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Hermes Wingtips #70: skills.external_dirs, one shared skills folder

posted 2026-09-12. original: https://x.com/witcheer/status/2098679753960034724

you keep your skills in one folder for every agent tool you use, or your team keeps them in a shared repo.

Hermes Agent can scan those folders too.

add external_dirs under skills in config.yaml and every skill it finds there joins the index, shows up in hermes skills list, and answers to its /skill-name slash command, the same as a skill you installed yourself.

if a skill with the same name lives in both places, your local copy wins.

skills:
  external_dirs:
    - /home/shared/team-skills
    - ${SKILLS_REPO}/skills

or from the terminal:

hermes config set skills.external_dirs '["/home/shared/team-skills"]'

paths take ~ and environment variables; a folder that does not exist is skipped. a writable external folder can be edited by the agent's skill_manage tool, so use filesystem permissions if the shared set must stay read-only.

docs: external skill directories

hand this to your agent: "list every folder on this machine that holds SKILL.md files outside ~/.hermes/skills and tell me which ones are worth adding to skills.external_dirs. change nothing."