11 — Hermes, Execution and Providers
Canonical reference: 00-SPINEWORKSPACE-INTEGRATEWISE-CANON.md §20
Status: Canonical
1. Hermes
Hermes starts after an execution plan has been approved or policy-allowed. It coordinates dispatch, waits, retries, timeouts, observations, recovery/compensation, evidence capture, verification steps and reconciliation workflows.
Execution providers can include APIs, MCP tools, agents, browser runtimes, workflows, local execution, AI models or human tasks.
Hermes is not the AI brain. It does not decide whether execution is allowed and it does not own canonical business truth.
2. Execution providers
| Provider type | Examples |
|---|---|
| API connector | CRM, ERP, support, finance APIs |
| MCP tool | External MCP server tools |
| Agent | Spine Agents, specialist agents |
| Browser | Browser automation runtimes |
| Workflow | Multi-step coordinated flows |
| Local | Platform-internal execution |
| AI model | Model-based reasoning tasks |
| Human | Human task assignment |
3. Execution contract
Hermes coordinates: dispatch, waits, retries, timeouts, observations, recovery/compensation, evidence capture, verification steps and reconciliation workflows.
Execution produces outcome events/evidence, and governed writes occur only after the appropriate re-ingestion, verification and reconciliation path.