TLDR:
Hermes is an open-source AI agent framework from Nous Research that rivals OpenClaw, which has a native desktop app that makes it more accessible.
Unlike OpenClawâs terminal-first setup, Hermes Desktop lets you create multiple isolated agents called âprofilesâ each with their own memory and skills.
Connecting it to a VPS takes about five minutes and means your agent runs 24/7, firing scheduled tasks and building skills whether your computer is on or not.
Both Hermes and OpenClaw are excellent frameworks and Iâd really recommend you to use at least one of them as your own personal AI assistant.
At the start of the year we saw an explosion in agentic AI and the birth of the open-source agentic framework called OpenClaw. In past posts I wrote about how to create your own OpenClaw and about other closed source agentic frameworks like Claude Cowork that arrived later in the scene.
A separate and competing framework that appeared a little after OpenClaw was called Hermes, and itâs since grown massively and reached the point that many people prefer to use it over OpenClaw. So this week I decided to write about Hermes and how to create your own Hermes agent.
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Hermes
Hermes is an open-source AI agent framework from Nous Research that was launched in February of this year. It came out a little after OpenClaw which was the first agentic framework of its kind. Hermes became OpenClawâs main competitor and has been on a constant uptrend in adoption and relevance ever since.
At the start of the year I wrote a post showing how to create your own OpenClaw agent, and today I decided to write an equivalent guide for Hermes since it has reached the point where itâs hard to speak about one without speaking about the other.
The growth of these frameworks has been striking. Hermes hit 180,000 GitHub stars in under four months, making it one of the fastest-growing open-source projects in recent history. Meanwhile OpenClaw is even higher at 347,000 after six months. On GitHub both are in a category of their own.
The thing that sets Hermes apart from OpenClaw is the âself-improvingâ model. When Hermes figures out how to do something new it writes the approach down as a âskill documentâ and then applies it automatically next time. Over time the agent accumulates capabilities without you having to re-explain anything.
Another point where they differ most is the interface. OpenClaw has a messaging-first interface where you install it on a machine and interact with it via a messaging app like Telegram, WhatsApp, or Discord.
Hermes has all of that too, but it also has a native desktop app that changes the experience considerably and thatâs what weâll focus on here.
Getting Started
There are a few ways to run Hermes: the command line, a terminal interface, or the desktop app. The desktop app is the most user-friendly of the three and itâs what weâll take a look at.
To get started, download the desktop app from hermes-agent.nousresearch.com. You can download it for MacOS, Windows, and Linux.
When you launch the app youâll need to select a button to âInstall Hermesâ and thatâll make it run through several steps automatically.
Youâll need to click through a couple of setup screens, then finally once thatâs all done youâll be brought to the desktop app with the option to create new sessions or just start communicating with your agent.
However, as soon as you try to communicate with your agent itâll complain that you have to set up a model.
There are several options here but Hermes will push you towards paying for their own âNous Portalâ subscription, which isnât a bad idea given that it allows you to route to 300+ different models.
You can choose whichever option you prefer here. In my specific case I chose to use an OpenAI subscription that I already had so that I didnât end up paying for an additional subscription. Since I chose OpenAI it opened up a separate page in my browser that I had to put a code in for.
With all that done the screen below appeared showing that I was connected and ready to go!
Create your own Agent
The layout of the desktop app is simple. Thereâs a chat in the centre, a file browser on the right side, and sessions, skills, messaging and artifacts in the left panel.
On typing into the chat-box youâll essentially start your first interaction with a new local agent. Just make sure youâve selected a model with the model picker on the bottom right, and by simply saying something like âhiâ a new session will get created.
Sessions are essentially conversation threads that you have going with your agent. This is very similar to individual chats in most AI interfaces that youâll have come across, such as when using ChatGPT or Claude.
You can create multiple sessions for multiple different conversations and workflows with your agent.
Your agent begins as a blank slate so I highly recommend you start by teaching it more about yourself, your goals, and what you want your agent to help you with. This early context is fundamental to get the most out of your own personal AI assistant.
Your Hermes agent can browse the web, read and write files, run code, schedule recurring tasks, and communicate via Telegram, Discord, Slack, and other messaging apps. By selecting âmessagingâ on the left side youâll see that thereâs a wide variety of apps that you can use to communicate with your agent through.
