How to Install Hermes Skins (Step-by-Step Guide)

Hermes ships with a few built-in looks, but the real variety lives in the community. A Hermes skin is just a YAML theme file that changes your terminal agent's colors, banner art, spinner text, and prompt labels. Installing one takes under a minute: download a .yaml file, drop it into the right folder, and switch to it.

This guide covers every way to install a Hermes skin, from the built-in themes to manual installs, the visual editor, and where to find the best community skins.

What a Hermes skin is (and why install one)

A skin is a purely visual layer. It does not change how Hermes reasons, which tools it can call, or what it knows — it only changes how the interface looks. Inside a skin file you can set:

Colors for the banner, response box, status bar, prompts, and menus.
ASCII/Unicode banners shown at startup and in the header.
Spinner faces and verbs while the agent is thinking.
Branding text like the agent name, welcome message, and prompt symbol.
Tool emojis that appear next to tool calls.

If you want to change behavior instead of appearance, you want Hermes agent skills. For visuals, skins are the way.

Try the built-in skins first

Hermes includes a handful of built-in skins so you can see the effect immediately. Open Hermes and run:

/skin

This lists every available skin and shows which one is active. Switch to a built-in theme for the current session only:

/skin ares
/skin mono
/skin slate
/skin daylight

These changes are session-only. To make a skin the default across restarts, edit ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

display:
  skin: ares

Find and download community skins

The fastest place to browse community skins is the marketplace at hermesskins.io/skins. Each listing includes a preview and a downloadable .yaml file.

Other good sources:

joeynyc/hermes-skins on GitHub — a curated community pack.
Hermes Atlas listing — project page with links and context.

Popular community skins worth trying:

Catppuccin — soft pastel theme with a full color palette.
Neonwave — synthwave neon pinks and cyans.
Pirate — simple black-and-white look.
DOS — retro cyan-on-black terminal style.
Bubblegum '80s — bright pastels and fluorescent accents.
Empire — detailed sci-fi theme with deep space colors.

Download any .yaml file and move on to the install step.

Install a skin manually

Manual install is the most direct method and works with any skin file.

Create the skins directory if it does not exist:
```
mkdir -p ~/.hermes/skins
```
Copy or move the downloaded .yaml file into the folder:
```
cp ~/Downloads/catppuccin.yaml ~/.hermes/skins/
```
Inside Hermes, activate it for the current session:
```
/skin catppuccin
```
To make it permanent, add the skin name to ~/.hermes/config.yaml:
```
display:
  skin: catppuccin
```

Hermes falls back to the built-in default skin if the file is missing or cannot be parsed, so experimenting is safe. Any keys you leave out in a custom skin also inherit from default, so even a partial YAML file works.

Install skins with Hermes Mod (visual editor)

If you prefer a point-and-click interface, the community project hermes-mod provides a web UI for creating, editing, and saving skins without hand-writing YAML.

Run it with npx:

npx -y hermes-mod

Other install options include the Pinokio one-click installer or a manual git clone from the hermes-mod repo.

Once open, use the Skin Studio to pick a starting theme, adjust colors and banners, and save the result to ~/.hermes/skins/. Then activate it inside Hermes with /skin <name>. It is optional, but useful for previewing changes before you commit to a file.

Verify and manage installed skins

Use these commands to inspect and clean up your skins:

| Command | What it does | |---------|--------------| | /skin | List available skins and show the current one. | | /skin <name> | Switch to a skin for the current session. | | ~/.hermes/skins/<name>.yaml | The file that defines a skin. | | ~/.hermes/config.yaml | Where you set the permanent default skin under display.skin. | | npx -y hermes-mod | Launch the visual editor. |

To remove a skin, delete its .yaml file from ~/.hermes/skins/. If you delete the active skin, Hermes will fall back to default on the next restart.

If a skin does not look right, check that:

The YAML indentation is valid.
Every color value starts with #.
The filename matches the name: field inside the YAML.

Want to make your own skin?

Installing skins is the fastest way to see what is possible. Once you are ready to customize, see the companion guide:

How to Create a Custom Hermes Skin (Step-by-Step YAML Guide)

It walks through the YAML structure, the most useful keys, and a minimal working example you can edit.

Browse and share skins on hermesskins.io

The marketplace is the easiest place to discover community skins and share your own.

Browse 30+ live skins at hermesskins.io/skins.
Upload your own skin as a single .yaml file at hermesskins.io/upload.
If you also built a skill, list it at hermesskins.io/skills.

A good skin submission includes a clear name, a one-line description, and a preview image if you have one. Keep it legal and value-adding — only upload skins you have permission to share.

Quick-reference cheatsheet

# Switch skins
/skin                # list skins
/skin <name>         # activate for this session

# Permanent default
# ~/.hermes/config.yaml
display:
  skin: <name>

# Skin storage
~/.hermes/skins/<name>.yaml

# Visual editor
npx -y hermes-mod

For the complete schema, refer to the official Hermes skins documentation.