Hermes Agent Made Crystal Clear · chapter 9: Tools and MCP: Giving the Agent Hands
One core, two supply lines
2026-11-06
Built-in toolsets (left) are the hands Hermes ships with and register under their native names. External MCP servers (right) plug in over stdio, HTTP, or OAuth and register their tools as mcp_<server>_<tool>. Both are wired through a single config file.
Below: the paragraph from the book that builds this idea, then the diagram itself (Figure 9.1), and a recap. About a minute of reading.
The short version: tools are the hands Hermes was born with. Skills are learned procedures that tell the agent how to use those hands well for a specific job. MCP bolts on entirely new hands from the outside. The docs draw the same line: MCP is for "tools that live outside Hermes itself," and note separately that some capabilities (like Honcho cross-session memory) arrive as provider plugins rather than as a built-in toolset, so tools, skills, plugins, and providers are genuinely distinct layers.
Recap
- The idea: Built-in toolsets (left) are the hands Hermes ships with and register under their native names.
- The picture: Figure 9.1, from chapter 9 ("Tools and MCP: Giving the Agent Hands") of Hermes Agent Made Crystal Clear.
- Go deeper: the chapter builds this step by step, with recipes and sources at the end.
This diagram is one of many in Hermes Agent Made Crystal Clear.
Every chapter opens with the gist, draws the hard ideas, and ends with recipes and sources.
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