Hermes Renderline

A dockable Browser + task-aware quality-control workspace for Hermes Desktop.

Renderline runs its durable command, result, state, and WebSocket control plane as an independent launchd sidecar. Hermes owns only privileged browser security, generic extension points, and thin replaceable adapters.

What it gives you

• Independent Browser and Quality Control panes.
• Standalone Browser and QC toggle icons immediately beside Hermes's Layout button.
• Result / Reference comparison in a top-bottom split.
• Real fixed guest viewports for responsive QC:
  • Desktop 1440×900
  • Laptop 1280×800
  • Tablet 768×1024
  • Mobile 390×844
  • Custom dimensions
• Independent chat-image actions:
  • Open as Result
  • Set as Reference
  • Open in task QC
• QC profiles for design, generated images, generated video, and provider-driven structured A/B/C/D review.
• A core provider registry drives structured candidate review from per-provider dimension descriptors: Midjourney is the first adapter (strict schema-v1 QC JSON wire format, eight-dimension rubric), and Higgsfield Image renders structured review from its own descriptor.
• Structured candidate review state (the A–D cards) is a single shared store: switching between structured providers relabels the same candidates under the new provider's rubric rather than keeping per-provider copies.
• Candidate score, disposition, evidence, repair prompt, per-provider dimension rubric, and selected recommendation.
• Strict 64 KiB-bounded QC JSON import/export with unknown-field and score-range rejection.
• Persisted, versioned job state (DRAFT through ATTACHED, plus terminal failure/cancel states).
• Native Capture PNG affordance for the secure persistent Browser guest.
• Explicit Review in QC routing from either Result or Reference, with the linked URL, viewport, Fit/Actual mode, CDP metrics, and matching capture evidence visible in every QC profile.
• A persistent Inspection status block in every profile shows target, capture, live target check, review progress, selection state, and provider execution mode instead of leaving blank checks ambiguous.
• Higgsfield image/video results opened from a Higgsfield MCP tool card carry bounded read-only provenance into QC: job ID, status, model, media type, prompt, dimensions, duration/ratio/resolution, result URL, batch size, and reference count. The plugin never submits or polls a generation itself.
• Higgsfield structured results render their real batch count (up to A–D) instead of forcing four empty candidate cards; Midjourney remains strict A/B/C/D and visibly read-only.
• Design QC can run a non-mutating CDP page preflight for current-viewport horizontal overflow, broken images, missing alt text, and unlabeled controls; visual contrast and aesthetic judgments remain manual.
• Capture evidence is invalidated when its Browser URL changes, preventing a stale screenshot from being presented as proof for a new target.
• Packaged renderline Hermes workflow skill and deterministic non-billable fixture runner.

The preview is scaled to fit its pane, but the guest page still receives the selected viewport as its real window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight.

Install

npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline

Or with Bun:

bunx github:HeiTuz/Renderline

The installer writes:

$HERMES_HOME/desktop-plugins/renderline/plugin.js
$HERMES_HOME/skills/renderline/SKILL.md
$HERMES_HOME/plugins/renderline/plugin.yaml
$HERMES_HOME/plugins/renderline/__init__.py
$HERMES_HOME/plugins/renderline/dashboard/manifest.json
$HERMES_HOME/plugins/renderline/dashboard/plugin_api.py
$HERMES_HOME/desktop-plugins/renderline/scripts/handoff-receipt.mjs
~/Library/Application Support/Renderline/current/sidecar/
~/Library/Application Support/Renderline/venv/
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.eusin.renderline.sidecar.plist

When HERMES_HOME is unset, it uses ~/.hermes.

The launchd sidecar owns the durable ledger, command queue, results, state, authenticated local API, and WebSocket on 127.0.0.1:47821. It has its own Python virtual environment and survives Hermes backend restarts. Hermes Desktop watches the desktop-plugin directory and normally hot-loads the JavaScript plugin; the small backend adapter requires a backend restart when its contract changes.

Update

Run the install command again. Hermes adapter files retain their transaction backup, while the sidecar installs an immutable versioned release and atomically advances its current symlink. The previous sidecar release remains available for rollback.

Rollback

Preview or restore the exact newest update transaction:

npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline -- --rollback --dry-run
npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline -- --rollback

Rollback restores only files changed by that transaction, keeps unchanged managed files, removes files that did not exist in the prior marker, and restores the prior marker bytes. It never combines per-file backups from different updates.

Verification

--verify checks that all seven managed files match the current package source. --verify-installed is read-only and checks the installed files only against their marker hashes, so it can validate an installation without a checkout-source comparison.

npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline -- --verify
npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline -- --verify-installed

Uninstall

npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline -- --uninstall

The uninstaller refuses to delete any of the seven managed files when its hash changed. It pins deletion to the expected plugin, skill, backend, dashboard, and receipt paths instead of trusting paths stored in the marker. Use --force only when you intentionally want to remove local modifications.

