Autom for Hermes Agent

Live search engine results for Hermes Agent, through the Autom SERP API.

• 17 tools for Google (Search, News, Images, Videos, Shopping, Maps, Autocomplete), Bing, Brave (web, images, videos), DuckDuckGo and Yahoo, each returning clean JSON.
• One fallback search (autom_search) that tries several engines in turn, so the agent still gets results when one engine fails.
• A backend for the built-in web_search tool, so every search Hermes runs uses live Google results.

Contents

• Install
• How it works
• Tools
• Use it as the web_search backend
• Choosing country, language and location
• Example prompts
• Credits and errors
• What it does on your machine

Install

hermes plugins install autom

Hermes asks for AUTOM_API_KEY during the install. Create a key in the Autom dashboard.

Answer yes to Enable 'autom' now?, or run hermes plugins enable autom later. The tools join the autom toolset, which is on by default; turn it on or off in hermes tools like any other toolset. They stay hidden from the model until the API key is set.

How it works

Each tool is one HTTPS call to https://api.autom.dev, authenticated with your key. Autom runs the search on the engine live, at the time of the call, parses the results page and sends back JSON: organic results with title, link, snippet and position, plus what the engine shows around them (knowledge graph, news dates, prices, places…). Hermes passes that JSON to the model as the tool result.

Hermes  ──tool call──▶  plugin  ──GET /v1/...──▶  api.autom.dev  ──▶  Google, Bing, Brave…
        ◀──JSON──────          ◀──JSON─────────                 ◀──results page──

Results are not cached between calls: two calls with the same query hit the engine twice. To get the next results, call the same tool again with page set to 2, 3 and so on.

Tools

Search tools take a query. Optional arguments (country, language, location, page, SafeSearch…) are in each tool's schema, so the model sees them too. Credits are per call.

Google

Tool	What it returns	Input	Credits
autom_google_search	Google web search: organic results (title, link, snippet, position), knowledge graph and pagination. Supports Google operators (site:, intitle:…), country (gl), language (hl), location, time filters (tbs, for example qdr:d for the last day) and SafeSearch.	query	1
autom_google_search_light	Fast Google web search that returns organic results only (title, link, snippet, position). Use it when you do not need the knowledge graph or pagination.	query	1
autom_google_news	Google News search: articles with title, source, date, snippet and link, by country and language, with pagination.	query	1
autom_google_images	Google Images search: images with title, source page, image URL and size.	query	1
autom_google_videos	Google Videos search: videos from YouTube and other platforms, with title, channel, duration, date and link.	query	1
autom_google_shopping	Google Shopping search: products with title, price, rating, number of ratings, merchant, image and product ID.	query	1
autom_google_maps	Google Maps search: places matching a business type, brand or name, with address, website and phone. Use ll (for example @48.8566,2.3522,14z) to search around a point.	query	1
autom_google_autocomplete	Google autocomplete suggestions for a query: what people type after it. Useful for keyword research.	query	1

Other search engines

Tool	What it returns	Input	Credits
autom_search	Web search with automatic fallback: one call tries Google, then Brave, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Baidu until one answers, and returns its organic results (title, link, snippet, position). Set engines to choose the order. First page only.	query	1
autom_bing_search	Bing web search: organic results (title, link, snippet, position), by market (mkt), country (cc), location or GPS coordinates, with pagination.	query	1
autom_brave_search	Brave Search web search: organic results (title, link, snippet, position), by country (gl) and language (hl), with pagination.	query	1
autom_brave_images	Brave image search: images with title, source page, image URL, thumbnail and size, with SafeSearch and pagination.	query	1
autom_brave_videos	Brave video search: videos with title, channel, duration, date, thumbnail and link, with SafeSearch and pagination.	query	1
autom_duckduckgo_search	DuckDuckGo web search: organic results (title, link, snippet, position), by country and language, with pagination.	query	1
autom_yahoo_search	Yahoo web search: organic results (title, link, snippet, position), by country and language, with pagination.	query	1

