hermes-backend-watchdog

Hermes launches about 15 MCP servers per profile, so multiple profiles create dozens of node.exe processes. Run the watchdog script to kill idle profile serve backends while keeping the active profile and default gateway running, reclaiming several gigabytes of memory.

Use the hermes-profile-watchdog.ps1 script, which only terminates `--profile X serve` processes for inactive profiles. It protects the bare default serve, the active profile, and any profile with a live session_turn_leases row in its state.db.

No. The Hermes desktop re-launches a profile's backend on demand when you use it, so killed idle backends come back automatically. The hard rule is to never kill bare default serves, which are the machine gateway children of Hermes.exe.

Register-ScheduledTask throws error 0x80070005 from a normal shell because it requires elevation. Launch the installer with Start-Process powershell.exe -Verb RunAs to trigger a UAC prompt and register the hidden login task successfully.

An embedded Python reader queries the session_turn_leases table in each profile's state.db, checking for rows where expires_at is greater than the current time. Profiles with non-expired leases are treated as live and protected from termination.

No. Hermes config.yaml, including per-profile configs, is blocklisted from patch and write_file operations. The correct approach is managing processes with the watchdog rather than attempting configuration edits.