Hermes Kanban: The Swarm

The Stack

Tested Against

Prerequisites

• Hermes Agent (MIT): `curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash`
• Profiles for the worker/verifier/synthesizer roles (dispatch skips unknown assignees)
• `hermes gateway start` to actually run the swarm
• Node 20+ (used here to read the --json board state)

Steps

1. 1

   Build the swarm graph and verify its shape

   One `hermes kanban swarm` command builds the graph. CI asserts (via the command's --json and `list --json`) that it created 3 parallel workers plus a verifier and a synthesizer, with all the named roles present on the board.

   hermes kanban init >/dev/null
   hermes kanban swarm "Design a multi-region failover plan" --worker researcher:Research --worker architect:Architecture --worker sre:Reliability --verifier reviewer --synthesizer writer --json | node -e 'let s="";process.stdin.on("data",d=>s+=d).on("end",()=>{const o=JSON.parse(s);if(!o.worker_ids||o.worker_ids.length!==3||!o.verifier_id||!o.synthesizer_id){console.log("BAD GRAPH");process.exit(1)}console.log("swarm graph: "+o.worker_ids.length+" workers, verifier yes, synthesizer yes")})'
   hermes kanban list --json | node -e 'let s="";process.stdin.on("data",d=>s+=d).on("end",()=>{const o=JSON.parse(s);const t=Array.isArray(o)?o:(o.tasks||o.items||[]);console.log("assignees: "+[...new Set(t.map(x=>x.assignee))].sort().join(","))})'

2. 2

   Run the swarm (the worker steps, not checked by CI)

   Start the gateway: workers run in parallel and write findings to the blackboard; the verifier wakes only after all workers finish; the synthesizer wakes only after the verifier signs off. All three call models, so CI doesn't run them — the badge covers the graph the command builds.