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# hermes-agent · open-source contribution to Hermes Agent

https://geonwoo.kim/en/portfolio/hermes-agent

Period: 2026.08 — Present

Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent from Nous Research. When the agent searched a broad path such as the home folder, macOS privacy prompts appeared even in unattended runs. I contributed a fix that leaves protected folders out before the search starts.

Fix that stops macOS privacy prompts during home-folder searches

- [hermes-agent](https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/commit/5fd6811dfe6fb18c81a510da354bf5356eb2449b)

Team: Contribution

Role: Bug fix · Tests

Python · ripgrep · macOS

- Seven protected folders such as Desktop, Documents and Downloads skipped when searching home or /Users
- The same exclusion for file-name and content search across ripgrep, grep and find
- Searches that name a protected folder directly still run
- A warning that lists skipped folders and how to search them directly
- No change outside macOS

## Prompts before results are filtered

Problem: Filtering protected folders out of the results was too late, because entering a folder already triggered the permission request.

Solution: Protected folders are left out before traversal starts, with ripgrep exclude patterns and find -prune. The original PR reported 61 related tests passing along with results from broad searches on a real Mac.

## Results that shrank silently

Problem: Skipping folders meant users could not tell that some results were missing.

Solution: A warning names the skipped folders and how to search them directly, and searches that target a protected folder are not filtered. Users know what was left out and can search a protected folder by naming it directly.

## Same-named folders and remote environments

Problem: The first version excluded folders by name, so an ordinary subfolder with the same name could be skipped too. The macOS rule could also apply in remote environments.

Solution: A follow-up fix in the merged PR blocks traversal by path instead of by name. It also detects the runtime environment and skips the exclusion on remote machines. Ordinary same-named folders and remote searches no longer lose results for no reason.


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