At a glance
- Where to turn it on
- Settings › General › X › Link X account
- What you post
- A reply or quote that mentions @HeraldHermes, plus your request
- Who can use it
- Only X accounts linked in Herald. Other people’s mentions are ignored.
- What reaches Hermes
- Your request and the text of the post you replied to, marked as untrusted
- Review first
- Off by default: requests go straight to your agent unless Review X requests before sending is on
- Your X account
- Read access only, to look up your X user ID, then revoked
- Limits
- 20 requests a day and one a minute per account, by default
- Cost
- Included in Herald. No extra purchase.
Set it up
- Link your X account
In Herald, open Settings › General › X and tap Link X account. You sign in on X’s own page in a secure browser window and approve read-only access. The relay looks up your numeric X user id, then revokes that access.
- Mention @HeraldHermes
Reply to a post, or quote it, with @HeraldHermes and what you want: “@HeraldHermes summarise this thread” or “@HeraldHermes check these numbers”. The text after the handle becomes your request.
- Get the notification
Within about a minute, each phone you linked gets a notification that a request is waiting. It never shows the request itself.
- Send it to your bot
Herald passes the request to your default agent’s chat. With Review X requests before sending on, it waits instead: you read it, pick a bot and tap Send to Hermes, or discard it. The answer streams into the chat as usual.
How the request travels
Herald has no server between your phone and your Hermes, and X mentions keeps it that way. The relay, a small Cloudflare Worker run by Herald’s developer, reads the public posts that mention the bot through the X API about every 30 seconds. It keeps only mentions from linked accounts, cleans the text (links, media and hidden control characters are removed) and queues the request for up to 24 hours.
Your phone then fetches the request and sends it to your own Hermes over the network it already uses, your Wi-Fi or Tailscale. The relay never connects to your Hermes and never sees its answer. If Hermes can’t be reached, the request waits in Herald for you to send it later.
What the relay keeps
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Your numeric X user id and each linked phone’s push token | Until you unlink, or 90 days after a phone last checks in |
| Requests waiting for your phone | Until Hermes has them or you discard them, at most 24 hours |
| Ids of handled mentions and rate counters | Up to 7 days and 2 days |
| Your X username | At most 10 minutes, while linking |
| An opt-out record after you unlink or say stop | Kept, so you are never invited again |
The full details are in the privacy policy.
Safety
- The post you replied to is someone else’s text. Herald fences it off as untrusted content and tells Hermes to check with you before any action with side effects.
- Herald never posts, replies, likes or sends messages from your X account. We only request read access to look up your X user ID, then revoke it.
- Herald’s own @HeraldHermes account may post a short public confirmation reply under your mention, such as “Sent to your Hermes ✓”, once Hermes has your request. You can turn this off in the app under “Reply on X when I tag @HeraldHermes”. It may also send a one-time invite reply to people who tag it without a linked account. Hermes’ answers are never posted to X.
- Only the phone that started a link and approved it on X can finish it, so nobody can link your account from another device.
- Unlink in the app, or post “@HeraldHermes stop”, to unlink every phone and delete what the relay holds.
Limits
- It depends on the X API, so it can slow down or stop if X changes its rules or prices.
- Requests over the daily or per-minute limit are dropped, and requests not collected within 24 hours expire.
- With Herald in the background, an automatic send happens when you next open the app.
- It works in the iPhone and Android apps, not on the web.
Questions
Does Herald see my conversations with Hermes?
No. The relay only handles the mention and the post it replied to. The request goes from your phone to your own Hermes, and the answer comes back the same way.
Can other people send things to my Hermes by mentioning @HeraldHermes?
No. The relay only accepts mentions written by an X account you linked in Herald. Everyone else’s mentions are ignored.
Can I check a request before it reaches Hermes?
Yes. Requests go to your default agent straight away unless you turn on Review X requests before sending on the X account screen; with it on, every request waits until you tap Send to Hermes.
Is Herald affiliated with X?
No. Herald and the @HeraldHermes account are independent and not made, endorsed or sponsored by X Corp. Your use of X is covered by X’s own terms.
