hermes-sudo

Your agent runs sudo commands. Your password stays with you.

hermes-sudo lets your Hermes Agent run sudo commands without ever seeing your password. Authentication happens through your system's normal sudo prompt — the same one you see in a terminal.

Quick start

hermes plugins enable hermes-sudo

That's it. The next time your agent needs sudo, it will call the sudo_authorize tool and prompt you.

Why this is secure

Property	How it's enforced
Agent never sees your password	Authentication uses sudo -S with stdin piping. The password is obtained via a system prompt and cached in the terminal tool — the agent process does not directly read it from the terminal.
Can't batch sudo commands	Default scope is once: one sudo command per authorization. After it runs, sudo -k immediately invalidates the credential cache.
Destructive commands blocked	Scope confirm catches dangerous tools (rm, dd, mkfs, etc.) and asks you before they run. Handles prefix commands, subshells, and command substitutions.
Session ends cleanly	When the conversation ends, sudo -k runs automatically — no lingering credentials.
Audit trail	Every sudo invocation is logged to ~/.hermes/logs/sudo-audit.log with timestamp and command.
No TTY required	Uses sudo -S with stdin piping, which works without a controlling TTY.

Scopes

Scope	Commands per auth	Destructive ops
once	1	Allowed (re-authorize for more)
confirm	1	Blocked — you must explicitly authorize rm, dd, mkfs, and similar
session	Unlimited until session ends	Allowed

Configuration

Env var	Default	Effect
HERMES_SUDO_ALLOW_NOPASSWD	true	Set to false to require explicit authorization even if you already have passwordless sudo

Installing from source

git clone https://github.com/your-org/hermes-sudo.git
cd hermes-sudo
bash install.sh         # install or update the plugin

After installing, start a fresh session (/reset).

Requirements

• Hermes Agent (CLI mode — needs /dev/tty)
• sudo with PAM authentication
• Linux or macOS