Hermes Agent Is an Open-Source Agent That Grows Its Own Skills

What Happened

Hermes Agent, the open-source project from Nous Research, is a "self-evolving" AI agent. It belongs to the same category as OpenClaw: a personal agent that stays running on your computer or server. But in our testing the two work quite differently, and there were a number of pleasant surprises.

What's Different

Why It's Worth Watching

We've previously written about OpenClaw's issues: unstable execution and no notification on failure. Hermes takes a different approach, with its focus on "growth": skills and memory accumulate over time.

You can install both at once. In our testing they ran side by side and could revive each other: when one had a problem, we used the other to diagnose and fix it.

Worth Trying

Linux, macOS, WSL2:

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

Windows has a native PowerShell installation method; see the official documentation. Once it's installed, first have it handle one or two tasks you normally repeat, then check back in a few days to see whether it has turned those into skills.

Notes

• Self-evolution means it will write its own skills and save its own memories. Review what it has stored from time to time and delete anything that's wrong.
• It can operate the terminal and files. Like any agent, have it ask you before taking dangerous actions.
• Before running the one-line install command, you may want to open the install script and look through it first.

🔗 Project page: https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent