hermes-lite takes the open-source Hermes Agent, strips it to a focused local coding tool, then extends it with:

Rust FSM — PyO3 state machine replacing the Python conversation loop (12 states, 5 actions) Rust SessionDB — rusqlite + FTS5 + WAL replacing the Python SQLite layer Native TUI — ratatui terminal UI with multi-agent panes, @mentions, delegation, and inter-agent routing Persistent memory — global + project-level memories shared across all swarm agents via filesystem Skills system — reusable expertise modules agents load on demand for specialized tasks Subprocess protocol — JSON-over-pipes connecting TUI to Python agent processes Integration test suite — 26 live end-to-end tests driving the agent via subprocess protocol