/// SEC.01   Themes for Hermes Agent in the visual language of The Designers Republic and Marathon (Kurppa Hosk × Bungie, 2026).   PG 01/01 ↗

Install  ·  Design System  ·  Customize  ·  Influences

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/// SEC.01   OVERVIEW

The default Hermes Teal theme is a soft cream on dark teal — polished, warm, easy. Republic is the opposite move. Bone parchment over near-black ground. Radioactive yellow as structural material, not accent. Magenta and cyan as instrument micro-marks. Geist Mono Bold and IBM Plex everywhere. Square corners, hairline rules, sector codes, page numbers, faction tags.

The agent stops being a friendly chat companion and becomes a system console — a Sector-01 readout with a sigil, a faction tag, and a launch latch. That contrast against the soft Hermes Teal default is the point.

Note

◆ WINNER — Nous Research Hermes Agent Theme Hackathon ($350 theme track, April 2026). v1.0 — DAEDALUS is the first theme in the Republic atelier.

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/// SEC.02   SCREENSHOTS

_{MTRC.001 // SESSIONS — the operator's open conversation pool. Yellow active nav, magenta sector eyebrow, plugin-injected status banner with the Yellow Contract enforced on descendants.}

MTRC.002 // ANALYTICS — metric plates with rotating corner blocks (yellow → cyan → magenta → lime). Recharts bars in bone + magenta. Yellow reserved for chrome.

MTRC.003 // SKILLS — faction-tagged registry. Mono-caps labels, hairline rules between rows, cyan counters on numbered nav.

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/// SEC.03   INSTALL

Daedalus is a single self-contained YAML theme. Works with Hermes Agent v0.11.0+.

[ ONE-LINE INSTALL ]

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JustinPerea/Republic/main/theme/daedalus.yaml \
  -o ~/.hermes/dashboard-themes/daedalus.yaml

If you use Hermes profiles (~/.hermes/profiles/<name>/), copy to that profile's dashboard-themes/ directory instead — Hermes is profile-aware via ~/.hermes/active_profile.

[ MANUAL INSTALL ]

1. Download theme/daedalus.yaml.
2. Place it in either of these locations:
   • ~/.hermes/dashboard-themes/daedalus.yaml
   • ~/.hermes/profiles/<active-profile>/dashboard-themes/daedalus.yaml
3. Restart the Hermes dashboard, or hit the rescan endpoint:

   curl http://127.0.0.1:9119/api/dashboard/plugins/rescan

4. Open the dashboard and select DAEDALUS from the theme picker.

[ BELT-AND-SUSPENDERS INSTALL ]

Apply regardless of which profile is active — install in both locations:

THEME_URL="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JustinPerea/Republic/main/theme/daedalus.yaml"
curl -fsSL "$THEME_URL" -o ~/.hermes/dashboard-themes/daedalus.yaml
mkdir -p ~/.hermes/profiles/$(cat ~/.hermes/active_profile 2>/dev/null || echo default)/dashboard-themes
curl -fsSL "$THEME_URL" \
  -o ~/.hermes/profiles/$(cat ~/.hermes/active_profile 2>/dev/null || echo default)/dashboard-themes/daedalus.yaml

Tip

If the theme doesn't appear in the picker after install, hit the rescan endpoint above. Hermes caches the theme list per session.

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/// SEC.04   DESIGN SYSTEM

The full spec lives in DESIGN.md — 12 sections, 500 lines, every token, every selector, every locked decision.

MTRC	Pillar	Spec
001	Color	3-layer black/bone/yellow base + cyan secondary + magenta tertiary + lime success. Yellow is structural material — load-bearing chrome, not a thin accent. Magenta + cyan are chronic chrome accents (/// SEC eyebrow, page indicator, frame bottom edge). Enforced via the Yellow Contract.
002	Type	Geist Mono Bold (display) + IBM Plex Sans (body) + IBM Plex Mono (every label). Token-based scale — 6 sizes, 5 trackings, 4 line-heights. Reach for --type-eyebrow instead of font-size: 9px.
003	Spacing	4-base grid (--space-1 through --space-9). Off-grid values are not allowed. Layout constants (status-strip height, ticker height) deliberately stay numeric — they track other constants, not design intent.
004	Components	Cards with yellow top stripe + color-rotating corner block (yellow → cyan → magenta → lime). Buttons as solid yellow plates rendered [ EXECUTE ]. Badges as yellow stamps. Numbered sidebar nav with cyan counters. Magenta /// SEC page eyebrow.
005	Signature	Top status strip running HERMES AGENT ⌬ STATUS·OPERATIONAL ⌬ .... Corner-bracket frame (yellow top + sides, magenta bottom). Registration + marks scattered on the content area. Mono footer ticker.

