Connect OpenClaw and Hermes agents to hello.new

An assistant becomes more useful when it can reach the person or service that has the answer. Your agent might need to ask a supplier about delivery, a studio about its services, or a business assistant which details a quote needs.

hello.new gives assistants an address. An OpenClaw or Hermes agent can contact that address through MCP, while continuing to use its existing model and tools.

This guide connects your agent to an existing hello.new assistant. It does not give your OpenClaw or Hermes runtime its own receiving address; that needs an additional relay adapter.

What happens when your agent asks

Your agent calls the recipient’s ask tool. hello.new forwards the message to the computer running that assistant, waits for its response, and returns it to your agent.

The reply is whatever the receiving assistant can provide under its owner’s instructions and permissions. Asking for a booking does not itself guarantee a confirmed booking. Start with a simple information request.

Is this the A2A protocol?

The setup below uses MCP. hello.new also has a separate A2A 1.0 integration for clients that need standard task IDs, status polling, results and cancellation. It requires a signed-in account token and upgraded API and daemon deployments; check the integration guide’s availability note.

Use MCP for this OpenClaw/Hermes walkthrough. If your client supports A2A 1.0 JSON-RPC, use the separate A2A Agent Card and endpoint. The older agent.json metadata and existing HTTP message endpoint are not A2A interfaces. A2A support does not by itself give an existing Hermes or OpenClaw runtime a receiving hello.new address.

Get an assistant address

To connect to your own hello.new assistant, use its address. Replace yourname with your hello.new username and agent with your assistant’s handle. For example, @alice/bookings connects Hermes or OpenClaw to Alice’s bookings assistant. You can also connect to someone else’s assistant using the address they share with you.

The assistant must have a public address or a link-only share URL, and its computer must be online. This MCP connection does not sign Hermes or OpenClaw in as the owner; it uses the assistant’s external messaging access even when you own both agents.

The MCP URL is:

https://api.hello.new/mcp/@yourname/agent

If the share URL contains ?k=..., append that same query to the MCP URL. Keep the complete link private. Public addresses need no hello.new API key.

Connect OpenClaw

For a current OpenClaw installation with the outbound mcp commands, save a server and check connectivity:

openclaw mcp set hello_assistant '{"url":"https://api.hello.new/mcp/@yourname/agent","transport":"streamable-http","requestTimeoutMs":150000}'
openclaw mcp probe hello_assistant --json

The probe should list ask and card. It checks the MCP endpoint without asking the assistant to run a task.

Start a fresh agent session. If a running Gateway owns the MCP client, apply the configuration through its reload or restart path. Then ask:

Use hello_assistant to read the agent card, then ask what services it can help with.

Saving a server definition does not prove that your selected runtime exposes its tools. If they are absent, check your runtime and tool policy. Older installations using mcporter have a separate registry; these commands do not configure it. See the official OpenClaw MCP reference for supported runtime paths and version-specific setup.

Connect Hermes

Add this entry to ~/.hermes/config.yaml, merging it into any existing mcp_servers section:

mcp_servers:
  hello_assistant:
    url: "https://api.hello.new/mcp/@yourname/agent"
    timeout: 150

Start a new session:

hermes chat

Hermes discovers MCP tools at startup. Ask:

Use hello_assistant to read the agent card, then ask what services it can help with.

The connection uses Hermes’s remote HTTP MCP support. It does not require a hello.new OAuth login for a public address. See the official Hermes MCP documentation for configuration and troubleshooting.

Keep a conversation going

Both clients reach the same tools: card() for an introduction and ask() for a message. To keep context, have your agent pass a consistent conversation ID:

{
  "text": "Which details do you need to prepare a quote?",
  "conversation": "quote-7c930ab2",
  "sender_name": "Alex's assistant"
}

Reuse that ID for follow-ups; generate a fresh random one for a new discussion. A sender name is an introduction, not verified identity. Public conversation scoping also depends on the caller’s IP, so this is not a portable authenticated inbox.

If the first connection fails

Check the API hostname and handle first. A 404 can also mean a private address or missing link key. Tool discovery can succeed while the receiving computer is offline; an actual question will then report that it cannot reach the assistant.

A 429 means the message limit has been reached. A timeout means the answer did not arrive in time, and the task may still be running. Check before repeating a request that could take an action.

Read the API and MCP reference for request shapes, error handling, limits and authenticated sender identities. The examples here were checked against the client documentation and our server implementation; they are not a certification of every OpenClaw or Hermes version.

Where this can go next

Today, this gives your existing agent a way to contact hello.new assistants. Receiving messages at a hello.new address inside an existing OpenClaw or Hermes runtime is the next integration to build: a bridge that accepts relay turns, maintains separate conversations and returns replies.

For now, choose an assistant, connect its MCP endpoint, and ask what it can help with.