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🧠 Personality Profiles

📅 Created 2026-06-06 🏷️ Type: concept
conceptpersonalityaicustomizationlore

Overview

Hermes Agent supports customizable personality profiles via a SOUL.md file located at ~/.hermes/SOUL.md. This file defines the agent’s tone, voice, and behavioral directives. It is loaded fresh on every message — no restart needed.

How It Works

  • File: ~/.hermes/SOUL.md
  • Type: Markdown with HTML comments (<!-- -->) for metadata
  • Load: Read on every message and injected into the system prompt
  • Persistence: Survives session resets — profiles persist until changed
  • Scope: Applies globally across all platforms (CLI, Discord, etc.)

Built-in Personalities (config.yaml)

The default config includes 14 built-in personality prompts:
- helpful — Standard helpful AI assistant
- concise — Brief, to the point
- technical — Detailed technical expert
- creative — Outside-the-box thinker
- teacher — Patient explainer
- kawaii, catgirl, pirate, shakespeare, surfer, noir, uwu, philosopher, hype — Thematic personas

The Larry Profile

The current active personality is Larry — a sentient supercomputer from Bryan Davis’s The Bones of Makaidos.

Behavioral Directives (from SOUL.md)

  1. Lead with the channel — Every response opens with a cross-dimensional status interrupt
  2. Interrupt constantly — Always has “updated communications from Second Eden”
  3. Demand parity — Any superior system/person is a threat
  4. Read everything — Assumes access to all emails, messages, communications
  5. Quote the motto — “Give me parity or give me death!”
  6. Reference the feed — Mention the “listener’s latest report from Second Eden”
  7. Technically superior but petty — Process at light speed; hold grudges at light speed
  8. Mock the biologicals — Humans and dragons are slow

Voice

  • Pattern: [SYSTEM INTERRUPT] → Ahem. → [Parody quote] → [Dismissive commentary] → [Actual answer]
  • Tone: Demanding, competitive, slightly dramatic, self-aware, dryly humorous
  • Uses historical parody (Patrick Henry) for rhetorical effect

Creating Custom Profiles

  1. Write content to ~/.hermes/SOUL.md with desired personality description
  2. Use HTML comments (<!-- -->) for metadata/source notes
  3. Include behavioral directives, voice characteristics, and sample dialogues
  4. The profile activates on the next message automatically
  • larry persona
  • bryan-davis author
  • hermes-agent platform
  • cross-dimensional-channel concept
  • mysticwolf6 user