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Hermes Agent

A free, open-source AI agent from Nous Research that learns from its own work: it writes reusable skills, remembers you, and runs on Mac, Windows and Linux.

6 chapters3 tutorialsOfficial site

01 · Introduction

What Hermes Agent is

Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent (MIT license) made by Nous Research. You install it on your own computer and talk to it in the terminal, in a desktop app, or from chat apps like Telegram, Discord and Slack.

What makes it different is its learning loop. After a hard task it can write down how it did it as a skill (a reusable set of instructions), improve that skill the next time, keep notes about you in its memory, and search its own past conversations.

Words you will meet:

  • Provider and model: Hermes has no model of its own. You pick one, for example through a Nous Portal subscription, a ChatGPT/Codex subscription, or an API key from Anthropic, OpenRouter and others.
  • TUI: the newer full-screen terminal interface, started with hermes --tui.
  • Gateway: the background process that connects Hermes to chat apps.
  • Profile: a separate set of settings and memory, so one computer can run several agents.

02 · When to use it

When it is useful

  • Work you repeat. The more often you ask for the same kind of task, the more its saved skills help.
  • A long-term assistant that remembers your projects and preferences across sessions.
  • Messaging bots. One gateway answers in Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal or email.
  • Scheduled jobs and parallel work. It can run tasks on a timer and split work across sub-agents.
  • Trying many models. Switching model is one command, with no lock-in.

Be realistic: a self-written skill is only as good as the task it learned from. Review new skills before you rely on them.

03 · Setup

How to set it up

Desktop app: download it from the Hermes website. The Mac version supports Apple Silicon (M-series) only; Windows uses a signed installer.

Command line, Mac or Linux:

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

Command line, Windows (runs natively, no WSL needed):

iex (irm https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.ps1)

Open a new terminal afterwards so the hermes command is found. Then pick a model, which is the most important step:

hermes setup

Finally run hermes --tui and ask something simple. If it replies and can read a file, it works.

04 · How to use it

Day-to-day use

  • Start chatting: hermes (classic) or hermes --tui (newer interface). Both share the same sessions.
  • Pick up where you left off: hermes -c.
  • Change model: hermes model.
  • Turn tools on or off: hermes tools.
  • Web dashboard: hermes dashboard opens a local page at 127.0.0.1:9119.
  • Chat apps: hermes gateway setup, then hermes gateway install to start it at login.
  • Problems: hermes doctor. Updates: hermes update.

Coming from OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor? hermes setup offers to import your settings, memory and skills, with a preview first.

05 · Pitfalls

Things to watch out for

  • Get one plain chat working first. Add chat apps, schedules and model routing only after that.
  • Intel Macs are not supported.
  • Antivirus false alarm on Windows. Some antivirus tools quarantine uv.exe in %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\bin. It is a known false positive; allow the whole folder rather than turning antivirus off.
  • Keep keys in Hermes' .env file, not in system-wide environment variables.
  • Never delete the data folder to "fix" an install. It holds the skills and memory it has learned.
  • It moves fast. Version 0.23.0 came out on 5 November 2026; commands may change.

06 · Resources

Links

Related tutorials

Hermes Agent Now Has a Web UI That Puts Your Whole AI Agent Workspace in a BrowserPick

Hermes Agent v0.23.0 adds a web UI (Webapp): the full Desktop app workspace in your browser, served by your own gateway. Sessions, group chats, plugins and files sync with the Desktop app. Off by default, three commands to turn on. Set up sign-in before opening it to the local network or internet. Includes a prompt to hand to your AI agent.

News·Intermediate·4 min·Nov 11, 2026hermesagentsweb-uiopen-source
Hermes Agent Now Installs on Windows and Mac With One Command

Beginner tutorial: choose the desktop app or a one-line command install for Hermes Agent depending on your computer and habits, reopen the terminal, use hermes setup to pick a model, get the first conversation and follow-up chat working, then optionally set it to run in the background and connect a chat app, and finally watch out for common pitfalls such as Windows antivirus false positives. Includes one troubleshooting prompt you can copy directly.

Tutorial·Beginner·9 minhermes-agentagentwindowsmacos
Hermes Agent Is an Open-Source Agent That Grows Its Own SkillsPick

Hermes Agent, an open-source project from Nous Research, is the same kind of product as OpenClaw but works quite differently: it creates skills on its own from conversations, improves them as it's used, remembers you across sessions, and can dispatch sub-agents to work in parallel. In our testing it ran alongside OpenClaw and could revive it when something broke. MIT licensed.

News·Intermediate·2 min·Nov 6, 2026agentshermesopenclawopen-source

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