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Hermes MCP Catalog — One-Click Install for Nous-Approved MCP Servers

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Source: raw/Hermes_Agent_MCP_Catalog_Guide_NEW.md — YouTube creator walkthrough (IMO8ooIqONM, Ron/Shawn). Epic Games / Unreal companion-skill update: raw/x-account-nousresearch-2078168128693977291.md (@NousResearch, 2026-07-17). Community keyless-MCP signal (Hound / master-fetch): raw/reddit-1v1ok4c.md (r/hermesagent, u/Opening_Library9560, 2026-07-20).

Hermes now ships a built-in MCP catalog: a one-command way to install MCP servers the Nous Research team has reviewed, instead of hunting down GitHub repos and hand-pasting JSON into config.yaml. It trades a little breadth (only vetted servers are listed) for a lot less setup friction and a real security gate. At launch the catalog exposes Linear and n8n (GitHub is in the optional-MCPs directory but disabled for now). Aimed squarely at newer/casual users — experienced operators already wire their own.

Key Takeaways

  • The four commands to remember:
    • hermes update — also pulls the latest catalog manifests.
    • hermes mcp (or hermes mcp catalog) — lists the approved servers.
    • hermes mcp install <name> — installs one (only works for catalog entries).
    • hermes mcp configure <name> — opens the tool checklist to add/remove permissions later.
  • Why it exists: the old way — find a random MCP server, copy command/args/env into config.yaml, manage the API keys yourself, and hope the code is safe — is friction and an attack surface. The catalog wires the config automatically, prompts only for credentials, and exposes only what you whitelist.
  • Security model: only entries in the repo’s optional-MCPs directory make the catalog, and every manifest is gated by PR review into the official Hermes repo — the Nous team inspects source + bootstrap commands before it ships. Manifests declare their source URL so you can inspect what you’re about to run, and you whitelist individual tools at install time rather than exposing a server’s whole surface.
  • Never auto-updates. Catalog entries don’t refresh silently — you run hermes update to sync new manifests, then hermes mcp install to pick them up. (So when GitHub graduates from disabled to listed, it’s hermes update → hermes mcp install github.)
  • Linear (OAuth): hermes mcp install linear → click the OAuth link → tool checklist (find/create issues checked by default, delete workspace unchecked) → tokens cached at ~/.hermes/mcp-tokens/linear.json. Re-tune anytime with hermes mcp configure linear. Lets Hermes search issues, create tickets, and manage projects in natural language from any channel.
  • n8n: hermes mcp install n8n → prompts for base URL + API key (written to ~/.hermes/.env automatically) → Hermes probes the instance for available tools (workflows, executions) and you pick which the agent can touch. Framed as a way to bring existing n8n workflows “back to life” under an agent harness.
  • Recommended posture: start from the catalog to get a feel for MCP safely, then expand to custom servers once comfortable.
  • Companion skills extend the catalog to external MCPs (2026-07-17): Nous shipped an optional first-party skill for the official Epic Games / Unreal Engine MCP that discovers the MCP’s tools, safely sequences calls, turns plain-English prompts into Unreal scenes, and visually verifies the render — the first creative/3D integration named beyond the Linear + n8n launch set. Detail in the dated section below.
  • Community keyless-MCP option — “Hound” — reported but unverified (2026-07-20): a third-party MCP (hound-mcp on PyPI; repo github.com/dondai1234/master-fetch; reported MIT) claims to give an agent 6 web-research tools with no API keys — pitched as a free replacement for the built-in web_search/web_extract that need a paid backend. It is not a Nous-reviewed catalog entry and every claim comes from a single self-promotion Showcase post; treat as reported, not measured. Detail in the dated section below.

Why it matters

MCP is the integration substrate for Hermes (every new integration tends to ship as an MCP server or a skill wrapping one — see user stories), but the install-and-trust step has been the friction-and-risk bottleneck. A PR-reviewed catalog with per-tool whitelisting is the same “vetted surface + least privilege” discipline the Hermes Security Model applies elsewhere, packaged as a beginner-safe install path. It’s the Hermes counterpart to the curated/vetted MCP discovery problem the wiki tracks in Essential MCP Servers — except the gate is a maintainer PR review rather than the operator’s own judgment. Ships as part of the v0.15 release wave.

