# The Ultimate Guide to Hermes Desktop Plugins

Tonbi's AI Garage walkthrough of the Hermes Agent Desktop plugin SDK: ~25 placement slots, form-follows-job UI types, and live builds (Hyperliquid markets, Spotify controller, SNES emulator). Companion to the same channel's Kanban multi-agent video.

Tags: youtube-inbox, source, hermes-agent, plugins, desktop, tonbi

## Summary

Hermes Desktop plugins are UI surfaces inside the desktop app — not always-on native services. Power can come from Hermes state (sessions/cron/Kanban), an attached backend, or browser/media rendering. The speaker maps 25 host-owned positions and ships three one-shot plugins to show the range.

## Key points

- **What it is**: Plugin SDK for Hermes Agent Desktop. A prior video introduced it (baseball + weather plugins); this one is the placement/architecture deep-dive plus stretch demos.
- **~25 placements** via a "placement playground" plugin that hops through: pane (main/left/right/top/bottom), workspace (top/bottom/left/right/center, docked), status bar (left/right), title bar (left/center/right, often icon-only), popover (top/bottom/left/right), composer (top/bottom/leading/actions/attachments), and workspace route/sidebar (full-app overlay like slides/Kanban).
- **Form follows job**: compact (ambient status), anchored (detail without leaving the chat), media/popover, expansive (full apps / dense data / multi-step), declarative (structured data, Hermes owns presentation). Combinations work (status-bar item + popover).
- **Power sources**: Hermes state/gateway (sessions, cron, Kanban); attached backends (DB, files, native libs, websockets); browser/media renderer. "A renderer-only plugin is strong for UI. A plugin plus a Python backend can become a real product."
- **Cannot do**: arbitrary native APIs; invent new shell regions; unlimited binary persistence (plugin storage is small JSON); keep running after the desktop app closes; bypass security/licensing. Backend expands capability; does not remove platform boundaries.
- **Architecture**: Desktop plugin UI → backend → specialist engine (e.g. FFmpeg). If it needs a specialist engine, keep the engine external and make Hermes the control surface.
- **Demos**: (1) Markets — read-only Hyperliquid plugin, three-surface design (sidebar + status ticker + popover), later TradingView charts, watchlist (BTC/ETH/HYPE). (2) Spotify — status-bar popover search/play; requires Spotify desktop app (controller, not in-plugin playback); OAuth app setup guided by Hermes. (3) SNES — emulator.js + ROM (Link to the Past) in a pane while the agent works.
- **Open source intent**: speaker plans to polish and publish at GitHub "Tombstone Studio".

## Quotes / memorable lines

- "Form follows the job."
- "A renderer-only plugin is strong for UI. A plugin plus a Python backend can become a real product."
- "If it can be expressed as data, controls, or agent context, it belongs naturally in a Hermes plugin."

## Sources

- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLUtt-po_OE
- Raw ingest: `raw/youtube-inbox/SLUtt-po_OE/` (metadata.json, transcript.txt, notes.md, source.url)
- Channel: [Tonbi's AI Garage](https://www.youtube.com/@TonbisAIGarage)

## Related pages

- [[hermes-agent]]
- [[youtube-hermes-kanban-multi-agent]]
- [[hermes-plugin-perseus-vault]] (memory/MCP provider plugin — different from Desktop UI placements)
- [[perseus-vault]]
- [[grok-bot]] (managed computer-use vs local desktop plugin UI)
- [[grok-bot-vs-hermes-agent]]