Hermes agent keeps asking for API KEY.

[freebeedee]

Hi, according to the guide, AI provider API only needed when using CL. However, when i ask hermes-agent to trigger the skill /graphify ., it keep asking and spining around the fact that it need API key (mainly because they use terminal tool to run the command themselves).

After 2-3 minute spinning around, it finally proceed as expected. However, it's quite token consuming.

[safishamsi]

Thanks for the report — and you're right, no API key is needed. What you hit is a wording problem in the skill, not an actual requirement, so here's what's going on and how to get unstuck now.

graphify never needs an API key. Code is extracted structurally (AST) with no LLM at all, so /graphify . on a code repo does zero LLM work — there's nothing to authenticate. An API key (GEMINI_API_KEY) is only ever an optional accelerator for semantic extraction of docs/papers/images, and even then it's optional (the host agent can do that work itself). graphify does not read ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or any provider key.

Why Hermes spun: the skill's extraction step described the no-key path in terms of "dispatch subagents" — which is a Claude-Code-style mechanism. Hermes runs the CLI directly in a terminal and doesn't dispatch subagents, so it had no path it recognized, latched onto the key language, and looped before eventually falling through to the (correct) keyless behaviour. That's the 2–3 minutes of token burn you saw.

Fix: I've reworded the skill on v8. Step 3 now opens with an explicit, up-front line — graphify needs no API key, never ask for one, never block on one — and the fallback now spells out the terminal-only path for hosts like Hermes that don't dispatch subagents. It's applied to every host skill (including Hermes/Aider/Codex/etc.), with a test pinning the wording so it can't drift back.

Right now: you don't need to wait — just let it proceed; the keyless path is what runs anyway. Once the next release is out, re-run graphify hermes install (or graphify install --platform hermes) to pick up the clarified skill and the spinning should stop.

[freebeedee]

Thanks 🫰

[safishamsi]

Addressed in 0.8.50 (#1461). The skill now states up front that graphify needs no API key and never to prompt/block on one, with a non-subagent path for terminal hosts like Hermes — so the loop on a missing key is gone. After upgrading, re-run graphify hermes install to pick up the clarified skill.

[freebeedee]

Addressed in 0.8.50 (#1461). The skill now states up front that graphify needs no API key and never to prompt/block on one, with a non-subagent path for terminal hosts like Hermes — so the loop on a missing key is gone. After upgrading, re-run graphify hermes install to pick up the clarified skill.

Haha, I have just run successfully via pi.dev; i thought because the simplicity of Pi was effective, never though you have just patch it ^^

Thanks you!