Open Source AI Agent · From Nous Research

The Complete Guide to Hermes Agent

Deploy Hermes once on your server. It learns your projects, builds its own skills, and stays reachable on every device you use — quietly getting smarter every day.

GitHub Stars
219K
Built-in Tools
40+
Platforms
22+
Stable Version
v0.19.0

Just a chat. Lots of jobs.

One persistent agent on your server — long-term memory, real browser control, scheduled jobs, and a self-evolving Skills system.

RUNS ON A TIMER

Tell It Once, It Runs Forever

Describe a recurring job once. Hermes runs it on schedule, survives restarts.

hermes · Slack
Post the daily standup prompt to #team at 9am every weekday
Scheduled — I'll post the prompt every weekday at 09:00 and save the replies to memory.
Skip US holidays, and ping me if nobody replies by 10
Linked your US holidays calendar — won't run on holidays. Added a 10:00 silence check that DMs you if fewer than 3 people replied. Next post: Mon Mar 24.
Also summarize the replies and post a recap to #leadership at 11
Done. The 11:00 follow-up clusters replies into 'in progress / blocked / done' and posts the recap to #leadership. Want a dry-run before it goes live tomorrow?
LEARNS YOU

Knows How You Work

Teach it your conventions once. Every future task ships in your voice.

hermes · Telegram
We use Conventional Commits — always prefix with feat:, fix:, chore:, etc.
Got it. Logged to your project preferences — I'll prefix every commit title with the right type from now on.
Also: every PR description needs a 'Risk' section at the end
Added. Every PR description I draft will end with a 'Risk' section listing what could break in prod, plus a rollback plan.
Draft the commit + PR for the auth bugfix I just merged
Commit: fix(auth): fall back to silent reauth on expired refresh token PR draft pushed to #98. Risk section flags the session migration as the highest-blast-radius change — rollback = revert PR #95.
DRIVES A BROWSER

Actually Opens The Page

Hermes drives a real browser — the page itself, not a search snippet.

hermes · Discord
What's new on Anthropic's blog this week?
Pulled 5 posts from anthropic.com/news (Mar 17–23). Top read: 'Claude Opus 4.7 release' (Mar 18) — adds 1M token context and faster tool use.
Open that post and pull out the API changes
Three API changes worth knowing: • `extended_thinking` now defaults to on • new `prompt_caching: "auto"` option • `legacy_max_tokens` removed (deprecated since 4.5)
Cross-check the changelog — anything in our codebase that breaks?
Yes — 3 endpoints still use `legacy_max_tokens`. I opened a draft PR replacing them with the new `max_tokens` field. CI's green, ready for your review.
LONG-TERM MEMORY

Remembers Months Back

Stop re-explaining yourself. Hermes pulls up decisions and reasoning from chats months back.

hermes · Telegram
What did we land on for that caching layer we talked about last month?
Found it — Feb 14 Slack thread. Picked Redis to reuse the existing BullMQ instance. Logged in #architecture.
I'm building it now but I've forgotten the details — give me a checklist
Based on that thread + your last 3 similar PRs: 1. `ioredis` wrapper with TTL per key prefix 2. Write-through invalidation 3. DB fallback on Redis failure 4. Hit/miss metrics in Grafana
What was Alex's pushback exactly?
Two concerns: (1) no fallback when Redis is down; (2) cross-service invalidation. The fallback was left open — resolve before you ship.

Get Your 24/7 AI Assistant in 5 Minutes

Install, configure, and start using Hermes in one short pass.

1

Install

The bootstrap script sets up uv and Python 3.11, clones the repo, and finishes initial setup without asking for sudo.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
2

Configure

Connect Nous Portal, OpenRouter, or your own endpoint. The guided setup flow walks through the essential model settings.
# Interactive setup wizardhermes setup# Or choose your modelhermes model
3

Start Chatting

Launch Hermes and you immediately get the full interactive CLI with tools, memory, and skills ready to work.
hermes
4

Add Messaging Platforms (Optional)

When you want Hermes online all the time, wire up Telegram, Discord, Slack, or WhatsApp and run the gateway as a system service.
# Interactive gateway setup wizardhermes gateway setup# Start the messaging gatewayhermes gateway# Install as a system servicehermes gateway install
5

Stay Current

Run the updater whenever you want the latest code, dependencies, and fixes pulled into the local runtime.
hermes update
Native Windows support is still experimental. For a steadier setup, install WSL2 first and run Hermes inside it.

Migrating from OpenClaw?
Done in 3 steps

Use hermes claw migrate for one-shot migration — configs are preserved. Backup, import, diagnose in one flow.

Read the migration guide
hermes-sh
~ hermes claw migrate --dry-run
[INFO] Scanning for legacy OpenClaw instances.
[INFO] Found 3 nodes. Starting data mapping.
[PROGRESS]100%
✓ SUCCESS: Migration completed in 1.2s
✓ All configs migrated
✓ All 3 agents imported

Best Tutorials & Guides

HermesAgent 101 aims to be the best Hermes Agent resource hub.

Contributions welcome — add resources, improve content, share your experience.

EN
Official Docs

Hermes Agent Official Site

The official Hermes Agent website for project overview, features, and latest updates.
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Official DocsVisit
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Official Docs

Hermes Agent Documentation

The official documentation covering installation, quickstart, architecture, gateways, memory, skills, MCP, and more.
quickstartsetupgetting started
Official DocsVisit
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Official Docs

NousResearch/hermes-agent

The official GitHub repository for Hermes Agent, including source code, issues, releases, and project activity.
reposource coderelease
GitHubVisit
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Official Docs

Architecture Overview

A developer-facing architecture guide focused on the agent runtime, prompt assembly, and the core execution loop.
architectureruntimeprompt
Official DocsVisit
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Videos

Hermes Just Released Their Biggest Update Ever (Hermes Bot)

A timely walkthrough of Hermes Bot covering its setup, strengths, limitations, practical use cases, and how it compares with Grok Bot.
Hermes BotGrok Botuse cases
Alex FinnVisit
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Videos

Learn 95% of Hermes Agent in 31 Minutes

A structured guide to Hermes Desktop, Telegram, models, memory, skills, tools, scheduled jobs, subagents, specialist profiles, safety, and real-world workflows.
guidememorysubagents
Sharbel A.Visit
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Videos

Hermes Agent Desktop: Full Setup + Real Use Cases

A screen-shared walkthrough of Hermes Desktop featuring sessions, profiles, artifacts, skills, cron jobs, subagents, local models, cost control, and practical business use cases.
desktopuse casessubagents
Greg IsenbergVisit
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Videos

Hermes Agent Explained in 5 Minutes

A concise introduction explaining what makes Hermes Agent useful, how to install it, how its skill system works, and which users and workflows it suits best.
overviewinstallationskills
CodeHeadVisit
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Community

What Tool Do You Use to Browse Reddit with Hermes?

A community discussion of reliable read-only Reddit access for Hermes using public JSON endpoints, authenticated sessions, SearXNG, browser tools, PRAW, and other fallback options.
Redditbrowser automationSearXNG
ozone6587Visit
EN
Analysis

I Spent Hours Comparing Models. Turns Out the Model Was Never the Problem.

A practical troubleshooting lesson showing how weak search, page extraction, browser access, credentials, permissions, and tool configuration can limit every model in the same way.
troubleshootingconfigurationresearch
kenmazaikaVisit
EN
Videos

Hermes Agent: Zero to Personal AI Assistant (1 Hour Course)

A complete video course covering Hermes Agent setup, VPS deployment, memory, skills, soul, cron jobs, practical use cases, and the self-improvement loop.
coursesetupmemory
Nate Herk | AI AutomationVisit
EN
Videos

100 Hours of Hermes Agent Lessons in 46 Minutes

A practical collection of lessons from extensive Hermes Agent use, focused on building reliable workflows, improving agent behavior, and getting more value from everyday automation.
lessonsworkflowsbest practices
David OndrejVisit
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Videos

Hermes Agent Just Got 10X Better (Agentic OS)

A walkthrough of an Agentic OS-style Hermes setup for coordinating agents, tools, persistent context, and automated work inside a more complete operating system for AI workflows.
agentic OSmulti-agentorchestration
Jack RobertsVisit
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Videos

Hermes Agent Fundamentals in 29 Minutes

A concise introduction to Hermes Agent fundamentals, setup, core capabilities, and practical automation for people who want a structured starting point.
fundamentalsbeginnersetup
Tina HuangVisit
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Analysis

