Summary

External skills are visible to Hermes/CLI and can be invoked by the agent, but they are excluded from Telegram slash command registration.

What I expected

Skills declared through skills.external_dirs should be eligible for Telegram slash command registration the same way bundled local skills are, subject to the same Telegram command cap and disabled-skill rules.

What happens

External skills appear in:

• hermes skills list
• get_skill_commands()
• normal CLI / agent skill usage

But they do not appear in Telegram getMyCommands.

Reproduction

1. Configure an external skills directory, for example in config.yaml:

   skills:
     external_dirs:
       - ~/my-skills

2. Add a valid external skill such as:
   • ~/my-skills/morning-briefing/SKILL.md
3. Confirm Hermes sees it:
   • hermes skills list
   • get_skill_commands() includes /morning-briefing
4. Check Telegram Bot API getMyCommands.

Observed results

• Hermes sees the skill
• get_skill_commands() contains it
• its skill_md_path is an external path such as:
  • /home/coder/my-skills/morning-briefing/SKILL.md
• Telegram getMyCommands does not include /morning_briefing

Code evidence

In hermes_cli/commands.py, _collect_gateway_skill_entries() filters skills like this:

_skills_dir = str(SKILLS_DIR.resolve())
...
skill_path = info.get("skill_md_path", "")
if not skill_path.startswith(_skills_dir):
    continue

That means only skills physically under SKILLS_DIR are eligible for gateway slash command registration.

External skills from skills.external_dirs are therefore excluded by path, even though they are present in get_skill_commands() and usable elsewhere.

Why this seems unintended / limiting

The user-facing skill system already treats external skills as first-class in CLI/tooling, so Telegram slash commands become inconsistent with the rest of Hermes.

Workaround that worked locally

A custom Telegram menu builder that:

• keeps the normal core/plugin ordering
• keeps hub skills excluded
• applies the same Telegram sanitization and cap logic
• but includes external skills from get_skill_commands()

allowed /morning_briefing to appear in Telegram getMyCommands for all tested bots.

Version

Observed on nousresearch/hermes-agent:v2026.4.8.