# Hermes Agent

Open-source (MIT), self-hosted, self-improving AI agent runtime from Nous Research — CLI/TUI/Desktop + messaging gateway, bounded memory, agent-created skills, cron, subagents, MCP, and multi-backend execution. Latest tracked release as of 2026-08-12: v0.20.0 / v2026.8.3 “Herald” (2026-08-03).

Tags: product, agents, nous-research, open-source, self-hosted, signal, cron

## Summary

Hermes Agent is not an IDE-only copilot. It runs on your machine/VPS/Docker (or Modal/Daytona/etc.), remembers via MEMORY.md/USER.md + FTS5 session search, writes reusable skills, reaches you on 20+ chat platforms (including Signal via signal-cli), and schedules work with built-in cron. Distinct from Nous’s Hermes LLM weights and from managed products like Grok Bot / OpenClaw.

## Disambiguation

- **Hermes Agent** = this runtime (`NousResearch/hermes-agent`)
- **Hermes models** = separate open-weight LLMs from Nous; Agent can use them or any other provider
- **OpenClaw** = competing OSS personal agent; Hermes documents migration helpers
- **Grok Bot** = SpaceXAI/Cursor managed teammates — see [[grok-bot]] and [[grok-bot-vs-hermes-agent]]

## Key facts (Aug 2026)

- License: MIT
- Org: Nous Research (also Atropos RL, Hermes/Nomos/Psyche models)
- Marketing launch: February 2026; repo created 2025-07-22
- Version: v0.20.0 Herald (tag v2026.8.3, 2026-08-03) — voice, A2A, grounded citations, webhooks, desktop artifacts
- Install: `curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash`
- Data dir: `~/.hermes/` (Docker: `/opt/data`)
- Providers: Nous Portal (recommended), OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI/Codex, xAI, Gemini, Bedrock, local OpenAI-compatible, many more
- Terminal backends: local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal, Daytona, Vercel Sandbox
- Privacy: local state by default; Portal sends `client=hermes-client-v*`; secure gateway/dashboard (auth required on non-loopback after June 2026 hardening)
- RL: trajectory export + batch runner; integrates with Atropos (separate framework) — not online self-training by default

## Fit notes

Strong for self-hosted Signal bots, cron research digests, model choice, and auditable skills/memory. Ops-heavy vs managed Grok Bot. See [[grok-bot-vs-hermes-agent]].

## Related

- [[grok-bot-vs-hermes-agent]]
- [[grok-bot]]
- [[buzz-block]] (Hermes v0.20 also ships a Buzz/Nostr gateway adapter)
- [[youtube-hermes-desktop-plugins]] (Tonbi: Desktop plugin SDK + 25 placements)
- [[youtube-hermes-kanban-multi-agent]] (Tonbi: Kanban board as multi-agent bus)
- [[perseus-vault]] (Perseus ctx + Vault: live context file + encrypted MCP memory; first-party Hermes wiring)
- [[hermes-plugin-perseus-vault]] (Hermes *memory provider* plugin — not a Desktop UI placement)
- [[ia-local-casa]] (home document/photo RAG via MCP+Open WebUI; not a Hermes plugin)
- [[youtube-ai-code-review-bot]] (How I AI: Vercel Eve as easier Slack/GitHub alternative)
- raw/`hermes-agent-2026-08-12/`

## Sources

- https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/
- https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/llms.txt
- https://hermes-agent.org/
- https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent
- https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/releases/tag/v2026.8.3
- https://nousresearch.com/
- https://nousresearch.com/introducing-atropos/