If you select âSkills & Toolsâ youâll be able to navigate a range of pre-built skills and configurations that your agent can use too. These have been growing over time as the Hermes framework has continued to evolve and represent a large library of extensions to your agentâs capabilities that you can toggle on and off.
One of the most powerful features of the Hermes app though are its âProfilesâ, which act almost like entirely separate agents within your machine.
By pressing the â+â button on the bottom-left you get a pop out view that allows you to create a ânew profileâ essentially creating an entirely separate agent to the current one you have.
The app allows you to have as many profiles as you want, and flicking between them is as simple as selecting either button at the bottom. Each profile has itâs own context, memory, and personality, so as I said above itâs like jumping between different agents.
As you can see thereâs a lot available with the Hermes desktop app. However, one key limitation with this setup is that if you switch off your computer then the agent stops!Scheduled tasks pause and nothing runs while the machine is off.
For many use cases thatâs completely fine. But if you want a true always-on agent, you need it running on a machine that never switches off.
Always-on agent
Hermes Desktop allows you to connect to a remote backend, which means you can run the agent on any machine you point it at, and your laptop becomes the interface.
To do this you can use a separate computer you have at home, for example you can use a Mac Mini which has become an incredibly popular. However for this tutorial weâll use a VPS (Virtual Private Server), which is essentially just a computer in the cloud.
You donât need anything powerful, any Linux server with 1GB of RAM is enough, for this setup Vultr starts at around $5/month and DigitalOcean at $4/month. To avoid making this post too long I recommend either looking back at my OpenClaw post on how to set up your own Digital Ocean VPS, or you can get one on Vultr here.
Once your VPS is ready, you can install Hermes on it with following the command:
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
Once installation is complete itâll ask you to connect your API key, once again I went with OpenAI here.
Youâll be asked to select the model during the setup, and then whether to run it locally. In both cases just hit Enter to continue with the defaults.
After the setup is complete youâll see the following below.
Here you should type âyâ and hit Enter so that it installs the gateway service, which is an important step.
Now youâll want to run the command below to have the agent kick off a setup that you can connect to remotely.
hermes dashboard --no-open --host 0.0.0.0 --port 9119
Itâll ask you to create a username and password in the process as you can see at the bottom of this screenshot above.
To keep it running after you log out you can set it up as a systemd service so it starts automatically on boot, or run the command with âtmuxâ:
tmux new -d -s hermes-dashboard âhermes dashboard --no-open --host 0.0.0.0 --port 9119â
With all that done you can go back to your Hermes desktop app, go into the systems settings, and select âGatewayâ with âRemote gatewayâ. Then where it says âRemote URLâ you can copy and paste http://<your-vps-ip>:9119 as the Remote URL. Note that Iâve purposefully Iâve hidden my IP so that nobody can target my VPS.
Now hit the blue âSign Inâ button, enter the username and password you just set, so the desktop app connects to the remote backend and youâre done!
From this point your agent is running on the VPS! You can communicate with your agent from the Hermes desktop app and it will run scheduled tasks for you whether your computer is on or off. If you do turn your computer off then just switch it on again and it reconnects to the same running agent.
OpenClaw or Hermes
Having used both OpenClaw and Hermes for a while the honest verdict is that theyâre both good and whichever one you choose will be a good choice.
OpenClaw has the larger community and the messaging-app setup has real advantages once itâs running. Iâve grown fond of my agent being available on Telegram whenever I need help.
However, where Hermes wins is the desktop experience. The native app is polished in a way that OpenClawâs web dashboard isnât, and the way in which Hermes keeps generating new skills along the way gives me the impression that itâs learning how to solve problems more effectively.
One other thing Iâve noticed is that OpenClaw has disconnected on me a few times, especially when updating forcing me to restart the gateway. Meanwhile with Hermes I havenât had that happen yet, it just seems to stay up and running the whole time.
Iâm a big believer in this agentic future, so much so that my cofounder and I are building our own agents within the crypto space with Yieldseeker. Weâve started with agents that automatically find and manage the best yield opportunities on Base, and are working on more DeFi capabilities to come.
To summarise though, if youâre already running OpenClaw and itâs working well, you probably donât need to switch. But if youâre coming to this fresh, or if youâve found OpenClawâs terminal-heavy setup off-putting, then Hermes with their desktop app is probably the easier starting point and the best choice between the two.
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