Three Months with Hermes Agent: What I Wish I Had Understood Earlier

Hard-won lessons from using Hermes Agent as a daily driver for three months, including memory, profiles, model choices, Raspberry Pi hosting, stability, and realistic expectations.
experiencememoryRaspberry Pi
itsdodobitchVisit
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Community

Sharing My Totally Nutty Hermes Setup

A detailed showcase of the Joshu stack: Hermes on a dedicated cloud server with multi-gateway communication, Hindsight memory, semantic file search, a shared human-AI desktop, and a sandboxed authenticated browser.
cloud desktopvoicememory
Stephen_Falken_1983Visit
ZH
Videos

2026 最新 Hermes Agent 新手完整教程

一套面向新手的 Hermes Agent 中文视频课程,涵盖安装部署、微信和 QQ 及飞书接入、个性化配置、Skills、持久记忆、MCP、Cron 与 Web 仪表板。
installationmessagingMCP
阿良摸到了陆芝的腿-Visit
EN
Tutorials

How I Use Obsidian as the Long-Term Memory Backbone for My AI Assistant

A community workshop for combining Hermes Agent with an Obsidian vault through a three-tier memory system, daily notes, scheduled briefings, searchable history, and reusable starter templates.
Obsidianmemoryknowledge base
Jonathan_RiveraVisit
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Community

My Hermes Setup, Roast Me

A detailed production setup using Hermes Agent on Apple Silicon with Docker, multiple profiles, SearXNG, Hindsight, Bitwarden, automated coding, QA, deployment, and documentation workflows.
Dockerprofilesautomation
riceinmybellyVisit
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Analysis

One Month with Hermes Agent — What I Wish I Knew Earlier

Practical lessons from a month of daily Hermes Agent use, including starting with one reliable workflow, separating profiles, treating configuration as part of the product, and building reusable skills.
experienceprofilesskills
itsdodobitchVisit
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Tutorials

Nous Research Hermes Agent: Setup and Tutorial Guide

A hands-on DataCamp guide to installing Hermes Agent, choosing local or hosted models, connecting messaging gateways, using subagents and MCP, and troubleshooting common setup problems.
installationlocal modelsMCP
Derrick MwitiVisit
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Analysis

How to Automate Workflows Using Open-Source AI Agents

A TechRadar guide for solo founders comparing Hermes Agent and OpenClaw, with practical advice on workflow automation, platform selection, operating costs, security guardrails, and gradual adoption.
automationbusinessOpenClaw
Ritoban MukherjeeVisit
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Official Docs

Hermes Agent v0.20.0 — The Herald Release

The official v0.20.0 release notes covering real-time conversational voice, barge-in, wake words, grounded citations, A2A v1.0, signed webhooks, the desktop plugin SDK, and smarter recovery.
release noteschangelogv0.20.0
NousResearchVisit
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Official Docs

Voice Mode

The official guide to using Hermes Agent with interactive voice, streaming text-to-speech, speech-to-text, wake words, and voice conversations across the CLI and messaging platforms.
voicetext-to-speechspeech-to-text
NousResearchVisit

Not a Copilot. Not a Chatbot.

Hermes Agent is an open-source autonomous AI agent from Nous Research. Not an IDE copilot or a thin chatbot wrapper, but a long-running agent that lives on your server, keeps what it learns, and becomes more capable over time.

Lives Where You Do

One agent running across Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email, and the terminal. Start on your phone, pick it up on your laptop.

Grows The Longer It Runs

Persistent memory and auto-generated skills work together. It learns your projects and remembers how it solved that bug last time.

Real Sandboxing

Five execution backends to pick from: local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal. Container hardening and namespace isolation — keep it off your main machine if you want to.

Scheduled Automations

Describe a cron job in plain English — "send me a news briefing every morning at 8" — and it runs itself. Results land in whichever gateway you choose.

Parallel Sub-Agents

Spin up isolated sub-agents that each have their own conversation and terminal. Multi-step pipelines collapse into a single near-zero-context RPC call.

Full Web & Browser Control

Search, scrape, navigate, click, type, screenshot — all end to end. Layer on vision, image generation, text-to-speech, and multi-model reasoning as needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Quick answers to the questions we get most often.

Stay Current on Hermes

Only the updates that are actually worth your time.