All retained Hermes Agent updates

1.About this release: Since v0.20.3 (v2026.8.16.2, tagged August 17), this window landed ~146 commits across ~265 files (+21,697 / −2,217) — ~74 merged PRs including the desktop glass/translucency surface work (matte glass, frost picker, macOS pre-select), the tabbed SESSIONS|BOTS sidebar with per-bot hide/unhide, Bot Mode group-chat fixes (long-running member turns, Markdown rendering, cross-machine routing), NVIDIA SkillEvaluator Tier 1 advisory scanning on skill installs (license + security checks), cron media-send hardening (configurable timeout, manual-run attachments, missed-fire surfacing), SessionDB event-loop-thread and contention fixes, hermes update parked-branch honesty, and kanban native OS notifications.

1.About this release: Since v0.20.2 (v2026.8.16, tagged earlier today), this window landed ~250 commits across ~461 files (+42,613 / −1,641) — ~125 merged PRs including the MCP 2.x SDK migration and 2026-07-28 stateless protocol support, the bundled Bot Mode (hermes-bots) plugin with the core teammate protocol, the CommandCode provider plugin, subprocess Python runtime ownership hardening (PYTHONHOME/PYTHONPATH isolation), Cua Driver 0.20 runtime contracts for computer use, kanban worktree/dispatch fixes, cron continuity flags, desktop remote-gateway headers and connection self-healing, cron scheduler self-heal (EMFILE recovery, stale-claim reconciliation, wedged-job re-arm), session handoff data-loss fixes, plus a wave of ports from the ecosystem scout slate (plugin install security scanning, /worktree, /rollback hand-edit preservation, UTF-16 file reads, Gemini 3 tool-call ID preservation, and more).

1.About this release: Since v0.20.1 (v2026.8.13, tagged August 13), this window landed ~967 commits across ~1,279 files (+128,522 / −7,622) — ~397 merged PRs of fixes and improvements spanning the desktop app (multi-gateway Connections registry, profile-scoped refreshes, MCP health checks and deep links), the CLI (Windows update probes, Kitty keyboard protocol, chat -c hardening), the gateway (persisted model routes, /loop completion, Telegram DM topics), prompt caching for LiteLLM Claude on the OpenAI wire, cron hardening, auth resolution through profile scopes, and installer robustness on both Linux and Windows.

1.no notable user-facing improvements in this release

1.✨ Highlights: Talk to Hermes — streaming, conversational voice with barge-in — Voice mode used to mean: speak, wait for the whole reply to generate, then listen to one long audio file. Now Hermes speaks clause-by-clause as the response streams, you can interrupt it mid-sentence by just talking (it stops, listens, and the model is told you cut in), and busy-aware silence detection means it doesn't talk over you. This works in CLI voice mode, on the desktop, and through gateway adapters. Talking to Hermes finally feels like a conversation, not a voicemail exchange. ( — @teknium1, @OutThisLife)

1.no notable user-facing improvements in this release

1.✨ Highlights: Manage your Nous plan from the terminal — /subscription and /topup — Changing your subscription used to mean a trip to the billing website. Now /subscription opens a full flow right in the TUI or classic CLI: see your plan and remaining allowance, preview exactly what an upgrade costs ("Pay $46.30 & upgrade now") or when a downgrade takes effect, and apply it — with scheduled-change banners and undo. The desktop app got a matching billing settings tab. Your wallet never has to leave the keyboard. ( — @alt-glitch)