Pipe Script Output to Messaging Platforms

hermes send is a small, scriptable CLI that pushes a message to any messaging platform Hermes is already configured for. Think of it as a cross-platform curl for notifications — you don't need a running gateway, you don't need an LLM, and you don't need to re-paste bot tokens into each of your scripts.

Use it for:

• System monitoring (memory, disk, GPU temp, long-running job finished)
• CI/CD notifications (deploy done, test failure)
• Cron scripts that need to ping you with results
• Quick one-shot messages from a terminal
• Piping any tool's output anywhere (make | hermes send --to slack:#builds)

The command reuses the same credentials and platform adapters that `hermes gateway` already uses, so there's no second configuration surface to maintain.

---

# Plain text to the home channel for a platform
hermes send --to telegram "deploy finished"

# Pipe in stdout from anything
echo "RAM 92%" | hermes send --to telegram:-1001234567890

# Send a file
hermes send --to discord:#ops --file /tmp/report.md

# Attach a subject/header line
hermes send --to slack:#eng --subject "[CI] build.log" --file build.log

# Thread target (Telegram topic, Discord thread)
hermes send --to telegram:-1001234567890:17585 "threaded reply"

# List every configured target
hermes send --list

# Filter by platform
hermes send --list telegram

---

Target Formats

Any platform Hermes ships adapters for works as a target: telegram, discord, slack, signal, sms, whatsapp, matrix, mattermost, feishu, dingtalk, wecom, weixin, email, and others.

Exit Codes

Exit codes follow the standard Unix convention so your scripts can branch on them the same way they would on curl or grep.

---

hermes send resolves the message body in this order:

1. Positional argument — hermes send --to telegram "hi"
2. --file PATH — hermes send --to telegram --file msg.txt
3. Piped stdin — echo hi | hermes send --to telegram

When stdin is a TTY (no pipe), Hermes does not wait for input — you'll get a clear usage error instead. This keeps scripts from hanging if they accidentally omit the body.

---

Monitoring: Memory / Disk Alerts

Replace ad-hoc curl https://api.telegram.org/... calls in your watchdogs with a single portable line:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
ram_pct=$(free | awk '/^Mem:/ {printf "%d", $3 * 100 / $2}')
if [ "$ram_pct" -ge 85 ]; then
  hermes send --to telegram --subject "⚠ MEMORY WARNING" \
    "RAM ${ram_pct}% on $(hostname)"
fi

Because hermes send reuses your Hermes config, the same script works on any host where Hermes is installed — no need to export bot tokens into each machine's environment manually.

CI / CD: Build and Test Results

# In .github/workflows/deploy.yml or any CI script
if ./scripts/deploy.sh; then
  hermes send --to slack:#deploys "✅ ${CI_COMMIT_SHA:0:7} deployed"
else
  tail -n 100 deploy.log | hermes send \
    --to slack:#deploys --subject "❌ deploy failed"
  exit 1
fi

Cron: Daily Report

# Crontab entry
0 9 * * * /usr/local/bin/generate-metrics.sh \
  | /home/me/.hermes/bin/hermes send \
      --to telegram --subject "Daily metrics $(date +%Y-%m-%d)"

Long-Running Tasks: Ping When Done

./train.py --epochs 200 && \
  hermes send --to telegram "training done" || \
  hermes send --to telegram "training failed (exit $?)"

Scripting with --json and --quiet

# Hard-fail a script if delivery fails; don't clutter logs on success
hermes send --to telegram --quiet "keepalive" || {
  echo "Telegram delivery failed" >&2
  exit 1
}

# Capture the message ID for later editing / threading
msg_id=$(hermes send --to discord:#ops --json "build started" \
  | jq -r .message_id)

---

Usually no. For any bot-token platform — Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal, SMS, WhatsApp Cloud API, and most others — hermes send calls the platform's REST endpoint directly using credentials from ~/.hermes/.env and ~/.hermes/config.yaml. It's a standalone subprocess that exits as soon as the message is delivered.

A live gateway is only required for plugin platforms that rely on a persistent adapter connection (for example, a custom plugin that keeps a long-lived WebSocket open). In that case you'll get a clear error pointing at the gateway; start it with hermes gateway start and retry.

---

Before sending to a specific channel, you can inspect what's available:

# Every target across every configured platform
hermes send --list

# Just Telegram targets
hermes send --list telegram

# Machine-readable
hermes send --list --json

The listing is built from ~/.hermes/channel_directory.json, which the gateway refreshes every few minutes while it's running. If you see "no channels discovered yet", start the gateway once (`hermes gateway start`) so it can populate the cache.

Human-friendly names (discord:#ops, slack:#engineering) are resolved against this cache at send time, so you don't need to memorize numeric IDs.

---

hermes send is intentionally the simplest possible surface. If you need an agent to decide what to say, schedule a cron job — the agent's final response is auto-delivered to the configured deliver: target (the agent no longer fires messages itself). If you need a scheduled run with LLM-generated content, use cronjob(action='create', prompt=...) with deliver='telegram:...'. If you just need to pipe a raw string, reach for hermes send.

---

• Automate Anything with Cron — scheduled jobs whose output auto-delivers to any platform.
• Gateway Internals — the delivery router that hermes send shares with cron delivery.
• Messaging Platform Setup ↗ — one-time configuration for each platform.