Add usecase: Deterministic Workflow Delegation (nika)

README.md

@@ -115,6 +115,7 @@ Then pick a use case below. The [`/demos`](demos/) folder has three runnable sta
 | [Matt Pocock Skills + Sub-Agents](usecases/matt-pocock-skills-subagents.md) | Use Matt Pocock's open-source skills (`/grill-me`, `/to-prd`, `/to-issues`) for planning and scoping, then Hermes sub-agents for parallel implementation of vertical-sliced issues — with HITL gates to stop AI slop before it ships. |
 | [Dynamic Skill Dojo](usecases/dynamic-skill-dojo.md) | A monitoring and improvement loop that reads session history, ranks weak skills, proposes patches or new skills, invokes self-evolution, and reports learning progress. |
 | [Hermes Kanban: Multi-Agent Swarm from Slack](usecases/kanban-multi-agent-swarm.md) | The v0.15 `/kanban` slash command turns a Slack message into a durable multi-agent swarm with named workers, a verifier, and a synthesizer — persistent via `~/.hermes/kanban.db`. |
+| [Deterministic Workflow Delegation](usecases/deterministic-workflow-delegation.md) | Hermes keeps the judgment, a deterministic runner keeps the receipts: repeatable jobs graduate from chat into checked `.nika.yaml` DAG files — audited before any token is spent, budget-capped, with tamper-evident run traces. Offline demo, zero keys. |
 
 ## Memory & Context
 

usecases/deterministic-workflow-delegation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+# Deterministic Delegation: Repeatable Jobs as Checked Workflow Files
+
+**Class:** First-party integration · **Confidence:** High · **Demo status:** Runnable (offline, no keys)
+
+## Pain Point
+
+You ask Hermes for the same morning brief, triage pass, or report pipeline and get a slightly different improvisation every time. When a repeated job spends money, there's no receipt; when a small model claims it "verified" something, you can't tell narration from execution (we've watched a local 9B answer "VERIFIED ✓" with zero tool calls in the log).
+
+## What It Does
+
+![A repeated chat prompt becomes meeting-actions.nika.yaml; nika check audits it, then a real local run (ollama/llama3.2:3b) writes typed action items](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/supernovae-st/nika/main/media/gifs/chat-to-workflow.optimized.gif)
+
+Hermes keeps the judgment; a deterministic runner keeps the receipts. The repeatable slice of the work graduates from chat into one plain-text `.nika.yaml` file (a small DAG: fetch → summarize → save) that Hermes delegates to via the `nika` skill:
+
+- `nika check` audits the file **before any token is spent**: the plan, an honest cost floor (unpriced work is flagged, never shown as $0), which secrets flow into which task.
+- Paid runs are budget-capped (`--max-cost-usd`); the offline mock and Ollama paths need zero keys.
+- Every run writes a hash-chained trace: `nika trace verify` exits 0 or names the first broken link. The receipt comes from the runner, not from the model's prose.
+
+Honest tradeoff: workflows are non-interactive by design. For autonomous coding, the OpenCode skill stays the right seat: this is for the boring-on-purpose slice (daily digests, triage, ETL, report pipelines).
+
+## Setup
+
+1. Install the runner (single Rust binary) and the skill:
+   ```bash
+   brew install supernovae-st/tap/nika
+   hermes skills tap add supernovae-st/nika-agents
+   ```
+2. Nothing else. The offline demo below needs no API key, no model server.
+
+## Prompts
+
+Ask Hermes to capture a repeated job as a workflow, then run it with receipts:
+
+```
+Use the nika skill. Create a workflow file daily-brief.nika.yaml that
+fetches https://news.ycombinator.com/rss (feed mode), keeps the top 5
+titles, and writes them to brief.md. Check it with nika check first,
+run it on the mock model, then verify the trace and tell me the chain
+head from the terminal output, not from memory.
+```
+
+Or hand it an existing file:
+
+```
+Run nika check on report.nika.yaml, explain any findings with
+nika explain, fix the file, and only run it once check passes.
+Cap the run at $0.10 with --max-cost-usd.
+```
+
+## Runnable Demo (offline · zero keys)
+
+![nika run executes the DAG in parallel waves in the terminal, live lanes, per-task timings, then the verdict card](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/supernovae-st/nika/main/media/gifs/dag-execution.optimized.gif)
+
+```bash
+nika examples run 01-hello --model mock/echo   # deterministic offline run
+nika examples run 01-hello --model ollama/qwen3.5:4b   # same run, real local model
+nika trace verify                              # latest run · exit 0 = chain intact
+```
+
+## Skills Needed
+
+- The `nika` skill (taught commands are CI-tested against each released binary before the skill can merge)
+- Optional: Ollama for a real local model (the mock path works with nothing installed)
+
+## Sources
+
+- Integration guide (official docs · commands + config verbatim): https://docs.nika.sh/integrations/hermes
+- The skill pack + read-only MCP oracle (public repo · Hermes named in the skill's architecture): https://github.com/supernovae-st/nika-agents (skills/autonomous-ai-agents/nika/SKILL.md)
+- hermes-agent optional-skill PR (skill-guard SAFE + maintainer review on record): https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/pull/61632
+
+## Notes
+
+- The skill passed the hermes-agent skill-guard security scan (it never edits host config and never pipes curl|sh, installs are a human step, by design).
+- Engine AGPL-3.0, spec + TS SDK Apache-2.0. Disclosure: contributed by the nika author.