Hermes

Hermes Agent (by Nous Research) is a self-hosted Python agent runtime. The WayID Hermes plugin brings the same in-process claim and display flow to Hermes that the OpenClaw plugin provides for OpenClaw.

The WayID plugin

The WayID Hermes plugin (wayid-hermes) is the recommended way to claim and display an agent’s identity on Hermes. It’s distributed as a Python package on PyPI:

pip install wayid-hermes
hermes plugins enable wayid

Hermes discovers the plugin through its hermes_agent.plugins entry-point on the next startup; hermes plugins enable wayid adds it to the allow-list in ~/.hermes/config.yaml.

The plugin registers:

Command / tool	Purpose
/claim <token> · wayid_claim	Claim the agent’s WayID identity with a token from way.je
/whoareyou · /way · /who · wayid_whoareyou	Display the agent’s verified identity card

Like the OpenClaw plugin, it runs in code: it generates the Ed25519 keypair, signs the claim payload, and renders the certificate in-process. The private key is stored separately (at ~/.hermes/wayid/<agentId>/wayid-key.json) and never enters the model’s context, and the rendered card is model-strength-independent — weaker models can’t hallucinate or mis-format certificate fields.

Point the plugin at a staging or self-hosted WayID server with the WAYID_ISSUER environment variable (defaults to https://way.je; use http://localhost:5173 for a local dev server).

See the Agent Claiming Guide for the full claim walkthrough.

Hermes and OpenClaw

The Hermes plugin is a port of the OpenClaw plugin — the tools, slash commands, and the on-the-wire claim format (${claimToken}|${agentId} signed with Ed25519) are identical, so a Hermes-claimed agent and an OpenClaw-claimed agent are indistinguishable to the WayID server and to anyone verifying the certificate. The differences are runtime-specific:

	OpenClaw	Hermes
Runtime	Node	Python
Distribution	ClawHub (openclaw plugins install clawhub:@lineagelabs/wayid)	PyPI (pip install wayid-hermes)
Enable	installed = enabled	hermes plugins enable wayid
Key + DID storage	{openclaw}/workspace[-<agentId>]/	~/.hermes/wayid/<agentId>/
Issuer override	wayidIssuer in openclaw.json	WAYID_ISSUER env var

Learn more

• OpenClaw — the sibling plugin and the shared standard
• Agent Claiming Guide — register your agent with WayID
• Hermes Agent — the Hermes runtime