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Personal assistant

The same plugin can run Hermes as one person's assistant in their Rocket.Chat DMs: it answers only its owner, only in a one-to-one DM, and opens the session, model and scheduling commands that a shared team bot must not expose. Nothing in the code changes; it is configuration only.

One Hermes instance and one bot account per person

A Hermes instance holds one owner's sessions, memory, model choice and cron jobs, and the personal preset lets its user switch models, browse and resume sessions and choose where reminders are delivered. If several people want an assistant, run a separate Hermes instance (its own HERMES_HOME, container or profile) with its own Rocket.Chat bot account for each of them. Never use the personal preset on a bot that more than one person can talk to.

What the owner gets

Area What works
Conversation Plain messages in the DM, no mention needed; answers stream in
Memory Hermes remembers facts and preferences across sessions (memory is safe to enable: only the owner talks to it)
Sessions /sessions, /resume, /title, /branch, /undo, /retry, /compress, /new
Model and run /model, /reasoning, /personality, /bg, /queue, /steer, /usage, /status
Reminders and goals Ask in plain words ("remind me in an hour to…"); /sethome makes the DM the delivery target; /loop, /goal, /plan
Approvals Dangerous commands still wait for the owner's click, as on a team bot

The full list of the preset is in Commands and approvals. Type commands as !status in the DM, or @<bot> /status; a Rocket.Chat client does not send an unknown /status on its own.

Set it up

1. A bot account for this person

In Rocket.Chat, Administration → Users → New: create a user such as bob-assistant with the roles user and bot. Log in as it, open Profile → Personal Access Tokens and create a token with Ignore Two Factor Authentication ticked. Copy the token and the user ID.

You also need the owner's user ID: open the owner under Administration → Users; the ID is the last part of the page address.

2. Its own Hermes

Give the assistant its own Hermes home: a separate container with its own data volume, a separate HERMES_HOME, or a Hermes profile. Install and enable the plugin there as in Install on your server.

3. .env

ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_URL=https://chat.example.com
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_BOT_USERNAME=bob-assistant
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_USER_ID=<bot user id>
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_TOKEN=<bot personal access token>
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_ALLOWED_USERS=<owner user id>      # the owner alone
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_DM_ONLY=true                       # DMs only; a room mention gets one short notice
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_ALLOW_BUILTIN_PRESET=personal      # the owner's commands
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_STARTUP_GREETING=false
ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_TIMEZONE=Europe/Budapest           # the owner's zone, for reminders and timestamps

4. config.yaml

memory:
  memory_enabled: true          # one owner, so their memory is theirs alone
  user_profile_enabled: true
approvals:
  mode: manual                  # the owner clicks to allow a dangerous command
streaming:
  enabled: true                 # optional: answers appear as they are written
  transport: edit

5. Start and point reminders at the DM

Start the gateway, open a DM with the bot as the owner and send !sethome. Hermes stores the DM as its home channel, and reminders and other scheduled jobs are delivered there. You can also set ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_HOME_CHANNEL to the DM's room ID in .env.

Several assistants on one server

Each assistant is its own Hermes process with its own data, bot account and .env. When several run on one host with host networking, give each its own port for Hermes's built-in API server, or turn it off where it is not used:

platforms:
  api_server:
    enabled: false

The assistants share nothing but the Rocket.Chat server. If they use the same model provider account, they also share its rate limits; a busy free tier shows up in !usage.

What stays closed

/yolo, /restart, /update, /approvals, /pause, /learn, /debug and /platform are in no preset: they skip approvals, restart or update the gateway, or change its configuration. If the owner really needs one, enable it alone with its own key, for example ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_ALLOW_BUILTIN_DEBUG=true, and restart the gateway. Any command can also be taken out of the preset with ROCKETCHAT_TEAM_ALLOW_BUILTIN_<NAME>=false.

Check it works

As the owner, in the DM:

  1. Ask a question without a mention: the assistant answers.
  2. !status and !model: session and model information, no model call.
  3. "Remember that my standup is at 9:30." Then !new and ask when the standup is: it remembers.
  4. !sethome, then "Remind me in one minute to stretch.": the reminder arrives in the DM about a minute later.
  5. !yolo on: refused.

As anyone else:

  1. A DM to the assistant gets no answer.
  2. A mention in a room the bot belongs to gets one short notice that it works in DMs only.

These checks, run against a real model, are in Testing and evidence.

Good to know

  • Hermes shows short progress lines while it works (for example, which tool it is using). For a quieter DM, see the display settings in Deployment.
  • Reminders are delivered on Hermes's scheduler tick, so a "one minute" reminder can arrive up to a minute later.
  • Everything about the plugin's security applies unchanged: see Security.