Beginner's Guide to Hermes Slack: Getting Started in 2026

If you have been wondering how to connect Hermes Agent to Slack for beginners, this walkthrough covers every step, from generating a Slack app manifest to starting the gateway. By the end, your team will be able to ping a friendly open-source assistant in channels and DMs, and it will reply with streaming answers, files, and more. The whole process uses Socket Mode, so you never expose a public URL.

How This Guide Was Built

To write this guide we pulled from the official Slack setup docs, the messaging gateway overview, the installation guide, and the Slack API console. We verified the required token types, the full scope and event lists, the manifest generation command, and the Socket Mode architecture. This guide is based on official documentation, pricing pages, and community reports — we did not run the tool hands-on. Every command and configuration value below comes straight from those sources rather than memory. Last verified: August 2026.

What Is Hermes Agent and Why Use Slack?

Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent from Nous Research that you can run on your own machine and reach from the chat apps you already use, including Telegram, Discord, and Slack (installation guide). Slack works well as a gateway because so much team collaboration already happens there: you can ask questions in a DM, loop the bot into a channel thread, and share files, images, and even voice notes. The messaging layer supports threads, reactions, typing indicators, and streaming replies (messaging overview), so it feels like chatting with a colleague rather than poking a script. Prefer a different platform? The same agent pattern powers our Telegram integration guide and our Discord bot guide.

How Do You Connect Hermes Agent to Slack for Beginners?

You create a Slack app from a generated manifest, install it to your workspace, paste two tokens into Hermes configuration, then start the gateway process. Everything runs over Socket Mode, an outbound WebSocket connection, so your laptop or home server stays behind its firewall with no public URL. The whole flow takes one terminal session, the Slack API console, and a config file. See the Slack setup docs for the reference version.

Step-by-Step: Connect Hermes Agent to Slack

Connecting Hermes Agent to Slack means five stages: generate a manifest, configure scopes and events, install the app, set environment variables, and start the gateway. Socket Mode carries all traffic over an outbound WebSocket, so no public URL is required even behind a firewall (Slack setup docs). Each step below expands on that foundation.

Step 1: Generate the Slack App Manifest

Hermes can write the entire Slack app definition for you. Run:

hermes slack manifest --agent-view --write

This creates ~/.hermes/slack-manifest.json containing every scope, event subscription, and slash command the bot needs. Open the Slack API console, click Create New App, choose From an app manifest, pick your workspace, and paste the file’s contents. The manifest command means you never hand-edit JSON or risk a typo in a scope name — the generator outputs exactly what the Slack setup docs describe. If you delete the file later, rerun the same command to regenerate it.

Step 2: Configure Scopes, Events, and the Messages Tab

The generated manifest already includes everything, but it pays to verify the settings in the Slack console under OAuth & Permissions and Event Subscriptions. The Slack setup docs list the required bot token scopes as chat:write, app_mentions:read, channels:history, groups:history, im:history, im:read, im:write, mpim:history, mpim:read, users:read, files:read, and files:write, plus optional groups:read and assistant:write (the latter powers an is-thinking status). Subscribe to the events message.im, message.mpim, message.channels (public channels), message.groups (private channels, recommended), and app_mention. Here is the number one pitfall: if message.channels or message.groups is missing, the bot answers in DMs but never in channels. Finally, open App Home and enable the Messages Tab — otherwise DMs fail with “Sending messages to this app has been turned off”. Because the manifest command generates all of these automatically, treat this step as a checklist rather than data entry.

Step 3: Install the App and Copy Tokens

In the Slack console, click Install to Workspace and approve the permissions prompt. Slack then shows a Bot User OAuth Token beginning with xoxb- — copy it immediately and keep it private. Whenever you change scopes or events, you must reinstall the app so Slack issues the updated permissions; skipping this is a classic source of mysterious permission errors. One historical note: classic Slack apps built on the RTM API were fully deprecated in March 2025, so Socket Mode is the only current path (Slack setup docs).

