Hermes Agent Adds Asynchronous Subagents, So Delegated Work No Longer Blocks the Parent Chat
AI
Nous Research's Hermes Agent now supports asynchronous subagents, allowing delegated tasks to run in the background without blocking the parent chat.
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The Big Picture
Nous Research has updated Hermes Agent, an open-source personal agent, to support asynchronous subagents via a new async_delegation toolset. Previously, the delegate_task tool ran synchronously, blocking the parent chat until all child agents completed. The update, announced by co-founder Teknium, introduces tools like delegate_task_async, check_task, steer_task, collect_task, cancel_task, and list_tasks, enabling non-blocking delegation. Subagents remain isolated with their own conversation, terminal, and toolset, returning only the final summary to the parent to keep context small. Users can enable the feature by running 'hermes update'. This enhancement allows for long-running background tasks, parallel evaluations, and monitoring via an /agents overlay in the TUI.
Why It Matters
This update transforms Hermes Agent from a blocking tool into a true multitasking assistant, enabling users to delegate long-running tasks like research or coding while continuing to work in the main chat. By allowing real-time steering and monitoring of subagents, it unlocks complex workflows such as parallel evaluation of multiple approaches or background refactoring, making AI agents more practical for power users and developers.
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Nous Research has shipped a change to Hermes Agent. Its delegate tool can now run subagents asynchronously. Per the announcement, delegated work no longer blocks the parent chat.
Hermes Agent is an open-source personal agent from Nous Research. A parent agent can spawn child agents, called subagents, to fan out work. Until now, that delegation made you wait.
The update was announced on X by Nous Research and co-founder Teknium. Existing users enable it by running hermes update.
Hermes Agent now supports asyncronous subagents!
The existing delegate tool, which your agent uses to spawn subagents to fan out and do work, no longer blocks your chat!
The delegation tool is delegate_task. It spawns a subagent, which is an isolated child agent. Each child gets its own conversation, terminal session, and toolset.
Only the final summary returns to the parent. The parent’s context never sees the child’s intermediate tool calls or reasoning. That keeps the parent’s context window small.
Isolation is strict. Subagents start with a completely fresh conversation. They have no knowledge of the parent’s history. The parent must pass everything through the goal and context fields.
Subagents inherit the parent’s API key, provider configuration, and credential pool. That credential pool enables key rotation on rate limits. You can route subagents to a cheaper model through config.yaml.
What Was Blocking, and What Changed
In source, delegate_task is synchronous. The parent blocks inside the tool call until every child completes. Your chat stays frozen during that wait.
That design prevented several workflows. You could not start a long agent and keep working. You could not check in on a run or steer it mid-flight.
Nous built the non-blocking path in the open. Issue #5586 adds an async_delegation toolset. It spawns a background agent and returns a task_id immediately. The announcement confirms async subagents are now available.
The async tools cover the full lifecycle:
delegate_task_async — spawn a background agent, return a task_id
check_task — non-blocking status plus recent output
steer_task — inject a message into a running task
collect_task — block until done, then return the full result
cancel_task — stop a running task
list_tasks — all async tasks in the session
Background agents run as in-process threads. They reuse the same AIAgent machinery, credentials, and toolsets as delegate_task.
Synchronous vs Asynchronous Delegation
DimensionSynchronous delegate_taskAsynchronous delegation (async_delegation, #5586)Parent chatBlocks until all children finishReturns a task_id immediately; chat stays freeControl while runningNone — you waitCheck status, steer, collect, or cancel per taskExecutionParent waits inside the tool callBackground in-process threadsContext costOnly the final summary returnsOnly the final summary returnsIsolationFresh conversation per childFresh conversation per childBest forQuick fan-out you wait onLong tasks you run alongside the chatDurabilityNot durable across turnsSingle-session; ACP (#4949) targets cross-turn
Code: Spawning and Steering
A synchronous batch spawns children in parallel and waits. Concurrency is capped by delegation.max_concurrent_children, which defaults to 3.
# Synchronous: the parent waits for all children
delegate_task(tasks=[
{"goal": "Research topic A", "toolsets": ["web"]},
{"goal": "Fix the build", "toolsets": ["terminal", "file"]},
])
The async toolset from issue #5586 returns control immediately.