Custom Hermes home or test target

npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline -- --hermes-home /path/to/.hermes
npx --yes github:HeiTuz/Renderline -- --target /tmp/renderline --skill-target /tmp/midjourney-skill

--target and --skill-target are a required pair so a test install cannot accidentally write the skill into the real Hermes home. Installation preflights every managed destination, backup, temporary file, marker, and ancestor; rejects containment escapes and symlinks; and rolls back earlier writes and directory creation if a later operation fails.

Hermes compatibility

Full functionality requires the host capabilities proposed in NousResearch/hermes-agent#65647:

• chat.imageActions
• titleBar.appControls
• host.panes
• hardened Electron browser guest + capture bridge

Hermes host	Behavior
Host includes #65647 capabilities	Full titlebar toggles, chat-image actions, secure persistent webviews, and capture support
Older host	Browser/QC pane registration remains portable; unavailable host-powered controls stay absent and page rendering falls back to a sandboxed iframe

Until the upstream capability PR is merged, use a Hermes Desktop build containing that PR for the full experience.

Security boundary

The sidecar owns durable workflow coordination. The desktop plugin owns presentation. Hermes core remains authoritative only for privileged guest creation, navigation filtering, popup denial, permission handling, attachment handling, and PNG capture bounds.

The package ships a bounded independent Python sidecar plus a thin Hermes proxy adapter. The sidecar creates a mode-0600 control token under ~/Library/Application Support/Renderline, binds only to loopback, and never copies external provider credentials. Hermes updates can replace or temporarily break the adapter without terminating the sidecar or deleting its durable state.

It uses the existing persist:hermes-browser partition as-is and never reads, exports, deletes, or migrates its cookies. Midjourney submit, upscale, and variation remain agent approval gates: the plugin displays state and QC but never clicks those controls itself.

Midjourney automation is pinned to the Browser pane inside the Hermes Desktop window. The workflow scopes desktop actions to app="Hermes" and explicitly forbids external Chrome, Safari, Arc, Brave, Edge, and isolated browser_* sessions. If the internal pane is unavailable, it stops instead of falling back to another browser.

The Browser pane displays a visible Automation target affordance. With the privileged guest active it reads Automation target · Hermes internal Browser pane · persist:hermes-browser; in iframe fallback it reads Automation target unavailable, and the packaged workflow hard-stops as internal_pane_unavailable instead of retargeting any external browser or isolated browser_* session. Agents must re-verify this affordance from a fresh app="Hermes" capture immediately before every pointer, focus, or type action.

Delivery boundary

Renderline delivers a handoff receipt only for a selected PASS candidate with a complete, verified receipt. It fails closed as DELIVERY_BLOCKED when any required evidence, selection, or receipt stage is absent or invalid; do not bypass that state. Recover by repairing the reported stage, recapturing, relinking, or re-running QC as needed, then selecting a present PASS candidate and validating a new receipt.

3D is unsupported product-wide: it cannot be captured, reviewed, receipted, or delivered. Design, ImgGen2, and unknown external-provider profiles are local-only evidence; they may be inspected and recorded locally but cannot be submitted, selected for delivery, or used as a provider fallback.

Renderline never reads, prints, exports, stores, or migrates tokens, credentials, cookies, browser storage, or control tokens. Authentication is verified visually only.

Higgsfield read-only CLI inspection

Existing Higgsfield jobs can still be inspected through the authenticated higgsfield CLI without an MCP tool card. scripts/higgsfield-control.mjs maps only observation subcommands (account status, generate list, soul-id list, model list, generate get) and has no argv passthrough, so paid or mutating subcommands are unreachable by construction.

node scripts/higgsfield-control.mjs evidence --url "<result_url>"
node scripts/higgsfield-control.mjs evidence --job-id "<job-id>"

CLI evidence is diagnostic only and cannot be attached to QC through set-target. Trusted Web provenance is created inside Hermes: run the typed Higgsfield observe action on a completed result, then consume its short-lived one-shot observationReceipt with the typed link action. The Electron observer verifies the Unlimited UI state and exact result provenance; the plugin strips signed URL data before durable storage.

The bridge never uses the hf alias, which commonly resolves to the HuggingFace CLI; it always invokes higgsfield (override with HIGGSFIELD_BIN). This read-only bridge never triggers generation.

Non-billable fixture E2E

Create a complete local artifact job without a Midjourney submission:

npm run fixture:e2e -- --job-id fixture-v1

The runner writes request.json, provenance.json, qc.json, and capture.svg under:

$HERMES_HOME/artifacts/midjourney/<job-id>/

provenance.json records billableActionsExecuted: [], cookieDataAccessed: false, and credentialsEntered: false. Import the generated qc.json in Quality Control → Midjourney QC to verify the rendered four-candidate recommendation path.

Development

npm test
node scripts/install.mjs --target /tmp/renderline --skill-target /tmp/midjourney-skill

Runtime plugin source is plain ESM: no build step and no bundled copy of React or the Hermes SDK.

License

MIT