hermes-token-diet 0.2.1

Universal context-token diet tool for Hermes Agent

🫒 Hermes Token Diet

Cut your Hermes Agent context-window burn by 30%+ — without patching a single line of code.

Hermes ships with a kitchen-sink of toolsets and a huge skills catalog. That is great for a first-time user, but for a daily driver the context window fills up fast — and every extra token is a token you pay for. Hermes Token Diet is a small, opinionated CLI that audits your real billed prompt_tokens, shows you exactly what is burning tokens, applies a safe preset, and proves the savings with a live before/after demo.

⚡️ Config-only. Reversible. One-minute setup.

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✨ What it does

Before	After	Δ
~19,200 tokens just to say "hi"	~13,140 tokens	-32% fixed overhead
~9,500 tokens/exchange growth	~371 tokens/exchange growth	-96% per-exchange growth

Numbers above are from a live kimi-k2.6 / Ollama Cloud run on Hermes v0.17.0. Your mileage depends on your persona and tool usage, but the tool reports your actual numbers every time.

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🚀 Install

pipx (recommended)

pipx install git+https://github.com/deresolution20/hermes-token-diet.git

Run once without installing:

pipx run git+https://github.com/deresolution20/hermes-token-diet.git audit

uv

uv tool install git+https://github.com/deresolution20/hermes-token-diet.git

From source

git clone https://github.com/deresolution20/hermes-token-diet.git
cd hermes-token-diet
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q

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🎯 Quick start

1. Measure your current baseline

hermes-token-diet audit

╭──────────────────────────────────────╮
│ Hermes Token Diet — Fresh 'hi' audit │
╰──────────────────────────────────────╯
Hermes home: /home/brice/.hermes
Running hermes chat -q 'hi' from a neutral directory...

  Metric                                           Value
 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Session ID                      20260702_090329_26536f
  Input tokens (fixed overhead)                   13,140
  Output tokens                                       73
  Target fixed overhead                         ≤ 15,000
  Status                                 ✅ under target

2. See what costs tokens

hermes-token-diet analyze

Shows every enabled toolset and skill category with estimated token cost, plus your current file_read_max_chars / tool_output.max_bytes caps.

3. Preview a diet profile

hermes-token-diet recommend --profile daily

4. Live before/after demo

hermes-token-diet demo --profile daily

This measures your current cost, applies the profile, measures again, and prints the delta — with an automatic timestamped backup of ~/.hermes/config.yaml.

5. Verify long-session growth

hermes-token-diet verify

Runs a scripted 5-exchange working session and reports average token growth per turn. Target is ≤ 5,000 tokens/exchange.

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👁️ Context Watch addon

Monitor live Hermes sessions for context-window fatigue. Reports metrics, warns when you cross configurable thresholds, and writes reports to ~/.hermes/scratch/context-diet-latest.md so Hermes can read its own diet advice.

Manual check

# Check the active session
hermes-token-diet check

# Check a specific session
hermes-token-diet check --session-id 20260702_090329_26536f

# Show the markdown report in the terminal too
hermes-token-diet check --show-report

Background watch (foreground)

hermes-token-diet watch --interval 300

Polls every 5 minutes and writes a report only when a session crosses from healthy into warning or critical. Stop with Ctrl+C.

Daemon mode

Run unattended with a PID file and log file:

# Start the daemon
hermes-token-diet watch --daemon

# Check status
hermes-token-diet watch --status

# Stop it
hermes-token-diet watch --stop

# Opt-in auto-apply: when a session hits critical, automatically apply the
# 'daily' diet profile (with a backup) and keep watching
hermes-token-diet watch --daemon --auto-apply

Daemon files live in ~/.hermes/scratch/:

• context-watch-default.pid
• context-watch-default.log

Install as an OS service

hermes-token-diet watch --install-service

This prints copy-and-paste instructions for systemd --user and macOS launchd using the templates in extras/.

Fine-tune thresholds

Add a token_diet_watch block to ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

token_diet_watch:
  thresholds:
    token_ratio_warning: 0.60
    token_ratio_critical: 0.80
    compactions_warning: 3
    compactions_critical: 6
    growth_per_exchange_warning: 4000
    growth_per_exchange_critical: 7000

Re-enable tools or skills on the fly

# Bring a toolset back
hermes-token-diet enable-tool browser

# Bring a skill back
hermes-token-diet enable-skill ascii-art

# Undo the last config change
hermes-token-diet revert

# List available backups
hermes-token-diet revert --list

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📦 Profiles

Profile	Toolsets kept	Caps	Best for
minimal	Core assistant only (file, terminal, memory, skills, todo, session_search, context_engine)	20K file / 8K output	Minimal token budget, headless use
daily	Core + web, browser, code_execution, cronjob	20K file / 8K output	Coding / ops assistant (recommended)
balanced	Daily + kept creative / media skills	30K file / 12K output	Multimedia and research workflows

Add --usage-tuned to any profile to re-enable toolsets or skill categories you actually used in the last 14 days, pulled from ~/.hermes/state.db.

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🛡️ How it stays safe

• No Hermes patches. Every change is a documented edit to ~/.hermes/config.yaml.
• Automatic backups. apply and demo create timestamped .yaml.bak.token-diet-* files before touching anything.
• Skills stay loadable. Disabling a skill only removes it from the eager system-prompt index; skill_view(name='...') still works on demand.
• MCP servers preserved. Platform-specific and MCP config is left untouched.
• Uses the real Hermes venv. The tool discovers your Hermes Python interpreter and runs probes through it, so measurements match reality.

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🔧 What actually changes in config.yaml

platform_toolsets:
  cli:
    - file
    - terminal
    - memory
    - skills
    - todo
    - session_search
    - context_engine
    - web
    - browser
    - code_execution
    - cronjob

file_read_max_chars: 20000
tool_output:
  max_bytes: 8000

skills:
  disabled:
    - apple-notes
    - apple-reminders
    - findmy
    - imessage
    # ... heavy / niche skill categories only

All changes are scoped, reversible, and tailored to the chosen profile.

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🧪 Development & testing

# Clone and set up a local dev venv
git clone https://github.com/deresolution20/hermes-token-diet.git
cd hermes-token-diet
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run the suite
pytest -q

CI runs on Ubuntu, macOS, and Windows for Python 3.10–3.13.

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📖 Documentation

• docs/token-audit.md — full Phase 1 audit report with counter semantics, fixed-overhead breakdown, and verified Phase 4 results.
• workflows/hermes_token_diet.md — human SOP for running the tool end to end.
• CHANGELOG.md — release notes.
• CONTRIBUTING.md — how to contribute.

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🗺️ Roadmap

• check / watch Context Watch addon with live session monitoring
• revert command to restore from any timestamped backup
• diff command to compare two profiles side by side
• Per-provider token counting with tiktoken / local tokenizer fallbacks
• --aggressive profile for very long personas
• TUI mode for interactive exploration

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💡 Why context tokens matter

Hermes sends the entire system prompt + full transcript + tool schemas on every API turn. If your fixed overhead is 19K tokens and you grow by ~10K per exchange, a 256K window is half full after only ~23 turns. Compressing the fixed payload and capping tool-output retention keeps sessions cheaper, faster, and less likely to hit the context ceiling.

This tool makes that tuning measurable, repeatable, and reversible.

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📄 License

MIT © Brice Neal

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Built with the Hermes Agent ecosystem in mind.