Developer Documentation

// Technical reference, supported intents, and system setup guide for Hermes.

Overview

Hermes is the first Conversational AI Agent specifically built for the Portaldot network. By pairing a robust natural language processing engine with direct low-level Substrate RPC APIs, Hermes allows you to manage accounts, broadcast extrinsics, verify balances, and inspect the state of the chain in plain English — without needing any SDK or smart contract knowledge.

Its architecture separates natural language processing (using LLM-assisted or rule-based intent parsing) from raw execution (using a native Python Substrate client). This ensures zero latency on simple queries and highly deterministic transaction broadcasting on critical calls.

Supported Commands

Action / Intent	Example Query	Underlying Substrate Call
Chain Info	"what is the current block height?"	Queries latest block hash and system height via RPC.
Check Balance	"show balance of 5GrwvaEF..."	Reads System.Account storage key to return free POT.
Transfer POT	"send 10 POT to 5FHneW46..."	Signs and broadcasts a balances.transferKeepAlive extrinsic.
Fee Estimation	"how much is the transfer fee?"	Composes a keep alive transfer and retrieves state payment details.
Inspect Address	"inspect account 5H7x..."	Checks for deployed contract code hashes or keypair metadata.
Runtime Specs	"show runtime details"	Fetches specName, specVersion, and address formats from node properties.
Total Supply	"show me the total POT supply"	Queries Balances.TotalIssuance storage.
Address Inspector	"inspect address 5Grw..."	Queries balance, nonce, and account type for any account address.

Setup Guide

1. Clone and Navigate

git clone https://github.com/your-repo/hermes.git
cd hermes

2. Install Dependencies

Install both backend python modules and frontend node packages in separate terminal sessions:

# Install Python backend requirements
cd backend
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Install Next.js frontend dependencies
cd ../frontend
npm install

3. Run Local Node

Ensure your local Portaldot / Substrate development node is running and listening at:ws://127.0.0.1:9944

4. Startup Backend API Server

cd backend
python main.py

This boots up the FastAPI backend on http://localhost:8000 (configurable via NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL).

5. Startup Frontend Application

cd frontend
npm run dev

This runs the Next.js frontend dashboard locally on http://localhost:3000.

Tech Stack

Frontend App

Modern frontend built on Next.js 14, React 18, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript, and Lucide React Icons for stateful rendering.

Backend API

Asynchronous FastAPI Python server integrating open-source Substrate-Interface wrappers and advanced OpenAI semantic parsing.

Ledger / Node

Standardized Substrate blockchain network runtime featuring a local development testnet, custom WASM contract decoders, and POT tokenomics.