Polydocs.poly.app
Integrations & MCP

Hermes

Give Hermes persistent context and access to your files with the Poly plugin.

Poly turns Hermes into an assistant that knows what you have been working on and can act on the files in your personal and shared drives. Poly for Hermes adds persistent context, the poly-cli agent skill, and hosted MCP access in one plugin.

It works anywhere your Hermes agent runs—including the CLI and gateway sessions—so the same context and files can support conversations across your connected channels.

What Poly adds to Hermes

  • Persistent context — each new session starts with your Poly profile and recent memories already available to the model.
  • File tools — Hermes can search, read, create, update, and organize files through the hosted Poly MCP server.
  • Local CLI access — the bundled skill teaches Hermes to prefer the fast, cache-backed poly CLI when it has access to your desktop environment.

Install Poly for Hermes

The session context requires the Poly desktop app to be open and signed in. On macOS, open Downloads in the Poly menu bar app and click Install CLI.

Then install and enable the plugin:

hermes plugins install withpoly/polyhermes --enable

Restart Hermes after installation. On its first load, the plugin adds the Poly MCP endpoint to your Hermes configuration without replacing an existing mcp_servers.poly entry.

Authenticate the MCP connection and verify it:

hermes mcp login poly
hermes mcp test poly

Hermes opens your browser for Poly OAuth. You do not need to create or paste an API key.

The plugin source, issue tracker, and complete README are available at withpoly/polyhermes.

How it works

Once enabled, Poly runs automatically:

  1. Session start — the plugin asks the local Poly app for poly memory summary and caches the result for that Hermes session.
  2. Context injection — before the first model call, the plugin injects the cached summary with guidance about provenance, dates, and when to open source material in Poly. Later turns do not receive a duplicate summary.
  3. Agent skill — when a task involves Poly files or deeper memory search, Hermes can load the bundled poly:poly-cli skill for the full command workflow.
  4. MCP tools — Hermes discovers the tools served by https://mcp.poly.app/mcp and makes them available alongside its built-in tools.

Poly complements Hermes's own memory features. The startup summary gives Hermes cross-application context from your Poly second brain, while the MCP and local CLI let it inspect the underlying files and memories when a task needs more detail.

Use Poly with Hermes

Ask naturally:

What was I focused on last week, and what should I tackle next?

Find the project brief in Poly and summarize the unresolved decisions.

Read the launch plan in my shared drive and turn it into an execution checklist.

Move the approved launch assets into the shared Marketing drive.

The skill guides Hermes through the same Poly commands you can run yourself. See Using MCP for the hosted tool reference.

If Poly is not running

Hermes still starts normally. Instead of memory context, the first turn receives a short notice explaining that Poly is unavailable and must not be treated as having no memories. Open and sign in to Poly, then start a new Hermes session to try again.

If the notice says the CLI is missing, install it from Poly → Downloads → Install CLI first. The hosted MCP connection can still provide file access when the local app is unavailable.

Troubleshooting

Confirm that the plugin is enabled and loaded:

hermes plugins list

Inside a Hermes session, /plugins shows the active plugin. For startup errors, inspect the Hermes log:

hermes logs --level WARNING

If the plugin could not add the MCP entry automatically, run:

hermes mcp add poly --url https://mcp.poly.app/mcp --auth oauth
hermes mcp login poly

Safety

The skill requires Hermes to run local CLI commands with --disallow-force. Destructive commands cannot bypass confirmation or permanently delete files; rm archives files so they remain recoverable. See Recovering Files for details.

Source and related plugins

Poly for Hermes uses the native plugin interfaces from NousResearch/hermes-agent. Its packaging and startup behavior follow established Hermes plugins such as NousResearch/hermes-telegram-business and vimona3ds/hermes-snapcompact.

Codex

Give Codex persistent context and access to your files with the Poly plugin.

Claude CoWork (Desktop)

Install the Poly extension in Claude's desktop app straight from the Poly app.

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