personal-wiki/raw/articles/soul-md-approach-personality.md

Raw Source: SOUL.md — Approach C (Persona / Personality-Driven)

Source: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/features/personality (built-in personalities / /personality overlay section) Source: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/guides/use-soul-with-hermes (SOUL.md vs /personality comparison) Type: official feature docs (personality system) Confidence: high Date collected: 2026-09-25

Summary

SOUL.md defines the durable baseline identity. /personality provides session-level overlays. The framework supports custom personality presets defined in config.yaml (agent.personalities). Each profile can have its own SOUL.md (via profile directory under profiles/<name>/).

Key differences

• SOUL.md = durable identity; /personality = temporary mode switch.
• Profile-level SOUL.md isolation: hermes profile create --clone creates independent persona files.
• Personality presets defined in YAML (agent.personalities:) apply to the whole session without touching SOUL.md file.
• Personality names are stored in display metadata; personal files stay in SOUL.md.