hermes - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Feature]: Provide a lightweight Docker image without Playwright/Chromium [1 comments, 2 participants]

Problem or Use Case

The official Docker image (nousresearch/hermes-agent) is ~2.4 GB compressed. A significant portion of this size comes from Playwright + Chromium, Node.js, and the WhatsApp bridge — dependencies that many users don't need.

For users who only want CLI chat, gateway mode (Telegram/Discord/Slack), or the API server without browser automation, the current image is unnecessarily large. This makes deployment slower and more expensive, especially on lightweight VPS instances, CI/CD pipelines, or edge environments.

Proposed Solution

Publish an additional Docker image tag (e.g. :slim or :no-browser) that excludes:

• Playwright and Chromium (~800MB–1GB)
• Optionally: WhatsApp bridge / Node.js (if not needed for core functionality)

This would bring the image size down to roughly 1.2–1.5 GB or less.

Alternatively, a multi-stage build with a build arg (e.g. INSTALL_BROWSER=true/false) would also work, allowing users to build their own slim variant.

Additional Context

• The docs already note that browser automation is the most memory-hungry feature and that 1 GB RAM is sufficient without it — a matching slim image would be a natural complement.
• Currently all tags on Docker Hub (latest, v2026.4.16, v2026.4.13, etc.) are the same full image with no slim/minimal variant available.
• No existing issue covers this request.