Agent runtimes are where multi-step Amazon work actually finishes. Hand Hermes a goal — audit a catalog and patch the listings that fail validation, build an Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) audience and stage it for activation, reconcile a month of Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) reimbursements — and it plans the work, calls the Amazon tools in order, and returns the artifact. That is the autonomous Amazon operator teams go looking for, running in the agent runtime you chose, against accounts you already own.

Use Hermes Agent's MCP client support when you want Hermes to discover and call tools from your private MCP server.

For the official reference, see Hermes Agent MCP.

Your MCP server hostname is private to your deployment. It comes from your cloud provider, belongs to your environment, and is not shared across customers. Replace {your-private-mcp-host} with the private host shown in your dashboard.

Before you start

Install Hermes Agent.
Confirm MCP support is installed. Standard installs include it, but the Hermes docs show uv pip install -e ".[mcp]" when needed.
Create an API key from the dashboard Keys tab.
Store the key in MCP_API_KEY or another local secret source.
Confirm the private MCP endpoint ends with /mcp.

https://{your-private-mcp-host}/mcp

Understand Hermes MCP modes

Hermes supports both directions:

Mode	What it does
Hermes as an MCP client	Hermes connects to local stdio servers or remote HTTP MCP servers listed under `mcp_servers`.
Hermes as an MCP server	`hermes mcp serve` exposes Hermes messaging capabilities to another MCP client over stdio.

Use mcp_servers when you want Hermes to connect to your existing private MCP server.

Add the remote MCP server

Store the key in the environment that launches Hermes. You can use ~/.hermes/.env or your process manager's secret mechanism:

MCP_API_KEY=mcp_live_...

Add the server under the top-level mcp_servers key in ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

mcp_servers:
  private-mcp:
    url: "https://{your-private-mcp-host}/mcp"
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer ${MCP_API_KEY}"
    enabled: true
    timeout: 120
    connect_timeout: 60

Hermes reads remote HTTP MCP servers from url and headers. It discovers MCP tools at startup and registers them into the normal Hermes tool registry.

Reload Hermes

After saving config, restart Hermes or reload MCP config from a Hermes session:

/reload-mcp

If MCP_API_KEY is unset in the environment that launches Hermes, the placeholder may remain literal and authentication will fail.

Tool names and filtering

Hermes prefixes MCP tools to avoid name collisions:

mcp__

For a server named private-mcp, a tool named search is registered as something like:

mcp_private_mcp_search

You can limit which tools Hermes exposes from a server:

mcp_servers:
  private-mcp:
    url: "https://{your-private-mcp-host}/mcp"
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer ${MCP_API_KEY}"
    tools:
      include: [search, fetch]
      resources: false
      prompts: false

Use include for a small allowlist, exclude to hide dangerous tools, and resources: false or prompts: false when you do not want Hermes to expose MCP resource or prompt utility wrappers for that server.

Optional parallel tool calls

Hermes runs MCP tools sequentially by default. Only enable parallel execution when the server's tools are safe to run concurrently:

mcp_servers:
  private-mcp:
    url: "https://{your-private-mcp-host}/mcp"
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer ${MCP_API_KEY}"
    supports_parallel_tool_calls: true

Do not enable this for tools that write shared state, mutate records, or depend on strict call order.

Troubleshooting

Tools do not appear

Check that Hermes can connect to the server, that discovery succeeds, and that your tools.include or tools.exclude settings did not filter everything out. If the server is set to enabled: false, Hermes skips it entirely.

Authentication fails

Confirm MCP_API_KEY is present in the Hermes process environment. Restart Hermes after changing environment variables.

Resource or prompt helpers are missing

Hermes only registers resource and prompt utility wrappers when the MCP server supports those capabilities and your config allows them.

You want Hermes to be the MCP server

That is a different flow. Use:

hermes mcp serve

This starts a stdio MCP server that another MCP client manages. It is not the path for connecting Hermes to your private remote MCP server.

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