Hermes Agent 101Hermes Agent 101

Learn Hermes Agent

A linear path from hearing about Hermes for the first time to actually using it.

Stage 1

Get to know Hermes

What Hermes is, what it can do, and the five words you will see everywhere.

  1. 1

    What is Hermes Agent

    An AI agent that lives in your terminal, grows with you, and actually gets things done.

    5 min
  2. 2

    What you can actually do with it

    Five real things people use Hermes for. Pick one and let it pull you in.

    6 min
  3. 3

    Five words you need to know

    Provider, Tools, Skills, Memory, Learning Loop. Two sentences each. You'll hear them everywhere.

    5 min
Stage 2

Quick Start

Install, explore, configure a model, hold a real conversation, learn the basic controls.

  1. 4

    Install Hermes

    One command, a few minutes, and you're done. Plus the two or three things that usually go wrong.

    8 min
  2. 5

    Look around before you configure anything

    You don't need an API key to see what Hermes is. Poke around first.

    5 min
  3. 6

    Pick a provider and give it a key

    Two solid choices for beginners. Skip the paralysis — you can always switch later.

    7 min
  4. 7

    Your first real conversation

    Three small tasks that prove Hermes is actually doing things, not just talking.

    8 min
  5. 8

    Five slash commands you will actually use

    Ignore the other fifty. These five cover 90% of daily use.

    6 min
Stage 3

Make it yours

Personality, memory, and connecting Hermes to your Telegram so you can reach it anywhere.

  1. 9

    Give it a personality

    SOUL.md defines who Hermes is. A few lines of text changes how it talks to you forever.

    7 min
  2. 10

    Teach it to remember you

    MEMORY.md, USER.md, and session history. Three places Hermes keeps what it learns.

    7 min
  3. 11

    Put Hermes in your Telegram

    Create a bot, drop the token into Hermes, and start chatting from your phone.

    12 min
Stage 4

Put it to work

Skills, MCP, and Cron — your workflow, more tools, recurring jobs.

  1. 12

    Skills — teach Hermes your workflow

    Install one from the hub, then write your own. This is where Hermes gets powerful.

    12 min
  2. 13

    MCP — plug in external tools

    Connect Hermes to tool servers it didn't ship with. One config file, one reload, new powers.

    10 min
  3. 14

    Cron — give it a daily job

    Set up a cron job and let Hermes work while you're away. This is when it stops being a chatbot and starts being a coworker.

    10 min
Stage 5

Advanced

Self-evolving Skills and server deployment — Hermes gets stronger, stays online.

  1. 15

    Skills that get stronger with use

    Hermes auto-creates Skills from repeated tasks and improves them based on your feedback. This is what makes it different from every other agent.

    10 min
  2. 16

    Deploy to a server — $5 for 24/7 uptime

    A cheap VPS, one Docker command, and Hermes becomes an always-on personal AI assistant you can reach from your phone.

    15 min

Where to go next

You finished the learning path. Here's a map of the rest of the territory.