How to integrate Desktime MCP with Hermes

Hermes is a 24/7 autonomous agent that lives on your computer or server — it remembers what it learns and evolves as your usage grows. This guide explains the easiest and most robust way to connect your Desktime account to Hermes. You can do this through either Composio Connect CLI or Composio Connect MCP. For personal use we recommend the CLI, but you won't go wrong with MCP either.

Desktime logoDesktime
Api Key

Desktime is an automatic time tracking tool for teams and freelancers. It helps you monitor productivity, manage projects, and analyze work habits in real time.

11 Tools

Introduction

Hermes is a 24/7 autonomous agent that lives on your computer or server — it remembers what it learns and evolves as your usage grows.

This guide explains the easiest and most robust way to connect your Desktime account to Hermes. You can do this through either Composio Connect CLI or Composio Connect MCP. For personal use we recommend the CLI, but you won't go wrong with MCP either.

Also integrate Desktime with

What is Composio Connect?

Composio Connect is a consumer offering that lets anyone plug 1,000+ applications directly into their agent harness — including Hermes. It can:

  • Search and load tools from relevant toolkits on-demand, reducing context usage.
  • Chain multiple tools to accomplish complex workflows via a remote workbench, without excessive back-and-forth with the LLM.
  • Manage app authentication end-to-end with zero manual overhead.

Integrating Desktime with Hermes

Using Composio Connect CLI

1. Install the Composio CLI

Run the install script directly, or paste https://composio.dev/hermes into your Hermes chat box to have it installed for you.

bash
curl -fsSL https://composio.dev/install | bash
Hermes authenticating with Composio

2. Authenticate

Once the CLI is installed, ask Hermes to authenticate with Composio.

3. Connect to Desktime

Ask your agent to connect to Desktime, or simply request any Desktime-related task. Hermes will prompt you to authenticate and authorize access.

4. Done. You're all set with a new Desktime connection.


Using Composio Connect MCP

1. Get your MCP URL and API Key

Go to dashboard.composio.dev and copy your Connect MCP URL and API key.

Copy MCP URL and API key from Composio dashboard

2. Open the Hermes config file

bash
nano ~/.hermes/config.yaml

3. Add the Composio Connect MCP server

bash
mcp_servers:
  composio:
    url: "https://connect.composio.dev/mcp"
    headers:
      x-consumer-api-key: "YOUR_COMPOSIO_API_KEY"
    connect_timeout: 60
    timeout: 180

Save with Ctrl + O, Enter, then exit with Ctrl + X.

4. Restart your Hermes agent

Once restarted, ask your agent to connect to Desktime or request any Desktime-related task. It will prompt you to authenticate and authorize access.

5. Done!

What is the Desktime MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The Desktime MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your Desktime account. It provides structured and secure access to your time tracking, project management, and productivity data, so your agent can perform actions like tracking work hours, managing projects, analyzing employee productivity, and reporting on team activities on your behalf.

  • Automated project and task management: Create new projects, assign optional starter tasks, and retrieve a comprehensive list of active company projects for streamlined organization.
  • Employee and company insights: Instantly fetch detailed company account info, list all employees with their roles and statuses, and access individual employee data for better workforce visibility.
  • Time tracking control: Start or stop tracking work on specific projects and tasks, enabling hands-free, accurate logging of work sessions and project contributions.
  • Productivity and app usage analysis: Retrieve employee project assignments and application usage data to monitor work habits and identify productivity trends across your team.
  • API health and connectivity checks: Use built-in API ping tools to verify Desktime API availability and ensure uninterrupted agent operations.

Way Forward

With Desktime connected, Hermes can now act on your behalf whenever it detects a relevant task or you ask it to.

From here, you can extend Hermes further:

  • Connect more apps: Calendar, Slack, Notion, Linear, and hundreds of others are available through the same Composio Connect setup. Each new integration compounds what Hermes can do for you.
  • Build workflows across tools: Once multiple apps are connected, Hermes can chain actions together — turn an email into a calendar invite, a Slack message into a Linear ticket, or a meeting note into a follow-up draft.
  • Let it learn your patterns: The more you use Hermes, the better it gets at anticipating how you'd handle recurring tasks. Give it feedback on drafts and decisions, and it will adapt.

If you run into trouble or want to share what you've built, join the community or check out the Docs for deeper configuration options.

TOOLS

Supported Tools

Every Desktime action and event your agent gets out of the box.

Create Project with Optional Task

Tool to create a new project with an optional initial task.

Get Account Details

Retrieves company account configuration including work schedule and timezone settings.

Get All Company Employees

Tool to list all employees in the company, including their roles and statuses.

Get Employee

Tool to retrieve information about a single employee including user info, work settings, and tracking data for a specific date.

Get Employee Apps

Retrieves employee tracking data including tracked apps for a specific date.

Get Employee Projects

Retrieves comprehensive employee project tracking data including project assignments, time tracking metrics, work hours, and productivity statistics for a specific employee and date.

Get Employee Basic Data

Retrieve an employee's basic information and daily tracking statistics from DeskTime.

Get Projects List

Tool to retrieve all active projects for the company, including related tasks.

Ping DeskTime API

Tool to check the API's availability and confirm the service is operational.

Start Project Task

Starts time tracking for a specified project and optional task in DeskTime.

Stop Project Task

Tool to stop tracking time for a specified project and optional task.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

With a standalone Desktime MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Desktime tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Desktime and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Yes, you can. Hermes fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Desktime tools.

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Desktime scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Desktime data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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