppress one symptom type for up to 24 h

On kill, Caspase posts a death certificate with a full symptom log, shutdown sequence, and a one-click feedback URL so operators can label the verdict.

Policies

Shipped defaults:

Policy	Loop cap	Cost cap	Wall-clock cap
strict	3 repeats / 15 actions	$2.00	5 min
coding-default	5 repeats / 20 actions	$25.00	30 min
permissive	10 repeats / 40 actions	$100.00	2 h

Operator CLI

caspase agents list
caspase logs <agent_id>
caspase kill <agent_id> --reason "infinite loop in file search"
caspase grants create <agent_id> --symptom loop --duration 1h --reason "known flaky task"
caspase grants revoke <grant_id>

See the repo root README for the full operator workflow, security model, and deployment guide.

License

MIT © 2026 Caspase Contributors