Leave a Hermes the app never installed alone

Remove > AI > Hermes deleted ~/.hermes/hermes-agent, bootstrap-cache, bin and
node unconditionally, plus any wrapper on PATH pointing into ~/.hermes. The
official Hermes installer uses those same paths, so a user who installed the
CLI themselves, then installed the app and never launched it, lost their
checkout, venv and any local changes -- while being told their chats, memories
and skills were safe.

The app provisions its runtime on first launch and writes
.hermes-bootstrap-complete when it lands. Without that marker the app never got
that far and everything under ~/.hermes predates it, so dropping the package is
the whole job.

Two smaller things in the same path. The wrapper test matched ~/.hermes as a
pattern, and the dot made it claim a wrapper pointing at a sibling like
~/xhermes; it is a plain string now, and a symlink there is the user's
arrangement rather than something to delete. And -u, so an unset HOME is an
error instead of a set of rm -rf paths rooted at /.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Codex XHigh <noreply@openai.com>

bin/omarchy-remove-ai-hermes

@@ -3,47 +3,57 @@
 # omarchy:summary=Remove the Hermes desktop app along with the Hermes runtime it installed.
 # omarchy:requires-sudo=true
 
-set -e
+# -u so an unset HOME is an error rather than a set of rm -rf paths rooted at /.
+set -euo pipefail
 
 omarchy-pkg-drop hermes-desktop
 
-# The app installs a Hermes of its own under ~/.hermes -- the checkout and venv,
-# its own uv, its own node -- and puts its commands on PATH. None of it is any
-# use once the app is gone. Not ~/.config/Hermes, which holds the gateway
-# connections and their encrypted tokens, the active profile and the update
-# settings. Not the rest of ~/.hermes either:
-# the chats, memories and the skills Hermes wrote for itself are the user's,
-# they are small, and finding them still there after a reinstall is the better
-# surprise.
-rm -rf \
-  "$HOME/.hermes/hermes-agent" \
-  "$HOME/.hermes/bootstrap-cache" \
-  "$HOME/.hermes/bin" \
-  "$HOME/.hermes/node"
+# The app writes this when the runtime it provisions under ~/.hermes has landed,
+# and it is the only thing that tells that runtime apart from one the user
+# installed themselves -- the paths are the same either way. Without it the app
+# never got that far: a machine where it was installed but never launched still
+# has whatever was there before, and none of it is ours to delete.
+if [[ -f $HOME/.hermes/hermes-agent/.hermes-bootstrap-complete ]]; then
+  # The checkout and venv, its own uv, its own node. None of it is any use once
+  # the app is gone. Not ~/.config/Hermes, which holds the gateway connections
+  # and their encrypted tokens, the active profile and the update settings. Not
+  # the rest of ~/.hermes either: the chats, memories and the skills Hermes
+  # wrote for itself are the user's, they are small, and finding them still
+  # there after a reinstall is the better surprise.
+  rm -rf \
+    "$HOME/.hermes/hermes-agent" \
+    "$HOME/.hermes/bootstrap-cache" \
+    "$HOME/.hermes/bin" \
+    "$HOME/.hermes/node"
 
-# Only the wrappers pointing into ~/.hermes. The app writes these at its own
-# path stage, so a machine where it was installed but never launched still has
-# whatever was there before, and that is not ours to delete.
-for command in hermes hermes-agent hermes-acp; do
-  wrapper="$HOME/.local/bin/$command"
+  # Only the wrappers pointing into ~/.hermes, matched as a plain string: the
+  # path carries a dot, so an unanchored pattern would also claim a wrapper
+  # pointing at a sibling like ~/xhermes.
+  for command in hermes hermes-agent hermes-acp; do
+    wrapper="$HOME/.local/bin/$command"
 
-  if [[ -f $wrapper ]] && grep -q "$HOME/.hermes" "$wrapper"; then
-    rm -f "$wrapper"
-  fi
-done
+    if [[ -f $wrapper && ! -L $wrapper ]] && grep -qF "$HOME/.hermes" "$wrapper"; then
+      rm -f "$wrapper"
+    fi
+  done
 
-# When Hermes brought its own Node it symlinked these next to its own commands,
-# and they point at what we just deleted. Only the links into ~/.hermes: a
-# system Node, or someone else's, lives somewhere else entirely.
-for command in node npm npx; do
-  link="$HOME/.local/bin/$command"
+  # When Hermes brought its own Node it symlinked these next to its own commands,
+  # and they point at what we just deleted. Only the links into ~/.hermes: a
+  # system Node, or someone else's, lives somewhere else entirely.
+  for command in node npm npx; do
+    link="$HOME/.local/bin/$command"
 
-  if [[ -L $link && $(readlink "$link") == "$HOME/.hermes"/* ]]; then
-    rm -f "$link"
-  fi
-done
+    if [[ -L $link && $(readlink "$link") == "$HOME/.hermes"/* ]]; then
+      rm -f "$link"
+    fi
+  done
 
-echo ""
-echo "Hermes Desktop has been removed."
-echo "Your chats, memories, and skills are still in ~/.hermes,"
-echo "and your connections and settings in ~/.config/Hermes."
+  echo ""
+  echo "Hermes Desktop has been removed."
+  echo "Your chats, memories, and skills are still in ~/.hermes,"
+  echo "and your connections and settings in ~/.config/Hermes."
+else
+  echo ""
+  echo "Hermes Desktop has been removed."
+  echo "It never finished installing its own Hermes, so nothing in ~/.hermes was touched."
+fi