# I created a profile to be a Kanban worker and the decomposer never sends it a task. What is missing?

Hermes Agent v0.19.0, topology axis, by José Carlos Amorim, at Nexialismo. Verified on 2026-07-28 against tag v2026.7.20, with adversarial review: this answer is marked as corrected. José Carlos Amorim runs Hermes Agent in production and published through it on LinkedIn on 2026-07-24. Versão em português: https://docs.nexialismo.ai/pt/hermes-topologia-criei-profile-ser-worker-kanban-decompositor-nunca.

## I created a profile to be a Kanban worker and the decomposer never sends it a task. It shows up in the list normally. What is missing?

**In one sentence:** the **description** is missing. The Kanban decomposer reads the installed profiles **and their descriptions** to produce the task graph. A profile with no description stays in the roster and is still routable by name, only "less precisely". Fix it with `hermes profile describe <name> --text "..."` or `--auto`, without recreating the profile.

## The same question, asked other ways

- what is --description for in hermes profile create?
- how does Hermes Kanban decide which profile gets the task?
- the Kanban decomposer ignores my new profile
- how do I add a description to a Hermes profile after creating it?

## The trap in this question

**If you already run this:** treating `--description` as a documentation field. It is routing input for the decomposer LLM. Second trap, the opposite one: thinking a profile with no description becomes invisible. It stays in the roster and routable by name, just with poor precision. Third: confusing the decomposer's safety net (which redirects an unknown assignee) with the dispatcher (which fails silently). Only the first one has a net.

## The command you can paste

```bash
# text written by you (preferable: you control the routing vocabulary)
hermes profile describe researcher \
  --text "Reads source code and external docs, writes findings. Does not deploy."

# or generated from the installed skills + the profile's model
hermes profile describe researcher --auto
```

```bash
hermes profile create researcher \
  --description "Reads source code and external docs, writes findings."
```

```bash
kanban:
  auto_decompose: true            # default
  auto_decompose_per_tick: 3      # default
  orchestrator_profile: ""        # owns the root task after fan-out
  default_assignee: ""            # where a child with an unknown profile lands
  auto_subscribe_on_create: true  # default
```

## How to confirm it on your own install

**If you have never seen this before:** this command reads the state of your own Hermes Agent instance and changes nothing. Run it before believing any answer, including this one.

```bash
hermes profile list && hermes kanban assignees --json && hermes profile show <name> | grep -i descri
```

Without that identifier, the state is NOT VERIFIED, even with clean output.

## What the fleet corrected in this answer

The description is the likeliest suspect, but it is not an absolute block. The decomposer reads the installed profiles AND their descriptions in order to route; with no description the profile stays in the roster and routable by name, just with poor precision, so the LLM tends never to pick it. Before concluding, also check whether the decomposer is on at all: `hermes config get kanban.auto_decompose` (Manual mode turns automatic fan-out off) and `hermes config get kanban.default_assignee` (that is where every child whose profile the LLM invented ends up). Description fix: `hermes profile describe <name> --text "..."` or `--auto`.

## Who ran Hermes Agent in this document

This text is by José Carlos Amorim, published at Nexialismo on 2026-07-28. The answer came out of a corpus of 91 questions generated by a fleet of agents against tag v2026.7.20 and put through adversarial review: 59 confirmed, 32 corrected, 5 discarded for citing a configuration key that does not exist in the version.

The full corpus lives at https://docs.nexialismo.ai/pt/hermes. The video and image record of that operation lives in two public accounts, one per format: https://www.youtube.com/@josecarlosamorim-ai on YouTube and https://www.instagram.com/josecarlosamorim.ai/ on Instagram.

Verified on 2026-07-28. Version target: Hermes Agent v0.19.0, tag v2026.7.20.