Hermes Session Maintenance

Use this skill when the user asks about pruning Hermes sessions, session retention, session DB size, hermes sessions prune, sessions.auto_prune, sessions.retention_days, session export/backup, or whether old conversations should be capped.

Operating principles

• Treat this as Hermes configuration/maintenance work. If broader Hermes setup or CLI behavior is involved, also load hermes-agent for authoritative command references.
• Do not assume retention policy from memory. Check live state before recommending destructive cleanup.
• Pruning is deletion. Prefer exporting a safety snapshot before the first aggressive prune or before reducing retention substantially.
• Distinguish default behavior from active behavior:
• hermes sessions prune defaults to --older-than 90.
• sessions.retention_days may also default to 90.
• sessions.auto_prune: false means nothing is being deleted automatically.
• Only ended sessions are prune candidates; active sessions are not pruned.

Standard workflow