Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

See each section for specific troubleshooting guides.

Updating

• Portable Hermes has two independent update channels. See Keeping Portable Hermes Updated for the full workflow.
• For normal maintenance, close Hermes and gateways, then run UPDATE.bat or hermes.bat update --backup --yes.
• To check upstream without installing, ask: "Check whether upstream Hermes Agent has updates. Do not install anything yet."
• To install newer upstream core code from inside Hermes, ask it to run update_hermes, then restart Hermes after success.
• The agent updater preserves Portable Hermes launchers, custom tools, toolsets, extensions, docs, and runtime folders.
• Fresh release ZIP installs have no Git history, so they cannot report an exact behind count. They use an HTTPS ZIP-overlay path for upstream updates instead.
• If an updater reports locked files, close all Hermes windows and gateways, check Task Manager for remaining Hermes or Python processes, and retry.

Getting Help

• Ask Hermes! Type your question in the chat — Hermes can search this guide for answers using the search_guide tool
• File > API Key Setup — Check which services are connected
• Tools > Permissions — Adjust what Hermes can do if something is blocked
• Tools > Extensions — Check if extension servers are running
• Tools > LM Studio — Manage local AI models
• Visit the GitHub repository for bug reports and feature requests