OpenClaw and Hermes Agent are different from project-based coding agents. They load shared skills and instructions from an agent workspace or profile home, so ForgeCat installs into that home-side location instead of the current project.

What carries over

<workspace> is the selected OpenClaw agent workspace. <home> is the selected Hermes Agent profile home.

Agents, rules, commands, MCP configs, and hooks do not carry over because OpenClaw and Hermes Agent do not provide matching drop-in project surfaces for ForgeCat to manage. Keep profiles intended for these platforms centered on skills and instructions. If a profile also contains project resources, ForgeCat simply skips those resources for the home target.

Add persona and workspace guidance

Operating instructions are the profile's always-loaded guidance: they land in OpenClaw's AGENTS.md or Hermes Agent's SOUL.md. The same reference system can bind the other home-agent roles:

references:
  - id: operating
    path: instructions/operating.md
  - id: persona
    path: instructions/persona.md
  - id: identity
    path: instructions/identity.md
  - id: tools
    path: instructions/tools.md
    type: tool-conventions

instructions:
  operatingRef: operating
  personaRef: persona
  identityRef: identity
  additionalRefs: [tools]

The dedicated keys tell ForgeCat what the operating, persona, and identity references mean. Entries in additionalRefs need an explicit supported type, such as tool-conventions.

OpenClaw

OpenClaw keeps each role in the workspace file it already uses:

• Operating guidance → AGENTS.md
• Persona → SOUL.md
• Identity → IDENTITY.md
• Tool conventions → TOOLS.md

Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent loads one SOUL.md from the profile home on every session. ForgeCat adds persona, identity, tool conventions, and operating guidance to that file as separate sections. When ForgeCat adds the operating section, it also inserts a note telling the agent to prefer a project-level AGENTS.md for project-scoped instructions. That precedence note comes from ForgeCat's installed content rather than a Hermes Agent runtime setting.

References remain available

The operating document goes directly to its instruction target and is not copied again under .forgecat/profiles/. Other references are also installed as assets, including source documents used for persona, identity, and tool conventions.

When a skill uses {{ref:<id>}} for a co-installed reference, ForgeCat replaces the token with the reference's absolute home-side path. Tokens that point to operating instructions stay unchanged because that document goes directly to its instruction target instead of the asset directory.

Choose the install location

ForgeCat first asks the platform for its active workspace or profile home. You can choose another target explicitly:

# A named OpenClaw agent
forgecat install @creator/profile --platform openclaw --target-agent research

# A named Hermes Agent profile
forgecat install @creator/profile --platform hermes --target-profile work

# An exact base directory for either platform
forgecat install @creator/profile --platform hermes --target-dir /path/to/home

Home installs require confirmation because they write outside the current project. Use the same target options when uninstalling so ForgeCat cleans up the intended home.

OpenClaw and Hermes Agent do not support platform override mode. Their instruction files belong to the user, so ForgeCat only adds and removes marked sections; it never replaces the whole file.