Hermes Agent

What it does

Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent from Nous Research that runs as a desktop app or from the terminal. It takes in messages and tasks from you, from connected messaging platforms such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email, and the CLI, and it produces responses, completed tasks, and scheduled reports. It stores conversations, memories, and skills so that work can continue in later sessions.

People use Hermes Agent for ongoing personal and project work where the agent should remember context. It can schedule recurring jobs such as reports, backups, and briefings that run through its gateway, delegate tasks to isolated subagents, browse the web, and run code in sandboxed backends including local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, and Modal. Its distinctive feature is a built-in learning loop that creates skills from experience and refines them during use.

Hermes Agent suits developers and technically minded users comfortable configuring an agent and its permissions. The MIT-licensed software is free, while model usage and optional hosting have separate costs. Desktop apps are available for macOS and Windows, with terminal installation on Linux. Stopping a local agent ends its running process without deleting saved memories or skills; scheduled jobs require an active gateway. Review tool access and test important tasks before unattended use.

What it can do

• Persistent memory of conversations, projects, and skills across sessions
• Automatically creates and improves skills from experience during use
• Natural-language scheduling for reports, backups, and briefings through the gateway
• Delegates work to isolated subagents with their own conversations and terminals
• Web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, and text-to-speech
• Sandboxed execution across local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, and Modal backends

Works with

• Telegram
• Discord
• Slack
• WhatsApp
• Signal
• Email
• Nous Portal
• ElevenLabs

Example workflows

Recurring team briefing

Illustrative example. Input: a natural-language request to send a daily project summary to a Slack channel. Steps: the agent schedules the job through its gateway, gathers project notes from memory, and posts the summary at the set time. Output: a scheduled briefing delivered to the channel each day.

Delegated research task

Illustrative example. Input: a request to compare three sources on a topic. Steps: the orchestrator spawns isolated subagents, each browses one source with web tools, and results are combined. Output: a single summary of findings with the sources cited.

Before you choose

• Grant only the tool and account permissions needed for the task.
• A local gateway must be running for scheduled jobs; stopping it preserves saved context.
• Model API keys and extra hosted instances have separate charges from included subscription usage.

Listed under

• Productivity
• General assistants
• AI agent
• Automation
• Developer tools
• Messaging bots
• Open source
• Personal assistant

Get started

Run the install command or download Hermes Desktop, then connect a model provider.

1. Download Hermes Desktop for macOS or Windows, or run the terminal install command from the official site.
2. Connect a model provider, or sign in to Nous Portal for the current agent subscription or pay-as-you-go options.
3. Connect a messaging platform such as Telegram, Discord, or Slack by following the documentation for that integration.

Hermes software is free under MIT. Nous Portal lists Plus $20, Super $100 and Ultra $200 per month, each with Hermes usage limits and one Cloud agent up to its included size. API keys always consume separate pay-as-you-go credits. Larger or additional Cloud agents cost extra. The Hermes landing page still describes a credit-bonus scheme; verify current entitlements in Portal before purchase.

Source: portal.nousresearch.com, checked 29 Oct 2026. Prices can change; check before you buy.

Sources for this overview

Product pages, documentation, and pricing checked 29 Oct 2026. Each source supports part of the overview; availability and prices can change.

• Nous Research ↗nousresearch.com
• Hermes Agent — Open-Source AI Agent That Grows With You | Nous Research ↗hermes-agent.nousresearch.com
• Nous Portal ↗portal.nousresearch.com

Company website

hermes-agent.nousresearch.com: product, pricing and policy pages

YC directory mirror

Batch and company name

Social accounts

Accounts the company links, and its posts on X

Human review

Checked by a person

knowledge_base

Last checked 29 Oct 2026. Every field keeps its source and date; unknown means we couldn’t confirm it.