Step 4: Configure Hermes

Hermes reads its Slack credentials from ~/.hermes/.env. Set three variables: SLACK_BOT_TOKEN (the xoxb- value from Step 3), SLACK_APP_TOKEN (an xapp- app-level token you create under Basic Information in the console), and SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS. That last one takes a comma-separated list of Slack Member IDs, which look like U01ABC2DEF3 — real Member IDs, not display usernames (Slack setup docs). If you would rather not edit files by hand, run hermes gateway setup for a guided prompt that writes the same values. Save the file, then move on to launching the gateway.

Step 5: Start the Gateway and Invite the Bot

Launch the gateway in your terminal with hermes gateway for a foreground run, or install it as a service using hermes gateway install (add sudo for a system-wide service: sudo hermes gateway install --system). Then invite the bot into each channel you want it in with /invite @Hermes Agent — it never joins channels automatically (Slack setup docs). After that, mention it and watch it reply.

Common Mistakes and Troubleshooting

Most Slack gateway problems trace back to a handful of configuration slips (Slack setup docs). If the bot answers in DMs but ignores channel messages, the message.channels or message.groups event subscription is missing — this is the single most reported setup issue. If DMs show “Sending messages to this app has been turned off”, enable the Messages Tab under App Home. If you see permission errors after edits, remember scope and event changes require reinstalling the app to your workspace. Double-check that SLACK_BOT_TOKEN starts with xoxb- and SLACK_APP_TOKEN starts with xapp-, since swapping them is easy. Finally, confirm you invited the bot with /invite @Hermes Agent in each channel, and that SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS lists Member IDs, not usernames.

What Can the Slack Bot Do?

Once connected, the Slack gateway is a full-featured front end for Hermes. It handles voice, images, and files alongside plain text, and it supports threads, reactions, typing indicators, and streaming responses (messaging overview). Built-in slash commands — /btw, /stop, /new, /model, /help, /sethome, and /sessions — let you manage conversations without leaving Slack (Slack setup docs). If you add the optional assistant:write scope, the bot can display an is-thinking status while composing longer replies. Reactions and thread replies arrive in real time, so the conversation feels native to Slack.

FAQ

These are the questions beginners ask most often about running Hermes Agent in Slack, with short self-contained answers drawn from the Slack setup docs. If your question is not here, the troubleshooting section above covers the most common failure modes, and the docs go deeper on gateway behavior.

Does Hermes Agent Need a Public URL to Work with Slack?

No. Hermes uses Socket Mode, which keeps an outbound WebSocket connection open to Slack through the slack-bolt and slack_sdk libraries (Slack setup docs). Because the connection is outbound, your machine can sit behind a firewall or NAT on a home network or laptop, and you never expose a port or configure TLS certificates.

Why Does My Bot Reply in DMs but Not in Channels?

Almost always a missing event subscription. The bot needs the message.channels event for public channels and message.groups for private ones; without them it only hears direct messages. The Slack setup docs flag this as the most common setup issue. Add the events, reinstall the app, and run /invite @Hermes Agent in the channel — the bot never joins automatically.

Can I Limit Who Is Allowed to Talk to the Bot?

Yes. Add a SLACK_ALLOWED_USERS entry in ~/.hermes/.env containing a comma-separated list of permitted Slack Member IDs — identifiers like U01ABC2DEF3, not display names (Slack setup docs). Anyone outside the list is ignored by the gateway. You can find a Member ID in Slack by opening a profile and choosing to copy the member ID from the account menu.

Where to Go Next

That is the full loop: manifest, scopes and events, tokens, environment file, gateway, invite. From here, explore the messaging gateway docs to see how the same bot config also drives Telegram and Discord, or read our Telegram integration guide and our Discord bot guide for sibling setups. The getting started guide covers installing Hermes itself, and /tools/ lists everything the agent can reach.

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