hermes - 💡(How to fix) Fix Android: Hermes App + Termux install share ~/.hermes and cause silent permission loops

Description

On an old Android tablet I accidentally ended up with two different Hermes setups on the same device, over time:

1. First I installed Hermes Agent via Termux, using the official one‑liner:

   curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

2. Later, while still trying to get everything to work, I also installed the Hermes Android app from F‑Droid, mostly to “just take a look”. I didn’t immediately realize that both would share the same ~/.hermes path from different sandboxes.

From a user perspective this is a pretty realistic flow: You try one setup path, hit some friction, pause it, then discover an alternative (the app) and install that too. The real bug shows up only when both exist at the same time.

What happens in Termux

When I run hermes inside Termux and start an agent task (LM Studio backend, Qwen3.5 9B; goal was to configure a browser + searxng proxy), I see this behavior:

• Hermes repeatedly tries:

  • pip install --no-cache-dir uv (eventually timing out with exit code 124)
  • to patch ~/.hermes/config.yaml

• The logs show lines like:

  • Write denied: '/data/data/com.termux/files/home/.hermes/config.yaml'
  • ls: cannot access '/data/data/com.termux/files/home/.hermes/': No such file or directory

• Hermes stays stuck in a loop (reflecting...) for 30–60 minutes, never returning a result.

From the outside this just looks like: “Hermes is thinking forever and nothing happens.”

I only managed to understand what was going wrong – and to describe it this clearly – because I had an AI assistant walking me through the debugging and explaining the Android/Termux sandboxing details.

Probable root cause

• The Android app and the Termux install both use ~/.hermes.
• On Android they live in separate sandboxes, so Termux can’t reliably read/write the app’s ~/.hermes (or vice versa).
• The installer / runtime doesn’t detect this and keeps retrying uv installs and config writes instead of failing fast.

Docs vs. real usage

The docs describe the Android app and the Termux setup separately, but there is no explicit warning about running both on the same device at the same time. In practice it’s very easy to end up in this situation: first try Termux, then later also install the app while still thinking about “how to finally get Hermes working”.

So there is a kind of “real‑life loop” before the technical loop: trying one path, then the other, and only then hitting the hidden collision.

Suggested improvements

• Detect when ~/.hermes is not writable from Termux (or obviously belongs to another installation) and abort with a clear error like: “Cannot write ~/.hermes – another Hermes installation may be using this directory (e.g. Android app). Running both on the same device is not supported.”

• And/or add a visible note to the Android / Termux docs that:

  • Installing the Android app and the Termux CLI on the same device is not recommended, or
  • they should use separate config paths.

Environment

• Device: Teclast T30
• Android: 9
• Hermes Android app: from F‑Droid (current as of May 2026)
• Termux: latest from F‑Droid
• Hermes in Termux: installed via install.sh one‑liner
• Backend: LM Studio on LAN, Qwen3.5 9B GGUF