Pipe Script Output to Messaging Platforms

hermes sendis a small, scriptable CLI that pushes a message to any messaging platform Hermes is already configured for. Think of it as a cross-platformcurlfor notifications — you don’t need a running gateway, you don’t need an LLM, and you don’t need to re-paste bot tokens into each of your scripts.

hermes send curl

Use it for:

• System monitoring (memory, disk, GPU temp, long-running job finished)
• CI/CD notifications (deploy done, test failure)
• Cron scripts that need to ping you with results
• Quick one-shot messages from a terminal

• Piping any tool’s output anywhere (make

  hermes send –to slack:#builds)

make | hermes send --to slack:#builds

The command reuses the same credentials and platform adapters thathermes gatewayalready uses, so there’s no second configuration surface to maintain.

hermes gateway

Quick Start​

# Plain text to the home channel for a platformhermes send --to telegram "deploy finished"# Pipe in stdout from anythingecho "RAM 92%" | hermes send --to telegram:-1001234567890# Send a filehermes send --to discord:#ops --file /tmp/report.md# Attach a subject/header linehermes send --to slack:#eng --subject "[CI] build.log" --file build.log# Thread target (Telegram topic, Discord thread)hermes send --to telegram:-1001234567890:17585 "threaded reply"# List every configured targethermes send --list# Filter by platformhermes send --list telegram

Argument Reference​

-t, --to TARGET message --file -f, --file PATH --file - -s, --subject LINE -l, --list -q, --quiet --json -h, --help

Target Formats​

platform telegram platform:chat_id telegram:-1001234567890 platform:chat_id:thread_id telegram:-1001234567890:17585 platform:#channel discord:#ops platform:+E164 signal:+15551234567

Any platform Hermes ships adapters for works as a target:telegram,discord,slack,signal,sms,whatsapp,matrix,mattermost,feishu,dingtalk,wecom,weixin,email, and others.

telegram discord slack signal sms whatsapp matrix mattermost feishu dingtalk wecom weixin email

Exit Codes​

0 1 2

Exit codes follow the standard Unix convention so your scripts can branch on them the same way they would oncurlorgrep.

curl grep

Message Body Resolution​

hermes sendresolves the message body in this order:

hermes send

1. Positional argument—hermes send –to telegram “hi”
2. –file PATH—hermes send –to telegram –file msg.txt

3. Piped stdin—echo hi

   hermes send –to telegram

hermes send --to telegram "hi" --file PATH hermes send --to telegram --file msg.txt echo hi | hermes send --to telegram

When stdin is a TTY (no pipe), Hermes doesnotwait for input — you’ll get a clear usage error instead. This keeps scripts from hanging if they accidentally omit the body.

Real-World Examples​

Monitoring: Memory / Disk Alerts​

Replace ad-hoccurl https://api.telegram.org/…calls in your watchdogs with a single portable line:

curl https://api.telegram.org/...

#!/usr/bin/env bashram_pct=$(free | awk '/^Mem:/ {printf "%d", $3 * 100 / $2}')if [ "$ram_pct" -ge 85 ]; then  hermes send --to telegram --subject "⚠ MEMORY WARNING" \    "RAM ${ram_pct}% on $(hostname)"fi

Becausehermes sendreuses your Hermes config, the same script works on any host where Hermes is installed — no need to export bot tokens into each machine’s environment manually.

hermes send

For watchdogs that might fire when the gateway itself is struggling (OOM alerts, disk-full alerts), keep using a minimalcurlcall instead ofhermes send. If the Python interpreter can’t load because the box is thrashing, you still want that alert to go out.

curl hermes send

CI / CD: Build and Test Results​

# In .github/workflows/deploy.yml or any CI scriptif ./scripts/deploy.sh; then  hermes send --to slack:#deploys "✅ ${CI_COMMIT_SHA:0:7} deployed"else  tail -n 100 deploy.log | hermes send \    --to slack:#deploys --subject "❌ deploy failed"  exit 1fi

Cron: Daily Report​

# Crontab entry0 9 * * * /usr/local/bin/generate-metrics.sh \  | /home/me/.hermes/bin/hermes send \      --to telegram --subject "Daily metrics $(date +%Y-%m-%d)"

Long-Running Tasks: Ping When Done​

./train.py --epochs 200 && \  hermes send --to telegram "training done" || \  hermes send --to telegram "training failed (exit $?)"

Scripting with–jsonand–quiet​

--json --quiet

# Hard-fail a script if delivery fails; don't clutter logs on successhermes send --to telegram --quiet "keepalive" || {  echo "Telegram delivery failed" >&2  exit 1}# Capture the message ID for later editing / threadingmsg_id=$(hermes send --to discord:#ops --json "build started" \  | jq -r .message_id)

Doeshermes sendNeed the Gateway Running?​

hermes send

Usually no.For any bot-token platform — Telegram, Discord, Slack, Signal, SMS, WhatsApp Cloud API, and most others —hermes sendcalls the platform’s REST endpoint directly using credentials from~/.hermes/.envand~/.hermes/config.yaml. It’s a standalone subprocess that exits as soon as the message is delivered.

hermes send ~/.hermes/.env ~/.hermes/config.yaml

A live gateway is only required forplugin platformsthat rely on a persistent adapter connection (for example, a custom plugin that keeps a long-lived WebSocket open). In that case you’ll get a clear error pointing at the gateway; start it withhermes gateway startand retry.

hermes gateway start

Listing and Discovering Targets​

Before sending to a specific channel, you can inspect what’s available:

# Every target across every configured platformhermes send --list# Just Telegram targetshermes send --list telegram# Machine-readablehermes send --list --json

The listing is built from~/.hermes/channel_directory.json, which the gateway refreshes every few minutes while it’s running. If you see “no channels discovered yet”, start the gateway once (hermes gateway start) so it can populate the cache.

~/.hermes/channel_directory.json hermes gateway start

Human-friendly names (discord:#ops,slack:#engineering) are resolved against this cache at send time, so you don’t need to memorize numeric IDs.

discord:#ops slack:#engineering

Comparison with Other Approaches​

hermes send curl cron --deliver

hermes sendis intentionally the simplest possible surface. If you need an agent to decide what to say, schedule a cron job — the agent’s final response is auto-delivered to the configureddeliver:target (the agent no longer fires messages itself). If you need a scheduled run with LLM-generated content, usecronjob(action=’create’, prompt=…)withdeliver=’telegram:…’. If you just need to pipe a raw string, reach forhermes send.

hermes send deliver: cronjob(action='create', prompt=...) deliver='telegram:...' hermes send

Related​

• Automate Anything with Cron— scheduled jobs whose output auto-delivers to any platform.
• Gateway Internals— the delivery router thathermes sendshares with cron delivery.
• Messaging Platform Setup— one-time configuration for each platform.

hermes send