Stocks Skill: Read-Only Market Data via Yahoo Finance for Hermes Agent
Stock quotes, history, search, compare, crypto via Yahoo.
Written by Neura Market from the official Hermes Agent documentation for Stocks. Commands, paths, and version numbers are reproduced from the source unchanged.
Read the official documentationThe Stocks skill gives Hermes Agent read-only access to market data through Yahoo Finance's unofficial API. You get five commands, quote, search, history, compare, and crypto, with no API key required and no pip installs. It uses only Python's standard library, so it works immediately after installation. This is the skill you reach for when an agent needs a current stock price, a ticker lookup by company name, historical OHLCV data, side-by-side comparisons, or crypto prices.
What it does
The skill wraps Yahoo Finance endpoints into five straightforward CLI commands. Every command outputs JSON to stdout, which makes it easy to pipe through jq or parse programmatically. The data is read-only: no order placement, no account integration, no write operations of any kind.
Before you start
- Python 3.8 or later (stdlib only, no extra packages)
- The skill must be installed at the path
optional-skills/finance/stocks - Invoke it through the
terminaltool in Hermes Agent - Optional: set the environment variable
ALPHA_VANTAGE_KEYto enrichmarket_cap,pe_ratio, and 52-week levels when Yahoo's crumb-protected fields return null. Get a free key at https://www.alphavantage.co/support/#api-key - Platforms: linux, macos, windows
How to run
Once installed, set a variable for the script path and call it with the desired command:
SCRIPT=~/.hermes/skills/finance/stocks/scripts/stocks_client.py
python3 $SCRIPT quote AAPL
All output is JSON on stdout, pipe through jq if you want to slice it.
Quick reference
python3 $SCRIPT quote AAPL
python3 $SCRIPT quote AAPL MSFT GOOGL TSLA
python3 $SCRIPT search "Tesla"
python3 $SCRIPT history NVDA --range 6mo
python3 $SCRIPT compare AAPL MSFT GOOGL
python3 $SCRIPT crypto BTC ETH SOL
Commands
quote SYMBOL [SYMBOL2 ...]
Current price, change, change%, volume, 52-week high/low. Pass one or more ticker symbols. The response includes the fields you would expect from a standard stock quote endpoint.
search QUERY
Find tickers by company name. Returns top 5 results: symbol, name, exchange, type. Useful when the user knows the company name but not the ticker.
history SYMBOL [--range RANGE]
Daily OHLCV plus statistics (min, max, avg, total return %). Supported ranges: 1mo, 3mo, 6mo, 1y, 5y. Default: 1mo. The output includes the full date range of daily bars plus the computed stats.
compare SYMBOL1 SYMBOL2 [...]
Side-by-side comparison: price, change%, 52-week performance. Pass two or more tickers to see them lined up.
crypto SYMBOL [SYMBOL2 ...]
Crypto prices. Pass BTC (the script appends -USD automatically). Works for any major cryptocurrency symbol.
When not to use it
This skill is read-only. If the task requires placing orders, managing a portfolio, or integrating with a brokerage account, you need a different tool. It also depends on Yahoo Finance's unofficial API, which is not guaranteed to be stable or always available.
Limits and gotchas
- Yahoo Finance's API is unofficial. Endpoints can change or rate-limit without notice, if requests start failing, that's why.
market_capandpe_ratiomay return null onquotewhen Yahoo's crumb session isn't established. SetALPHA_VANTAGE_KEYto backfill.- Add a small delay between bulk requests to avoid rate-limiting.
- This is read-only, no order placement, no account integration.
Verification
python3 ~/.hermes/skills/finance/stocks/scripts/stocks_client.py quote AAPL
Returns a JSON object with symbol: "AAPL" and a numeric price field.
Related skills
This skill pairs with the financial modeling skills in the same category: dcf-model, comps-analysis, and lbo-model. Those skills can consume the data this skill fetches.