Bug

hermes crashes immediately on startup with:

argparse.ArgumentError: argument command: conflicting subparser: skills

Root Cause

In hermes_cli/main.py, the "skills" subparser name is registered twice on the same subparsers object:

1. Line ~2253 — Skills Hub (browse, search, install, inspect, list, audit, uninstall, publish, snapshot), importing from hermes_cli.skills_hub
2. Line ~2334 — Skills config (interactive enable/disable), importing from hermes_cli.skills_config

Both call subparsers.add_parser("skills", ...).

Python 3.11 changed argparse to raise an exception on duplicate subparser names instead of silently overwriting (see CPython #94331). Since the project requires >=3.11, this bug affects all supported Python versions.

Suggested Fix

Rename the second subparser from "skills" to "skills-config" (or integrate it as a sub-action of the first, e.g. hermes skills config).

Environment

• macOS (Apple Silicon)
• Python 3.11.14 (installed via uv)
• Fresh install of hermes-agent