Hermes gives the model resources and prompts under a fifth set of tool names

Kind: nuance · Status: current · Last verified: 2026-11-09 · Clients: hermes-agent, openclaw, openai-codex, opencode · Revisions: 2025-11-25

Every MCP tool Hermes registers is named mcp__<server>__<tool>, both components sanitized. The four resource and prompt operations are registered the same way, so a server called github yields mcp__github__list_resources, mcp__github__read_resource, mcp__github__list_prompts and mcp__github__get_prompt.

That is a third set of names for the same operations, and a fifth position on the question across the clients read so far. Codex and opencode converged on flat, server-agnostic list_mcp_resources / read_mcp_resource. OpenClaw materializes per-server resources_list, resources_read, prompts_list, prompts_get. Hermes is per-server like OpenClaw but keeps the spec's own method names in MCP's word order, prefixed. Cline lists resources into a UI tab with no read path, and fast-agent routes them through user-typed @server:uri mentions. A model that learned one set of names does not carry it to the next client.

Two things distinguish the Hermes version from the others. The utility tools are gated on what the server actually advertised: _select_utility_schemas reads initialize_result.capabilities and registers the resource pair only when the server declared resources, the prompt pair only when it declared prompts. A comment records that the previous gate — an hasattr check on the session — never filtered anything, because ClientSession defines all four methods on the class regardless. Cline is the counter-case for why the gate matters, listing resources into a UI tab with no way to fetch one.

They are also user-suppressible. Per-server config keys tools.resources and tools.prompts both default to true and turn the corresponding pair off. If a server's own tool normalises to the same name as a utility, the utility is dropped and the server's tool kept.

Like Codex, opencode and OpenClaw, Hermes ships this without anything in the spec to point at. PR #2527's mechanism-agnostic SHOULD would cover all of them. Ratifying any one client's names now strands the others.

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