Who Hermes Agent is for#
AI power users building a personal operating agent
Hermes can remember context, create skills, and work from messaging apps.
Skip if:
you want a hosted chat account with minimal setup.
Research teams testing agent memory and skills
the project exposes a practical loop for persistent agent improvement.
Skip if:
you need a locked-down enterprise admin console first.
Developers running cloud-based agents
Hermes can live on a VPS or sandbox while users talk to it from chat.
Skip if:
all work must stay on a local laptop.
The problem it solves#
Most AI assistants forget too much between sessions or trap memory inside a vendor product. That limits long-running work, personal operating context, and team-specific procedures, especially when the assistant needs to act from a server instead of a single laptop.
The second pain is channel sprawl. Users want the same agent in CLI, Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, and voice workflows, but each integration usually becomes a separate bot with its own context and maintenance burden.
How it solves it#
Persistent memory system
Persistent memory system grows across sessions, with nudges to store useful context and retrieve past conversations.
Reusable skills system
Skills system can create and reuse procedural knowledge after complex tasks, following the agentskills.io standard.
Messaging gateway
Messaging gateway supports CLI plus channels such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, and Teams.
Model-provider choice
Model-provider choice includes Nous Portal, OpenRouter, NovitaAI, NVIDIA NIM, Hugging Face, OpenAI, and compatible endpoints.
Flexible terminal backends
Terminal backends include local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal, Daytona, and Vercel Sandbox for different deployment models.
Strengths and trade-offs#
Strengths
- Long-term agent growthHermes Agent focuses on long-term agent growth, which makes it stronger for recurring work than one-off chatbot sessions.
- One agent across chat appsThe multi-channel gateway lets a single agent meet users in chat apps without splitting context across separate bots.
- Provider flexibilityProvider choice helps teams tune cost, latency, model capability, and data policy without rewriting the agent workflow.
- MIT licenseThe MIT license makes the project easier to adapt for research labs, internal automation, and custom agent environments.
Trade-offs
- -Operational setup requiredHermes Agent is more operationally involved than a hosted assistant. You need to manage the runtime, credentials, messaging channels, and model providers.
- -Memory hygiene mattersPersistent memory is valuable only if users curate it. Poor memory hygiene can create stale context or incorrect assumptions over time.
- -Broad surface can be excessiveThe broad capability surface can be too much for teams that only need a simple coding copilot or chat interface.
Quick start#
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bashHow to self-host Hermes Agent#
Deploy Hermes on your own server to run a self-hosted AI agent with persistent memory and tool use.
- A Linux server with SSH access (a small server is enough; any VPS provider works, e.g. Hostinger)
- An API key for your model provider of choice
01Install Hermes and its dependencies
The official installer handles Python 3.11, uv, Node.js, ripgrep, and ffmpeg. Run it on your server and follow any prompts it surfaces.
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash02Run the setup wizard
The setup wizard configures everything in one pass, including your model provider API key. Complete it before starting the agent.
hermes setup03Start the interactive CLI
Once setup is complete, the hermes command opens the terminal UI where you can talk to the agent directly.
hermes04Connect a messaging gateway
To reach the agent from Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, or Email, run gateway setup then start the gateway process. After that, messages from the connected app go straight to your agent.
hermes gateway setup hermes gateway start
What it's built on#
- Languages
- JavaScriptPythonTypeScript
- Frameworks
- React
- Tooling
- esbuild
FAQ#
What makes Hermes Agent different from a chatbot?
Hermes Agent is designed to keep improving across sessions through persistent memory, reusable skills, and tool workflows. A normal chatbot usually answers in the moment and forgets most operating context.
Can Hermes Agent run on my own server?
Yes. Hermes Agent can run on a VPS, local machine, GPU cluster, or serverless-style environment, depending on the backend you choose. You still need credentials for model providers and messaging channels.
Which models does Hermes Agent support?
Hermes Agent can use many providers, including Nous Portal, OpenRouter, NovitaAI, NVIDIA NIM, Hugging Face, OpenAI, and compatible endpoints. You can switch providers without rebuilding the agent workflow.
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