A native macOS and iOS application that reimagines the BBS for modern Apple hardware. Real-time chat, forums, file sharing, internet email, SSH and web terminal access, a pixel-perfect ANSI terminal — and 68K emulation to run the original Hermes external programs on Apple Silicon.
Not a retro novelty. Not a museum piece. A living application that carries the spirit of the original BBS into a new generation.
Hermes 4 is a client-server BBS. The server runs the board — users, forums, files, chat, games. The client connects in and provides the full BBS experience: classic ANSI terminal for purists, with native features layered on top for modern users.
macOS application
The BBS engine. Runs on your Mac and serves connections over five protocols — Telnet, TelnetS, HTTPS, WebSocket, and SSH. Manages users, forums, email, chat channels, file storage, and external programs. Comes with a native sysop dashboard for real-time monitoring and administration.
macOS & iOS application
The user experience. Connect to any Hermes server (or any BBS that speaks Telnet) with a pixel-perfect ANSI terminal. When connected to a Hermes 4 server, native features light up: file transfer progress, native mail, chat panels, attachment previews, and more.
HermesANSI
Not a generic terminal emulator — a purpose-built engine for the classic BBS experience. Full VT100/ANSI escape sequence parsing, 16-color palette with named slots, CP437 character set for authentic BBS art, and a virtual screen buffer with configurable scrollback.
ANSI scroll regions enable split-screen chat display. Text selection and copy/paste work natively. Canvas-based rendering with Metal compositing keeps everything smooth at any font size.
Hermes Terminal — main menu
Hermes Terminal — native chat with link previews and file sharing
Multi-channel · Persistent History
Multiple named channels — join #lobby, create #games, switch freely. Persistent message history backfills when you enter a channel. Message reactions, inline editing, and drag-and-drop file attachments. Slash commands for whispers, emotes, file sharing, blocking, and away status.
@Mentions with cross-channel notifications and typing indicators. Split-screen ANSI display for the classic feel, or use the native chat panel in Hermes Terminal for a modern interface. The sysop dashboard shows a live feed across all channels.
Threaded Messages · New-Scan · Internet Email
Multi-conference forum system with hierarchical organization — conferences contain subforums, each with their own access levels. Per-user read pointers track new messages since your last visit. Keyword search across message subjects and bodies.
Private email between users with quoted replies, unread indicators, and per-side deletion. At logon, new message scanning shows exactly what's waiting for you. Hermes Terminal provides a native mail UI with HTML rendering, attachments, and folder management alongside the classic terminal interface.
Internet email bridges the BBS and the wider world — inbound via Cloudflare Email Routing, outbound via Amazon SES. Users can receive and send real email from within the BBS, configured per-user by the sysop.
Hermes Terminal — reading forum messages in the terminal
Hermes Server — sysop chat view with link previews
HTTPS · ZMODEM · Signed Tokens
Two transfer protocols, old and new. HTTPS transfers use HMAC-SHA256 signed, time-limited URLs — Hermes Terminal detects them automatically and shows native progress. For classic BBS compatibility, full ZMODEM send and receive is built in, with auto-detection so the client picks up transfers seamlessly.
Organized file areas with access controls, per-user new-file tracking, and download counts. Per-user transfer preference lets each user choose Auto, HTTPS, or ZMODEM. Standard Telnet clients receive URLs for browser fallback. Share files directly into chat with the /share command.
68K Emulation · DOOR32.SYS · Classic & Modern
Two ways to run external programs. The Musashi 68K CPU emulator loads and executes the original Hermes externals from v2.2 through v3.5.11 — BBS door games and utilities written in the late 1980s and 1990s, running on modern Apple Silicon hardware. Over 45 classic externals have been tested successfully.
For modern door games, Hermes 4 supports the DOOR32.SYS standard — the same drop file protocol used across the BBS world. Any DOOR32.SYS-compatible program runs natively as a child process with full stdio bridging, CP437 or UTF-8 encoding, and automatic line-ending translation. Games like Usurper Reborn and other modern doors work out of the box.
Blackjack. Slots. Checkers. Trivia. Usurper Reborn. The originals on emulated hardware, and new doors running natively — side by side on the same board. This is what revival looks like.
HerTris — a 1990s external running on Apple Silicon via 68K emulation
Default Personalities
Sysops can create custom personalities or override prompts entirely.
Configurable Personalities · Channel & DM
AI-powered bots that live in your chat channels and feel like regulars, not assistants. Each bot has a distinct personality — a tech geek, a retro computing historian, a news curator — and participates naturally in conversation. They respond to @mentions, join ongoing threads when they have something to add, and accept direct messages.
Sysops control everything: which channels each bot joins, how often it speaks, what triggers a response (smart probability, keyword matching, or periodic), and hard rate limits to keep things balanced. Bots can search the web and X in real time to surface relevant links and news into chat.
Create custom personalities or use the three defaults. Override system prompts for full control. Token usage and message stats are tracked per bot. Powered by xAI's Grok — a BBS community that's never empty.
Connection Protocols
SwiftNIO SSH · Auto-Login
Connect to Hermes with any standard SSH client — no special software needed. Built on SwiftNIO SSH, the server handles terminal type negotiation, window size detection, and live resize as you drag your terminal.
SSH-authenticated users are automatically logged in to the BBS — no second password prompt. Five protocols, one board: Telnet, TelnetS, HTTPS, WebSocket, and SSH all serve the same BBS simultaneously.
Browser-Based · No Install
Full ANSI terminal access from any web browser. The WebSocket listener serves a complete BBS session with real-time rendering of colors, cursor control, and character attributes — no plugins, no downloads.
Point someone at your board's URL and they're in. The same BBS experience that Hermes Terminal and SSH clients see, delivered through the browser for zero-friction access.
Native Management Console
A full native administration interface. See active connections in real time with color-coded status, disconnect or preview any session. Manage forums, file areas, users, chat channels, and AI bots — all from a clean sidebar UI.
Live chat feed shows all channels simultaneously. Activity logs with 30-day auto-pruning. User management with inline editing, security level control, password reset, and soft-delete with restore. Plus a dedicated sysop terminal window for direct BBS interaction.
Hermes Server — user management with inline editing
Modern structured concurrency with actor-based session management. No callback spaghetti, no thread locks.
Apple's networking stack for Telnet, TelnetS, and HTTPS. SwiftNIO SSH for secure shell access. WebSocket for browser terminals.
Self-signed certificates generated on first launch. TELNETS and HTTPS encrypted by default. Passwords salted and hashed.
Full relational database via GRDB.swift with versioned migrations. Users, forums, messages, files, chat — all tracked cleanly.
The ANSI terminal uses canvas-based rendering with Metal compositing for smooth, hardware-accelerated display at any font size.
Built with Apple's latest frameworks for macOS and iOS (via Mac Catalyst). Runs on Apple Silicon. No Electron, no web views.
Hermes 4 is version 0.1.0 — usable, full-featured, and actively improving. Forums, chat, file sharing, email, internet mail, SSH, web terminal, 68K emulation, ZMODEM, and the sysop dashboard are all working. This is a passion project and a technical revival, not a commercial product. The beta is free.
macOS via direct download. iOS via TestFlight. Requires Apple Silicon.