# NousResearch/hermes-agent · Skills loading and frontmatter cold-start performance work

## Open now

- Nothing open on GitHub.

A cluster of performance-focused changes targeting speed improvements in skills snapshot manifest builds, frontmatter parsing, and prompt construction at cold-start. Includes caching and shared module approaches to reduce time-to-first-token overhead.

## TL;DR

- 4 member(s): 0 open issue(s), 2 closed issue(s), 0 open PR(s), 1 merged PR(s), 1 PR(s) closed without merging.
- A fix was merged to main in PR #61131. Verify it addresses your case.
- **Recommended:** read PR #61131 (and any competing PRs below) before filing. Confirm the merged change covers your symptom.

## Maintainer resolution verdict

- Internal-tracker verdict over this cluster's issue members: `unresolved`. This is distinct from the fix status above. Weigh it yourself.

## How this cluster was grouped

- Link evidence (`STRUCTURAL_PARTIAL`): some members are connected by structural evidence (shared changed files, or a closing/superseded reference); the rest are joined by an automated relevance judgement over their text.
- Members outside that structural core may belong to a different underlying problem.
- Pairwise link density `0.39`: the share of member pairs that carry a link, counting a structural link in full and a relevance-only link at 0.36. `1.00` means every pair is linked.

## Closed / duplicate issues

- #3344: \[superseded\] perf(ttft): eliminate the remaining cold-start skills frontmatter bottleneck
- #3356: perf(ttft): eliminate the remaining cold-start skills frontmatter bottleneck

## Prior & competing PRs

- **#61131: perf(skills): speed up snapshot manifest builds ~5x (#60339 salvage)**. merged to main · fix tier `verified`
  - maintainer direction: category `merged`; implication `superseded`
  - files: `agent/prompt_builder.py`, `agent/skill_utils.py`, `scripts/release.py`, `tests/agent/test_skill_utils.py`
- **#60339: perf(skills): speed up snapshot prompt builds**. closed without merge
  - maintainer direction: category `merged_via`; implication `superseded`; refs `e21ba9122`, `#61131`

## Fix status

- Merged to main in PR #61131 (cited above). No release data is tracked. Verify downstream.
- Fix last verified (merged) `2026-07-08`.
- Subsystem: `skills`