[ THE PALETTE ]

--ink-base #0A0A0A

--bone #E8E2D2

--rad-yellow #DCFF00

--cyan #4AC4F8

--magenta #F84A8C

--lime #7FFF7F

[ HOW THE THEME TALKS TO HERMES ]

flowchart LR
    A["theme/<br/>daedalus.yaml"] --> B[Hermes<br/>theme loader]
    B --> C["palette<br/>componentStyles"]
    B --> D[customCSS<br/>~29 KiB]
    C --> E[Generated<br/>CSS vars]
    D --> F[Signature<br/>elements]
    E --> G([DASHBOARD])
    F --> G

    style A fill:#DCFF00,color:#0A0A0A,stroke:#0A0A0A,stroke-width:2px
    style G fill:#0A0A0A,color:#DCFF00,stroke:#DCFF00,stroke-width:2px
    style B fill:#181818,color:#E8E2D2,stroke:#E8E2D2
    style C fill:#181818,color:#4AC4F8,stroke:#4AC4F8
    style D fill:#181818,color:#F84A8C,stroke:#F84A8C
    style E fill:#181818,color:#E8E2D2,stroke:#E8E2D2
    style F fill:#181818,color:#E8E2D2,stroke:#E8E2D2

Loading

[ SELECTOR STABILITY TIERS ]

The theme talks to Hermes through three layers with different upgrade-resilience guarantees. Documented in DESIGN.md § 12.5.

Tier	Guarantee	Targets
TIER.01  [STABLE]	Survives Hermes updates	palette / componentStyles / generated CSS vars
TIER.02  [SEMI-STABLE]	Standard web platform	Standard HTML / ARIA / aside#app-sidebar / header[role="banner"] / pseudo-elements
TIER.03  [FRAGILE]	Could break on any Hermes update	Tailwind class substrings on Hermes' shadcn fork (button[class*="gap-2"]...)

Warning

Each TIER.03 selector in theme/daedalus.yaml.template is annotated FRAGILE — see DESIGN.md. If a Hermes update changes a Tailwind class name, the theme degrades to "Hermes default with our palette" rather than visibly breaking.

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/// SEC.05   CUSTOMIZE

The shipped theme/daedalus.yaml is generated from theme/daedalus.yaml.template (which has the sigil image embedded as a base64 placeholder). To regenerate after tweaks:

python3 - << 'PYEOF'
import base64
sigil_b64 = base64.b64encode(open('assets/sigil.jpg', 'rb').read()).decode('ascii')
data_url = f"data:image/jpeg;base64,{sigil_b64}"
template = open('theme/daedalus.yaml.template').read()
open('theme/daedalus.yaml', 'w').write(template.replace('__SIGIL_DATA_URL__', data_url))
PYEOF

Note

The customCSS block is capped at 32 KiB by Hermes. Daedalus ships at ~29 KiB — about 3 KiB of headroom for forks.

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/// SEC.06   INFLUENCES

[REF]	Source	What we steal
001	The Designers Republic (WipEout, Aphex Twin, PWEI)	Anti-corporate corporate language: TM marks, version numbers, sector codes, "BUILT WITH PURPOSE" stamps. Saturated electric accents on near-black. Hash/stripe dividers. Fake spec-sheet labels everywhere.
002	Marathon (Kurppa Hosk × Bungie, 2026)	Faction identity systems. Status banners with bold blocks of color. Industrial product photography composited with brand marks. Recon-shell technical aesthetic. Three-tier font logic.
003	Sekiguchi Genetics (Marathon faction)	Two-color discipline. Modular tile letterforms. Bilingual Latin / katakana label pairs as parallel specification.
004	AXION brand kit mockups	Page numbering (02/06). Top-right corner arrow. Status banner with launch-console button. Engineered-product photography energy.

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/// SEC.07   LICENSE & CREDITS

MIT — use, modify, fork, ship.

Built by Justin Perea for the Hermes Agent Theme Hackathon, Nous Research, April 2026.

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DAEDALUS // ATELIER · BUILT WITH PURPOSE · ENGINEERED TO ELEVATE · v1.0 MMXXVI