Storytold skills for Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent skills for the storytold Crafting Apps: thirteen free, open-source creative tools written in Rust. Each app ships a desktop app, a CLI and an MCP server.

The skills give an agent three things:

• Install and wiring (storytold-install): download the apps, put them on PATH, check that each MCP server answers, and register it with Hermes.
• Picking the right tool (storytold): a router that maps a creative task to the right app.
• Knowing how to use it (one skill per app): the app’s mental model, MCP tools, recipes, formats, CLI one-shots, pitfalls and how to verify the result.

Quick start

Install the storytold skill:

hermes skills install hermes-pro/storytold-skills/storytold --yes

Then tell Hermes:

Install the Storytold skills.

The storytold skill tells the agent how to install the other 14 skills. Then start a new session so they load, and tell Hermes:

Set up the Storytold Crafting Apps.

The agent downloads the apps, puts them on PATH, checks that their MCP servers answer, and registers them with Hermes. After one more new session (or /reload-mcp), the app tools are loaded and the agent picks the right app for each creative task.

The agent will ask you before it installs storytold-install with --force. Hermes scans skills from community sources and blocks any that match risky code patterns. The app skills and the router pass that scan. storytold-install doesn’t, because its job is to:

• persist a PATH entry (the Windows registry, or ~/.profile / ~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc)
• run the app CLIs and hermes mcp add
• read STORYTOLD_* / GITHUB_TOKEN environment variables

To review it first, read storytold_tools.py, or run hermes skills inspect hermes-pro/storytold-skills/storytold-install.

Skills

Each app skill has a references/ folder with that app’s full command, effect or function catalog, generated from the live MCP server. The skills tell the agent to grep these files rather than read them whole.

Install the skills

The Quick start lets the agent install them. To install all 15 yourself in one line:

for s in storytold-install storytold vectorcraft photocraft lightcraft effectcraft filmcraft designcraft pdfcraft wordcraft gridcraft deckcraft soundcraft cadcraft figcraft; do hermes skills install "hermes-pro/storytold-skills/$s" --yes --force; done

'storytold-install','storytold','vectorcraft','photocraft','lightcraft','effectcraft','filmcraft','designcraft','pdfcraft','wordcraft','gridcraft','deckcraft','soundcraft','cadcraft','figcraft' | % { hermes skills install "hermes-pro/storytold-skills/$_" --yes --force }

--force is only needed for storytold-install (see Quick start). Single skills install the same way, e.g. hermes skills install hermes-pro/storytold-skills/vectorcraft.

You can also add the repo as a tap with hermes skills tap add hermes-pro/storytold-skills. Taps look under skills/ by default and these skills live at the repo root, so point that tap’s path at the root in ~/.hermes/skills/.hub/taps.json.

To use a local checkout, copy the skill folders into your Hermes skills directory (~/.hermes/skills//, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\skills\ on Windows).

Install the apps

Once the skills are installed, ask Hermes to set up the Crafting Apps, or run the helper yourself. It needs Python 3.9+ and nothing else:

python storytold-install/scripts/storytold_tools.py setup            # all thirteen apps
python storytold-install/scripts/storytold_tools.py setup vectorcraft photocraft

setup does four things:

1. Install: downloads each app’s latest GitHub release for this OS and CPU, checks it against the release’s SHA256SUMS.txt, and unpacks it.
2. PATH: links `` and -cli into one bin directory and adds it to the persistent PATH if it isn’t there yet.
3. Verify: runs an MCP handshake (initialize + tools/list) against every server.
4. Register: adds each server to Hermes with hermes mcp add and enables all its tools.

Then start a new Hermes session or run /reload-mcp. The tools appear as mcp__.

The helper also has the subcommands status, install, path, verify and register (with --replace). See storytold-install/SKILL.md for those, for the environment variables that change the locations, and for the per-app MCP arguments. PhotoCraft gets file-access roots, LightCraft gets a persistent library, VectorCraft runs --headless (so it never attaches to another app on port 7979), and PdfCraft runs --compact (17 tools instead of 161).

How the skills were tested

Every recipe marked (tested) was run against the released apps through their MCP servers or CLIs. The outputs were checked by rendering and looking at them, by reading values back, or by measuring them with ffprobe or ffmpeg. The versions tested were:

vectorcraft 0.13.1 · photocraft 0.10.0 · lightcraft 0.9.1 · effectcraft 0.11.1 · filmcraft 0.9.0 · designcraft 0.9.0 · pdfcraft 0.9.0 · wordcraft 0.8.0 · gridcraft 0.8.0 · deckcraft 0.8.0 · soundcraft 0.8.0 · cadcraft 0.8.0 · figcraft 0.7.0

Bugs and quirks found along the way, with their exact error text, are in each skill’s Pitfalls section. Each skill also says what wasn’t tested. When an app updates, regenerate its references/ from the live server and re-run its recipes.

Repository layout

/
├── SKILL.md          # frontmatter (name, description, platforms, metadata.hermes) + instructions
├── references/       # generated catalogs (app skills)
└── scripts/          # helper scripts (storytold-install)

License

MIT. See LICENSE. The Crafting Apps themselves are licensed separately by their own repositories.