Hermes Daily Goal-Oriented Autonomy Loop

Updated: 2026-05-03

Autonomy level

Daniel has approved Hermes operating at Level 3 autonomy.

Hermes may do unattended:

• create branches, commits, private repositories, and GitHub PRs
• create local/web/Notion artifacts
• append Notion logs
• perform low-risk local operational actions
• run bounded local tests/lints/research workflows

Hermes must still get Daniel review before:

• merging PRs
• production deploys or production service restarts
• public publishing outside GitHub PRs
• money/trading/payment actions
• credential or permission changes
• destructive data/file operations

Daily loop

The system should steer using a short feedback loop, not weekly overplanning.

Morning evaluation -> Daily goal planner -> Evening sweep -> Queue writer -> Overnight worker -> Morning evaluation

Morning evaluation job

Purpose: evaluate, not plan.

The morning brief should answer:

1. What happened overnight?
2. What PRs/artifacts need Daniel review?
3. Which active goals advanced, stalled, or drifted?
4. What failures/skips/blockers should influence today’s plan?
5. What steering signal should the daily planner use?

It should include overnight_workbench results: queued, succeeded, failed, skipped, PRs opened, and review-needed items.

Daily goal planner job

Purpose: propose the next 24-hour project queue.

This is the goal-oriented planning process Daniel asked for. It should run after the morning evaluation and use:

• Active Goals
• AI Delegated Projects grouped by goal
• overnight workbench results
• recent failures/skips
• stale or blocked projects
• Daniel review backlog

Output: a max-10 proposed next-24h queue, with each item naming:

• Goal
• Project
• Job type
• Written input description
• Expected review artifact
• Why this is the next best move

Planning horizon: 24 hours. Not weekly.

Evening sweep job

Purpose: evaluate the day and prepare the overnight queue.

The evening sweep should:

1. evaluate day-level progress by goal
2. compare actual progress to the daily goal plan
3. identify queue candidates for the overnight workbench
4. separate autonomous work from Daniel-needed decisions
5. create/emit queue candidates for the deterministic queue writer

It should not be a generic activity digest. It is the transition from daytime evaluation to overnight execution.

Queue writer job

Purpose: deterministic conversion of evening candidates into queue entries.

It should run after the evening sweep and enforce:

• max 10 jobs/night globally
• max 3 jobs/project/night
• safety policy
• dedupe by date/project/action/job type

It should not use an LLM for policy interpretation.

Overnight worker

Purpose: execute queued work under Level 3 autonomy.

Rollout sequence:

1. dry-run worker: claims jobs and writes synthetic results
2. real worker for research/draft/documentation/audit/review jobs
3. software-development worker that opens PRs
4. low-risk local ops worker, still forbidden from production deploys/merges/etc.

Retired job

The legacy nightly reviewer is retired. Its role is replaced by:

• morning evaluation
• daily goal planner
• evening sweep
• overnight workbench context

Current implementation status

Done:

• PR #1 merged in dndodson/hermes-ops
• PR #1 deployed to live ~/.hermes/scripts
• morning brief prompt updated to evaluation framing
• evening sweep prompt updated to queue-prep framing
• daily goal planner cron created for 08:20 ET
• overnight queue writer cron created for 22:45 ET
• legacy weekly/nightly reviewer cron retired
• PR #2 opened for dry-run worker

Next:

• Daniel reviews/merges PR #2
• deploy PR #2 worker script + optional dry-run systemd timer
• run one dry-run night
• then implement PR #3 real worker execution for low-risk non-code jobs