Hermes Agent (Nous Research)
App : A product you use directly
Self-hosted agent that learns from its tasks, creates its own skills, maintains persistent memory, and responds on Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, or Signal.
The most serious alternative to OpenClaw, cleaner on privacy (MIT, zero telemetry), and able to import your OpenClaw config.
Security reflects where data goes, requested permissions and incidents on record at the verification date. It is not a guarantee of zero risk: check the deployment mode and the connections you enable.
What it does, concretely
Most AI assistants forget everything between sessions and remain locked inside a single application. Hermes Agent addresses this by offering an autonomous agent that retains persistent memory, learns from each completed task, and can be reached from Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal or the terminal, without ever losing track of your projects.
In practice, the agent runs on your own machine, a five-dollar VPS, or serverless infrastructure such as Modal or Daytona. After each complex task, it automatically generates skills, meaning reusable procedures that it refines over time. Full-text search across conversation history lets it recall what it has already solved, and a user profile model deepens with every session.
Hermes Agent is aimed at users comfortable with a terminal who want an assistant capable of working in the background, scheduling recurring tasks in plain language, and delegating sub-tasks to parallel agents. It also suits developers who want to connect their own models or endpoints via OpenRouter, OpenAI, or their own infrastructure.
It is not suited to someone looking for a ready-to-use graphical interface with no configuration: installation goes through the terminal, setting up messaging integrations requires several steps, and the breadth of options may discourage non-technical users.
What it offers
- ·Persistent memory across sessions: the agent retains your projects, preferences, and its problem-solving history.
- ·Automatic skill creation and improvement: after each complex task, the agent generates a reusable procedure and refines it during subsequent use.
- ·Natural-language task scheduling: a built-in scheduler runs reports, backups, and recurring briefings unattended.
- ·Multi-platform messaging: a single instance responds on Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email, and 20+ other surfaces from one gateway process.
- ·Parallel sub-agents: the agent can delegate workstreams to isolated sub-agents running simultaneously.
- ·Multi-provider compatibility: switch models at any time with hermes model without changing code, using Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, or your own endpoint.
- ·Web search, image generation, text-to-speech, and browser automation via Nous Portal (paid).
- ·60+ built-in tools covering terminal, Docker, SSH, vision, and Python code execution via RPC.
In practice
- Price
- Freemium
- Commercial use
- Commercial use: yes
- Available on
- macos, linux, windows, cli
- Licence
- MIT
- FR interface
- No
Security and data
- Rating
- Security: nothing to flag
- Your data
- Local or cloud depending on use
- Maintenance
- Active
- Last release
- 23 October 2026
Links and repository checked on 25 October 2026 · added on 15 February 2026
How to install Hermes Agent (Nous Research)
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash