Hermes Agent, Nous Research's self-improving AI agent framework, just shipped /loop -- a slash command that turns any prompt into a recurring agent task inside your current session. It's a small surface area with a surprisingly useful set of behaviors underneath.

What it does

/loop re-runs a prompt (or another slash command) on a recurring cadence inside your current session. Each wakeup is a real agent turn: Hermes reads the current state fresh, does the work, reports back, and goes quiet until the next tick. Think of it as a lightweight polling loop you can spin up mid-conversation, without leaving the terminal or switching tools.

The basic syntax is straightforward:

# Fixed interval: check every 5 minutes
/loop 5m check the deploy status and tell me if it's live yet
# Loop another slash command
/loop 10m /recap
# Self-paced: Hermes decides the cadence
/loop keep an eye on the migration and summarize progress

Two modes, one command

The most interesting design choice is the self-paced mode. Omit the interval and the loop paces itself: it starts at the floor (1 minute by default), and while the agent's replies stop changing it backs off exponentially -- 2m, 4m, 8m, up to a ceiling of 15 minutes by default. The moment a reply differs from the last one, cadence snaps back to the floor. Change detection uses a local digest comparison that ignores timestamps, so idle waits cost nothing extra in compute.