diff --git a/infra/packages/host-baseline.txt b/infra/packages/host-baseline.txt
index c318f7a..050f088 100644
--- a/infra/packages/host-baseline.txt
+++ b/infra/packages/host-baseline.txt
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@ tmux
 btop
 bsddialog
 codex
+# python3 is 3.11 (FreeBSD PYTHON_DEFAULT); python312 available as python3.12.
+python311
 python312
 uv
 ripgrep
@@ -16,6 +18,10 @@ fd-find
 rsync
 postgresql18-client
 dnsmasq
+# hermes runtime: ffmpeg (media + voice-transcription), py311-pillow (Pillow
+# core dep; venvs use --system-site-packages so the system pkg satisfies it).
+ffmpeg
+py311-pillow
 dejavu
 rust