Hermes Agent adds Tool Search to load only needed MCP and plugin tools

• NousResearch's launch post says Hermes Agent now has Tool Search, a feature that loads only the tools an agent needs instead of stuffing every MCP or plugin tool into context.
• According to Teknium's explanation, Tool Search turns on automatically when MCP or plugin tools would consume more than 10 percent of the context window.
• The feature shipped inside Hermes Agent v0.15.0, which NousResearch's release post called "The Velocity Release" and linked to the GitHub release notes.
• Tool Search landed two days after NousResearch's MCP Catalog announcement, which added a built-in catalog for one-click installs from trusted MCP sources, with docs at Hermes' MCP feature page.

You can watch NousResearch's demo video, skim the release notes, and compare it with the MCP Catalog docs. The interesting bit is the sequence: Hermes first added a built-in catalog for trusted MCP installs, then added a retrieval layer so larger tool inventories stop bloating prompt context.

The core claim from NousResearch's launch post is simple: Hermes agents now search for the right tool instead of preloading everything.

Teknium's follow-up adds the threshold and the behavior:

• Tool Search works across MCPs and plugins.
• Hermes can expose an arbitrary number of tools without loading them all into context.
• The feature activates automatically once tool definitions exceed 10 percent of the model's context window.
• The pitch is lower token use and less context waste.

Teknium's how-it-works thread points to an implementation explainer, but the public tweets stop at the product behavior rather than a deeper architecture write-up.

Tool Search shipped as part of Hermes Agent v0.15.0, which NousResearch branded "The Velocity Release." NousResearch's release-notes link points directly to the project's GitHub release page, and the update command in the same thread is hermes update.

That matters mostly as release context: Tool Search was not teased as a distant roadmap item. It landed in the public update stream alongside the rest of the late-May release.

Two days earlier, Hermes added a built-in MCP Catalog. NousResearch's post framed it as a catalog inside the app, while Teknium's description said it ships with preconfigured MCPs from trusted sources.

The linked MCP documentation describes the feature as one-click install for Nous-approved MCPs. Put next to Tool Search, the pairing is obvious: Hermes is making it easier to add more tools, then trying to avoid paying the usual context penalty for doing that.

One other concrete addition surfaced in the same release window: WesRoth's post about Qwen 3.7 Max said Hermes Agent added support for Alibaba's Qwen 3.7 Max inside the Hermes workflow.

Teknium's OpenAI OAuth question also suggests users were testing recent changes to OpenAI OAuth reliability, but the evidence here is only that Teknium asked for feedback after the latest update, not that a specific fix was confirmed in public.

That leaves the late-May Hermes story looking less like a single feature drop and more like a stack update: more models, a curated MCP install path, and now a way to keep large tool catalogs from eating context.