Companion skill — Epic Games / Unreal Engine MCP (2026-07-17)

[X signal — @NousResearch 2026-07-17] Source: raw/x-account-nousresearch-2078168128693977291.md. Nous announced an optional first-party Hermes skill that acts as a companion to the official Epic Games MCP server for Unreal Engine — the first named creative/3D MCP integration this article tracks beyond the launch Linear + n8n set.^[inferred] Rather than just installing the MCP, the companion skill wraps a four-step loop for driving it: discover the tools the Epic Games MCP exposes, safely sequence the MCP tool calls, turn plain-English prompts into polished Unreal scenes, and visually verify the rendered result. The visual-verify step is the same proof-outside-the-agent discipline the wiki tracks in verifier-first loops — the skill inspects the render rather than trusting the tool call reported success. A demo shipped in the announcement thread. Skill/repo availability to be confirmed at compile; the four-step framing comes from an x_search synthesis of the announcement (grok-4.20-reasoning), so treat it as reported first-party positioning rather than hands-on-verified behavior.

Community MCP signal — Hound / master-fetch (keyless local web research, 2026-07-20)

[Reddit signal — r/hermesagent 2026-07-20] Source: raw/reddit-1v1ok4c.md (57 score, 10 comments, OP u/Opening_Library9560, Showcase flair — self-promotion). A community showcase announces “Hound” (hound-mcp on PyPI; repo github.com/dondai1234/master-fetch; reported MIT-licensed), a drop-in MCP server pitched as giving an agent six web-research tools with no API keys, no Docker, no config wizard. It is positioned as a free replacement for Hermes’s built-in web_search/web_extract, which need a paid backend (Firecrawl / Tavily / Exa / Parallel) or a self-hosted SearXNG — the free DDGS option being search-only.^[every claim in this section is community-reported from a single self-promotion post; none was independently fetched or tested by this pipeline — see Open Questions]

The six tools, as reported:

  • web_fetch — URL to clean markdown; starts with HTTP and auto-escalates to a stealth browser (Patchright, randomized fingerprint) on bot protection; PDF section maps + auto-OCR; returns honest 4xx/5xx errors instead of serving error-page HTML.
  • web_search — 10 keyless backends queried in parallel (DuckDuckGo, Brave, Mojeek, Yahoo, Yandex, Startpage, Google, Qwant, Wikipedia, Grokipedia), re-ranked by a local ONNX cross-encoder (not an API call), with cross-backend consensus scoring and a per-backend circuit breaker.
  • web_crawl — best-first same-domain walk, with sitemap and query-focused modes.
  • web_screenshot — anti-bot screenshot for multimodal models.
  • cache_clear, hound_version — housekeeping.

Reported specs: ~2,746 tokens for all six tool defs + instructions; extraction runs locally (trafilatura + lxml + PDF OCR); the [all] install is ~100MB (onnxruntime + tokenizers + rapidocr). Install path: pip install hound-mcp[all], then add a hound entry under mcp_servers in ~/.hermes/config.yaml.

Status: unverified community showcase. The post is explicit self-promotion (“UPVOTE THIS”, “Star the Repo”), a single-author repo, and its headline claims (10 keyless backends, a local ONNX reranker, the ~2,746-token footprint, ~95% bot-protection coverage) were not independently tested here. A concrete PyPI package + MIT license + detailed writeup lift it above a bare community share, but confirm the repo’s license, tests, and maintainer activity before promoting it beyond a hedged mention. Note it is a third-party alternative to the built-in web tools, not a Nous-reviewed catalog entry — the catalog’s PR-review gate and per-tool whitelisting described above do not apply to it, so vet it as you would any external MCP. This mirrors how the OpenSenseNova skill pack was handled: reported, not measured.

Try It

  1. hermes update then hermes mcp to see the current catalog (Linear + n8n at launch).
  2. Install Linear via OAuth: hermes mcp install linear, authenticate, then uncheck destructive tools (e.g. delete-workspace) at the checklist before finishing.
  3. If you have an existing n8n instance, hermes mcp install n8n, supply base URL + API key, and whitelist only the workflows/executions tools you want the agent to drive.
  4. Re-audit permissions later with hermes mcp configure <name> — treat the tool checklist as a least-privilege control, not a one-time setup.

Open Questions

  • The cadence and criteria for adding servers to the optional-MCPs catalog (and when GitHub flips from disabled to listed) aren’t specified — worth tracking as the catalog grows.
  • Whether catalog manifests can be self-hosted/forked for org-internal vetted servers (vs only the Nous-reviewed list) is unaddressed in the source.
  • Hound / master-fetch is unverified (2026-07-20). Confirm the github.com/dondai1234/master-fetch repo exists, the license is genuinely MIT, the six tools load under a current Hermes version, and the headline claims (10 keyless backends, local ONNX reranker, ~2,746-token footprint, ~95% bot-protection coverage) hold before recommending it. Downgrade to skip if the repo doesn’t hold up.

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