Context
7. Context — Shaping How the Agent Understands Your Context
This is the area most easily overlooked, yet it decides a great deal about response quality: Hermes does not rely only on the question you type in a single message — it automatically assembles a multi-layered “system prompt” at the start of every session, and the context files/configurations are precisely the raw material for those layers. The three sub-sections below correspond to three different context layers: the agent’s identity (SOUL.md), project rules (AGENTS.md and its family), and context specific to each communication channel.
Foundational principle: the system prompt is assembled in layers, and cached
Hermes’s system prompt is built with a three-layer architecture: Stable (identity, tool instructions, skills, environment hints), Context (the project’s context files), and the volatile part (memory, user profile). The whole thing is cached to avoid the expensive re-assembly on every turn — which is why changing a context file mid-session has no immediate effect; you have to wait for a new session or a rebuild (such as when context is compressed) for the change to apply.