Hermes Agent is described in its README as 'the self-improving AI agent built by Nous Research' — an agent with a built-in learning loop that creates skills from experience, improves them during use, searches its own past conversations, and builds a user model across sessions. It's MIT-licensed and developed in the open at github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent.

Hermes Agent is built by Nous Research. The repo (NousResearch/hermes-agent) lists 300+ contributors, but the vast majority of commits come from Nous Research maintainers — the top contributor alone has 2,500+ commits. It's released under the MIT license.

The official installer is a single curl command from the README: `curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash`. It installs uv, Python 3.11, Node.js, ripgrep, and ffmpeg for you. Full docs at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/getting-started/installation.

Native Windows is not supported. The README explicitly lists supported platforms as Linux, macOS, WSL2, and Android via Termux. On Windows, use WSL2 — the installer runs the same one-liner inside your WSL2 distro.

Python 3.11, per the README and the pyproject.toml in the repo. The install script automatically installs Python 3.11 via uv, so you don't need to set it up yourself — git is the only prerequisite.

The README lists Nous Portal, OpenRouter (200+ models), z.ai/GLM, Kimi/Moonshot, MiniMax, OpenAI, and custom endpoints as built-in providers. v0.8.0 also added native Google AI Studio support, and Anthropic plus Mistral are included as dependencies. Run `hermes model` after install to pick one.

The README lists Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email, and CLI as built-in deployment targets. v0.6.0 added Feishu/Lark and WeCom to the set. Each platform is configured through the same `hermes setup` flow.

Hermes Agent itself is free and MIT-licensed. The costs you pay are to your chosen model provider (Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, etc.). Nous Portal offers free MiMo v2 Pro access per the v0.8.0 release notes, and you can also point Hermes at a local model endpoint.

The install script clones the repo to `~/.hermes/hermes-agent/` by default and symlinks the `hermes` binary to `~/.local/bin/hermes`. You can override the install directory by setting `HERMES_INSTALL_DIR` before running the script.

Run `hermes update` — the CLI has a built-in updater documented in the official install guide. If you prefer manual control, `cd` into the install directory, `git pull`, and re-run `uv pip install -e ".[all]"` inside the venv.

Yes. The README explicitly supports Android via Termux, and the install script auto-detects Termux and installs the `.[termux]` extra. Same one-liner, no rooting needed.

The README describes it as a closed loop where Hermes 'creates skills from experience, improves them during use, nudges itself to persist knowledge, searches its own past conversations, and builds a deepening model of who you are across sessions.' It's the feature the README uses to differentiate Hermes from a stateless chat assistant.

Skills are reusable, composable capabilities. Hermes ships with native support for the open agentskills.io catalog (referenced in the README) and can also generate and save its own skills from working sessions — the self-writing skill system is part of the learning loop.

Yes. v0.6.0 (March 30, 2026) added an MCP server mode so Hermes can expose its tools to other MCP clients. v0.8.0 (April 8, 2026) added MCP OAuth 2.1 for authenticated MCP connections — both highlighted in the official release notes.

v0.6.0 (March 30, 2026) added an official Docker container — it's listed as a highlight in that release's GitHub notes. Prior to v0.6.0, the only supported install path was the curl script plus a local Python environment.

The README lists six terminal backends for tool execution: local, Docker, SSH, Daytona, Singularity, and Modal. They let you run Hermes's commands in an isolated environment ranging from a normal shell to an ephemeral serverless container.

v0.7.0 (April 3, 2026) made memory a pluggable provider interface — third-party backends implement a provider ABC and register through the plugin system. Honcho is the reference plugin with profile-scoped host/peer resolution, and it's used as the dialectic user-model backend described in the README.

The README quickstart is: `source ~/.bashrc` to reload your shell, then run `hermes` to start chatting, `hermes model` to pick a provider, `hermes tools` to configure tools, and `hermes setup` for the full wizard. All of these are listed in the README's post-install section.

The official repository is github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent — MIT licensed, ~50k stars, ~6.5k forks, and 3,700+ commits on main at the time of writing. Homepage: hermes-agent.nousresearch.com.

The README links three community channels: the Nous Research Discord (discord.gg/NousResearch), GitHub Issues at github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/issues for bugs, and GitHub Discussions on the same repo for longer-form questions and skill recipes.

Remove the CLI symlink and the install directory: `rm ~/.local/bin/hermes` then `rm -rf ~/.hermes/hermes-agent`. If you set `HERMES_INSTALL_DIR` during install, remove that path instead. No system-wide packages are touched.

No. This is a fan-made community site. It is not operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Nous Research. All content here is sourced from public material — the GitHub repo, release notes, and the official documentation at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com. Hermes Agent and Nous Research are trademarks of their respective owners.

No. The README lists the CLI and chat gateways (Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email) as the built-in interfaces — there is no official browser UI in v0.8.0. If you want to talk to Hermes from a browser, the two community paths are (1) run it on a Matrix/Discord/Slack workspace and use that platform's web client, or (2) point an MCP-compatible editor at Hermes's MCP server mode (added in v0.6.0).

Yes — a Linux VPS is the typical deployment. The official requirements are 2 GB RAM minimum (more if you run local models), ~1 GB disk, and Python 3.11 (installed automatically by the curl script). Run the same one-line installer over SSH. For command isolation on a shared host, enable the SSH or Docker sandbox backend from the README so Hermes's shell tools execute inside a container rather than on your VPS filesystem.

The upstream docs are at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs — that is the source of truth for installation, configuration, tools, channels, and the CLI reference. This community site (hermesagents.net) pulls facts from those docs plus the NousResearch/hermes-agent README and the GitHub release notes. If upstream and this site ever disagree, trust upstream.

No. Several unrelated products use the name 'Hermes' — enterprise security agents, email clients, middleware tools. This site only covers Hermes Agent by Nous Research: the open-source self-improving AI agent at github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent. If you are looking for a Hermes security product, this is not the right site.