Nous Research has released a major update to Hermes Agent that eliminates one of the biggest workflow bottlenecks in multi-agent systems: the parent agent no longer freezes while waiting for delegated work to complete. The open-source personal agent now supports asynchronous subagents, meaning you can spawn background tasks and keep working in your chat simultaneously. This shift from synchronous to asynchronous delegation opens up new possibilities for long-running agent workflows that previously forced users to wait.

What Changed in Hermes Agent's Delegation System?

Until now, Hermes Agent's delegate_task tool worked synchronously. When a parent agent spawned a child agent, called a subagent, to handle a specific task, the parent would block inside the tool call until every child agent finished. Your chat stayed frozen during that entire wait. This design prevented several practical workflows: you could not start a long-running agent task and continue working, nor could you check in on a run or steer it mid-flight.

The new asynchronous delegation system, announced by Nous Research co-founder Teknium on June 15, 2026, changes this fundamental behavior. Instead of blocking, the delegate_task_async tool spawns a background agent and returns a task identifier immediately. Your chat stays free to continue working. Existing users can enable the update by running hermes update.

How to Manage Asynchronous Tasks in Hermes Agent

• Spawn Background Work: Use delegate_task_async to spawn a background agent and receive a task identifier immediately without blocking your chat session.
• Monitor Task Progress: Use check_task to get non-blocking status updates plus recent output from any running task without interrupting your workflow.
• Steer Tasks Mid-Flight: Use steer_task to inject a message into a running task, allowing real-time course correction and guidance during execution.
• Collect Final Results: Use collect_task to block until a task completes, then retrieve the full result when you are ready to use it.
• Cancel Running Tasks: Use cancel_task to stop a running task immediately if priorities change or the work is no longer needed.
• List All Active Tasks: Use list_tasks to see all asynchronous tasks currently running in your session at a glance.

Background agents run as in-process threads, reusing the same AIAgent machinery, credentials, and toolsets as the synchronous delegate_task tool. Each subagent starts with a completely fresh conversation and has no knowledge of the parent agent's history. The parent must pass everything through the goal and context fields. Only the final summary returns to the parent; the parent's context window never sees the child's intermediate tool calls or reasoning, keeping the parent's context window small and efficient.

What Are the Key Differences Between Synchronous and Asynchronous Delegation?

The architectural differences between the old and new systems reveal why asynchronous delegation matters for real-world agent work. Synchronous delegation blocks the parent chat until all children finish, while asynchronous delegation returns a task identifier immediately and lets the chat stay free. Synchronous delegation offers no control while running; you simply wait. Asynchronous delegation lets you check status, steer, collect, or cancel per task. Synchronous delegation works best for quick fan-out tasks you wait on. Asynchronous delegation excels at long tasks you run alongside the chat.

Both approaches maintain the same context cost: only the final summary returns to the parent. Both preserve strict isolation, with each subagent starting with a fresh conversation. However, asynchronous delegation is not durable across turns in the current implementation. Single-session durability is the current limitation, though Nous Research is targeting cross-turn durability through a separate initiative called ACP.

"Hermes Agent now supports asynchronous subagents! The existing delegate tool, which your agent uses to spawn subagents to fan out and do work, no longer blocks your chat!" announced Teknium.

Teknium, Co-founder at Nous Research

Why Does This Matter for Agent Workflows?

The shift to asynchronous delegation addresses a fundamental constraint in agent-based systems. Many real-world tasks take time: research, data processing, external API calls, or complex reasoning. Forcing the parent agent to wait meant users could not multitask or run multiple workflows in parallel. With asynchronous subagents, you can spawn several background tasks and continue working in your main chat, checking in on progress whenever you choose. This mirrors how humans actually work: delegating work to a colleague and continuing with other tasks rather than standing idle until the delegated work finishes.

Subagents inherit the parent's API key, provider configuration, and credential pool. That credential pool enables key rotation on rate limits, and you can route subagents to a cheaper model through config.yaml. This flexibility means teams can optimize costs by running expensive reasoning tasks on a premium model while delegating routine work to cheaper alternatives.

The update is available now to existing Hermes Agent users. The asynchronous delegation toolset was built in the open through issue #5586 on Nous Research's repository, reflecting the project's commitment to transparent development and community feedback.