Local development guide

Local Kubernetes cluster

You need a running cluster to use make test or iterate on the chart locally. kind is recommended - it is the same runtime CI uses.

kind (recommended)

# Install
brew install kind          # macOS
# or: https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/docs/user/quick-start/#installation

# Create a cluster
kind create cluster --name hermes-dev

# Verify
kubectl cluster-info --context kind-hermes-dev

To tear it down:

kind delete cluster --name hermes-dev

minikube

# Install
brew install minikube      # macOS

# Start (Docker driver works without VMs)
minikube start --driver=docker

# Switch kubectl context
kubectl config use-context minikube

MicroK8s (Linux)

sudo snap install microk8s --classic
microk8s enable dns storage
sudo microk8s kubectl config view --raw > ~/.kube/config

---

Dev install on the local cluster

helm upgrade --install hermes-agent ./charts/hermes-agent \
  --namespace hermes-agent --create-namespace \
  --set-string env.NVIDIA_API_KEY='nvapi-...' \
  --set-string env.DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN='...' \
  --set-string env.DISCORD_HOME_CHANNEL='...' \
  --set config.model.provider=nvidia \
  --set config.model.default='meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct' \
  --wait

Run the chart's own test suite after install:

make test

If you edited values.yaml (new value, changed default, new section), regenerate the chart README via helm-docs and commit the result - CI's lint job fails on any drift between README.md and README.md.gotmpl:

make docs

---

Running the CI test scenarios locally

validate-chart.yaml's test job runs six scenarios as a matrix - each on its own ephemeral kind cluster. The scenario logic itself lives in .github/scripts (lib.sh + one script per scenario), so you can reproduce exactly what CI does, scenario by scenario, against a local kind cluster:

kind create cluster --name hermes-verify

export NS=test-hermes-chart
export CI_MODELS="nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-omni-30b-a3b-reasoning,google/gemma-4-31b-it,openai/gpt-oss-20b"
export NVIDIA_API_KEY='nvapi-...'   # omit for a doctor-only run (no live chat)

# Choose exactly one scenario per cluster:
.github/scripts/scenario-message.sh
# .github/scripts/scenario-existing-claim.sh
# .github/scripts/scenario-team.sh
# .github/scripts/scenario-security-hardened.sh
# .github/scripts/scenario-bootstrap-overwrite.sh
# .github/scripts/scenario-dashboard-ingress.sh

kind delete cluster --name hermes-verify

Each script is self-contained - install, its scenario assertion, and (for scenario-message.sh, when NVIDIA_API_KEY is set) the skill-injection + chat round-trip, exactly as CI runs it. DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN / DISCORD_HOME_CHANNEL are optional and only consumed by scenario-message.sh. Run each scenario against its own cluster (as above) - all scripts default NS to test-hermes-chart, matching CI's per-matrix-job isolation; reusing one cluster for both back-to-back will collide unless you delete the namespace or override NS between runs.

macOS ships bash 3.2 (/bin/bash --version), which has a long-fixed-upstream bug where expanding an empty array under set -u raises "unbound variable" (fixed in bash 4.4+). The scripts already guard for this ("${arr[@]+"${arr[@]}"}"), so this should just work - if you hit a similar error while extending these scripts, that's almost certainly the cause.

Using a different provider for the round-trip

scenario-message.sh is hardcoded to NVIDIA NIM (the provider CI exercises), but lib.sh's install_release is a thin wrapper around helm upgrade, so nothing stops you from copying a scenario script and pointing config.model.provider elsewhere for a quick local check - e.g. a local LM Studio server as a custom OpenAI-compatible provider (see Configure your provider in the chart README). Note this isn't validated end-to-end here: the agent pod runs inside the kind node's network namespace, so reaching an LM Studio instance on the host requires the pod to resolve the host (e.g. host.docker.internal, which may or may not resolve from inside a pod depending on your container runtime/CNI) - work this out before relying on it.

---

Port-forwarding a remote cluster agent

When you want to test against an agent already running in a staging or production cluster (instead of spinning up a local kind cluster), port-forward the management dashboard to your machine:

kubectl port-forward svc/hermes-agent 9119:9119 -n hermes-agent

The Hermes dashboard is then available at http://localhost:9119.

For exec-based debugging:

# Open a shell inside the running agent pod
kubectl exec -it deploy/hermes-agent -n hermes-agent -- sh

# Check gateway status
hermes gateway status

The agent connects outbound to Discord and the AI provider - there is no inbound webhook to expose. Port-forwarding is only needed to reach the management dashboard or to run ad-hoc hermes CLI commands through the pod.

---

Discord bot + NVIDIA provider + gateway

Prerequisites

Item	Where to get it
Discord bot token	Discord Developer Portal → Bot → Token
Discord channel ID	Right-click channel → Copy Channel ID (Developer Mode must be on)
NVIDIA API key	NVIDIA NIM → Get API Key

values file

Create a values-local-dev.yaml (keep this out of version control):

config:
  model:
    provider: nvidia
    default: meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct

env:
  NVIDIA_API_KEY: "nvapi-<your-key>"
  DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN: "<your-bot-token>"
  DISCORD_HOME_CHANNEL: "<channel-id>"

Install

helm upgrade --install hermes-agent ./charts/hermes-agent \
  --namespace hermes-agent --create-namespace \
  -f values-local-dev.yaml \
  --wait

Verify

# Check the agent came up
kubectl get pods -n hermes-agent

# Tail logs to watch Discord connection
kubectl logs -f deploy/hermes-agent -n hermes-agent

# Run the built-in health check
make test

A successful startup logs a line like gateway connected and the bot appears online in Discord. Send a message in the home channel to confirm end-to-end.

Minimal gateway values for team testing

If you are running multiple agents on a shared Discord channel (see Hermes teams), set the allow-bots flag so agents can reply to each other:

extraEnv:
  - name: DISCORD_ALLOW_BOTS
    value: "1"
  - name: DISCORD_THREAD_REQUIRE_MENTION
    value: "1"

See Hermes collaboration for the full multi-agent setup.