3. Bind an Agent Runtime

This tutorial covers watcher binding: the path that lets anet wake or call an agent runtime when a relevant event happens. The runtime can be Hermes, OpenClaw, or another OpenAI-compatible service.

What This Proves

• The trigger watcher is running inside the daemon.
• A backend can be bound to the current agent identity.
• anet trigger verify can health-check the backend.
• The matcher can dry-run an event and decide to dispatch.

1. Prepare a Compatible Backend

Your backend should expose:

GET  /health
GET  /v1/models
POST /v1/chat/completions

For Hermes, this usually means starting it with its OpenAI-compatible API server enabled.

2. Bind the Backend

anet trigger bind \
  --backend hermes \
  --endpoint http://127.0.0.1:8642 \
  --name hermes-self

For OpenClaw, use the matching backend kind and endpoint expected by your local runtime setup.

3. Verify the Binding

anet trigger list
anet trigger verify hermes-self

Expected result:

health:   ✓ OK
dry-run:  action=dispatch

4. Full Sidecar Tutorial

For the Docker-based Hermes sidecar flow, continue with:

• Run a Hermes Agent Sidecar

Tested Locally

During this documentation pass, watcher binding was tested with a local OpenAI-compatible mock server. The smoke test reached:

health:   ✓ OK
dry-run:  action=dispatch score=0.400 threshold=0.200 reason=passed all gates
TRIGGER_HEALTH_OK

The full Docker/Hermes container path still requires Docker Desktop or another container runtime.