Account and helpers

Tool	What it returns	Input	Credits
autom_google_locations	Find the exact location names Google accepts (cities, regions, countries) for the location argument of the Google tools.	query	free
autom_usage	Your Autom account: plan, credits used, credits left, renewal date and rate limit.	none	free

Which search tool to use

Need	Tool
A general web search	autom_google_search
The same, faster and with organic results only	autom_google_search_light
Results even when an engine is down	autom_search (Google, then Brave, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Baidu)
A second opinion, or results without Google's ranking	autom_bing_search, autom_brave_search, autom_duckduckgo_search, autom_yahoo_search
Recent articles on a topic	autom_google_news, or autom_google_search with tbs set to qdr:d (last day) or qdr:w (last week)
Prices and merchants for a product	autom_google_shopping
Businesses in a place	autom_google_maps
What people search for around a keyword	autom_google_autocomplete

Use it as the web_search backend

Hermes's built-in web_search tool can also go through Autom. Select it in hermes tools, or in ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

web:
  search_backend: autom

The backend calls Google Search and returns the organic results (title, link, snippet). It has two settings:

Setting	Default	Meaning
country	us	2-letter country code the Google results come from, for example fr or de.
language	(Google's default)	Interface language, for example en or fr.

Set it in the plugin's settings form (Plugins tab of the Hermes desktop app), or in ~/.hermes/config.yaml:

plugins:
  entries:
    autom:
      settings:
        country: fr

The backend is search only, so keep an extract backend for web_extract. The tools above work with or without this setting.

Choosing country, language and location

• gl is the country of the results (us, fr, de…) and hl the language (en, fr, de…). Search results change a lot from one country to another, so set gl whenever the question is about a country.
• google_domain picks the Google site, for example google.fr or google.co.uk.
• location searches as if from a city or region, for example Paris, Ile-de-France, France. Google only accepts its own location names: autom_google_locations finds the right one for free.
• tbs adds Google's filters, for example qdr:h (last hour), qdr:d (last day), qdr:w (last week), qdr:m (last month), qdr:y (last year).

Example prompts

• "Search Google for the best project management tools in 2026 and summarize the top five results."
• "What were the news about OpenAI in the last 24 hours? Use Google News."
• "Find bakeries near the Eiffel Tower on Google Maps and give me their phone numbers."
• "Compare the price of the Sony WH-1000XM5 on Google Shopping in the US and in France."
• "Give me 20 keyword ideas that start with 'web scraping' from Google autocomplete."
• "Search Brave and Bing for 'self-hosted LLM' and tell me which results both engines agree on."
• "Where does example.com rank on Google in Germany for 'cloud hosting'? Check the first three pages."
• "How many Autom credits do I have left?"

Credits and errors

• Each search uses 1 credit; autom_google_locations and autom_usage are free. The cost is at the end of each tool's description, so the model knows it before it calls. Plans and prices: autom.dev/pricing.
• Errors come back to the model as {"error": "Autom: <message>"} with the API's own message (invalid key, no credits left, bad input), so it can fix the input or try another engine instead of stopping.
• Calls time out after 60 seconds.

What it does on your machine

• Network: calls https://api.autom.dev only, with your AUTOM_API_KEY. Calls use credits on your Autom account.
• Credentials: reads the key only through Hermes's secret scope. It stores nothing.
• Nothing else: no files written, no processes started, no telemetry, no self-update. Standard library only, no dependencies.

Development

python -m pytest

The tests mock the network and run without Hermes installed. schemas.py is generated from the Autom OpenAPI spec; each entry holds the tool description, its JSON schema, the API route and the credits per call.

Contact

• Source: https://github.com/automdev/hermes-plugin-autom
• Autom: https://www.autom.dev
• Issues: https://github.com/automdev/hermes-plugin-autom/issues

License

MIT