Quickstart
Install Hermes and start your first conversation in under 2 minutes
CLI Usage
Learn the interactive terminal interface, slash commands, and keybindings
Messaging Gateway
Connect Hermes to Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, and more
Skills System
Procedural memory that grows with every complex task you complete
What is Hermes Agent?
Hermes is a self-improving AI agent built by Nous Research. Unlike conventional agents that reset after every session, Hermes builds up a persistent model of you and your work — creating skills from experience, improving them during use, and searching its own past conversations to recall relevant context. You can run it on a $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure that costs nearly nothing when idle. It’s not tied to your laptop — talk to it from Telegram while it works on a cloud VM.Key capabilities
Closed learning loop
Autonomous skill creation after complex tasks. Skills self-improve during use. FTS5 session search with LLM summarization for cross-session recall.
Any model, no lock-in
Use Nous Portal, OpenRouter (200+ models), OpenAI, Anthropic, or your own endpoint. Switch with
hermes model — no code changes.Lives where you do
Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, and CLI — all from a single gateway process. Voice memo transcription included.
Runs anywhere
Six terminal backends: local, Docker, SSH, Daytona, Singularity, and Modal. Serverless persistence means your environment hibernates when idle.
40+ built-in tools
Terminal, file ops, web search, browser automation, code execution, image generation, TTS, and more — all configurable per platform.
MCP integration
Connect any MCP server to extend Hermes with external tools, APIs, and data sources.
Quick install
hermes command. No prerequisites except git.
After installation:
Windows native is not supported. Install WSL2 first, then run the command above.
Common entry points
| What you want to do | Command |
|---|---|
| Start a conversation | hermes |
| Choose your LLM | hermes model |
| Enable/disable tools | hermes tools |
| Set up messaging platforms | hermes gateway setup |
| Run the setup wizard | hermes setup |
| Diagnose issues | hermes doctor |
| Update to latest version | hermes update |
Built by Nous Research
Hermes Agent is open source under the MIT license and built by Nous Research, the team behind the Hermes model family and cutting-edge AI research.- Discord community
- Skills Hub — community-contributed skills
- GitHub Issues
- GitHub Discussions