| name | scrying |
| description | Use this spell when you need to see what is happening right now on a distant system rather than reading stale logs or cached reports. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
| author | Wizards of the Ghosts |
| license | CC0-1.0 |
| compatibility | Hermes Agent skills system |
| metadata | {"hermes":{"tags":["spell","prototype","literal","monitoring-and-protection","observability","monitoring","guardrails","privacy","integration","home-assistant"]}} |
Scrying
Observe a live remote system, service, or deployment in real time.
What This Skill Does
Use this spell when you need to see what is happening right now on a distant system rather than reading stale logs or cached reports.
In this grimoire, Scrying is treated as a literal spell with a prototype delivery profile.
Canonical reference input: Scrying (spell).
When To Use
- You need live status from a remote service, server, or deployment.
- Cached dashboards or old logs are not trustworthy enough for the decision at hand.
- You want continuous observation of a system you cannot directly access.
- You want to pull a live snapshot of your Home Assistant device states — all lights, sensors, locks, and climate status in one view.
Prerequisites
- Environment variables available to Hermes:
HA_URL, HA_TOKEN.
- Primary credential or token:
HA_TOKEN.
- Binaries on PATH:
curl.
Setup
- Confirm the required environment variables are available inside the active Hermes runtime, not just in a shell profile.
- Verify the required binaries resolve on PATH before you rely on them in a procedure.
- Choose a non-production or low-risk target first if the skill can page, unlock, alert, or touch a live integration.
Procedure
- Restate the target, the success condition, and any no-touch boundaries before taking action.
- Identify the target system, service, or resource to observe.
- Establish the best available live data channel: API polling, log streaming, health endpoints, or dashboard scraping.
- Present the current state with explicit timestamps and staleness indicators.
- Maintain the scrying session with periodic refresh and alert on state changes.
- If Home Assistant is available, GET /api/states to retrieve all entity states and present a human-readable summary of the current home status.
- Stop for explicit confirmation before taking a live action that changes access, triggers an alert, or touches a real system boundary.
- Package the result as the deliverables below, with confidence, assumptions, and unresolved risk called out explicitly.
Deliverables
- A live or near-live status view of the target system.
- Timestamps and refresh intervals so the user knows how stale each datum is.
- Alerts or callouts for state changes detected during the session.
Pitfalls / Guardrails
- Call out the glue, permissions, or missing infrastructure before you imply this is fully operational.
- Do not access systems without the user's authorization and credentials.
- Never conflate cached or stale data with live state — always label the observation time.
- Prefer read-only observation channels; do not mutate the target to observe it.
- Do not rely on a live integration until credentials, target scope, and rollback expectations are verified.
Verification
- Check that the result includes every deliverable promised above.
- Check that confirmed facts, assumptions, and inferences are visibly separated.
- Check that the exact live target, confirmation gate, and rollback or recovery path are explicit.
- Check that any missing glue code, permissions, or future work is labeled before the skill is treated as ready.
- Check the required environment variables and binaries in the active Hermes runtime before trusting the procedure on a live target.
Example Invocation
/scrying show me the live state of this system right now, with timestamps and staleness clearly labeled
