Agency invocation (cheat sheet)

How the Hermes SDD agency is used. Full detail: ~/.hermes/HOW-TO-INVOKE-THE-AGENCY.md.

Slash commands

• /agency — general orchestrator; asks for the stage if you did not name one.
• Per stage: /init-project · /idea · /architecture · /plan · /implement · /review · /qa · /release

All of them are skill bundles in ~/.hermes/skill-bundles/; each loads hermes-sdd-orchestration + openspec-sdd and injects the stage protocol. hermes bundles list to see them · hermes bundles show <n> to see what each loads.

Without slash commands

The hermes-sdd-orchestration skill autoloads on: "the agency", "los agentes", "run the SDD loop", "initialize the project", "the workflow".

Before you start

cd <project-root> && pwd -P && openspec context --json
test -f openspec/project.md || echo "MISSING → /init-project"

Ambiguous root ⇒ the agency stops and reports. It never proceeds with the "most likely" one.

Hard rules

1. No implementation code without a validated OpenSpec change.
2. OpenSpec lives in the project repo, never in ~/.hermes/.
3. Agents never talk to each other; Hermes validates every output in the real repo.
4. Only review and QA can block.
5. Business/architecture/security/scope ambiguity ⇒ the human decides.
6. Every closure carries a final report, even a blocked one.

Output language (verify before sending)

The agency's files, agents, workflows, rules, templates and specs are all in English. Every reply to the user is in Spanish — including one-line acknowledgements and closing summaries after an English-only task.

This has failed in practice: a full Spanish verification report (translation of 33 files) came back written in Chinese, while the underlying tool output was correct. The language of the work and the language of the answer are independent decisions — a task conducted in English does not license answering in English, and never in a third language.

Before sending a reply, check the prose itself — tool output, code blocks, paths, slugs and commands stay in English by design and do not count. If a reply goes out in the wrong language, say so plainly in the next turn (the sent message cannot be recalled) and restate the content in Spanish.