Hermes Agent is an open-source autonomous AI agent built by Nous Research and released in February 2026.
Overview
Hermes Agent is an open-source AI assistant created by Nous Research. It improves itself over time. It learns from user interactions and builds skills over time. It also remembers past projects, which helps it tackle more complex tasks. It runs locally and supports various AI models and messaging platforms. It automates workflows and cuts down on manual effort for different use cases.
Lives Where You Do
Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email, CLI — and a growing list of platforms. Start on one, pick up on another.
Grows the Longer It Runs
Persistent memory and auto-generated skills — it learns your projects and never forgets how it solved a problem.
Scheduled Automations
Natural language cron scheduling for reports, backups, and briefings — running unattended through the gateway.
Delegates & Parallelizes
Isolated subagents with their own conversations, terminals, and Python RPC scripts for zero-context-cost pipelines.
Real Sandboxing
Five backends — local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal — with container hardening and namespace isolation.
Full Web & Browser Control
Web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, text-to-speech, and multi-model reasoning.
Getting started with Hermes AI Agent becomes much easier once the setup steps are clear and structured. The process mainly involves installing the tool, connecting it with a model provider, and running your first task. Here's a simple step-by-step approach to help you avoid errors and get the agent working smoothly:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bashrc # reload shell
hermes model # choose your LLM provider
hermes # start chatting
hermes model # choose LLM provider and model
hermes tools # configure enabled tools
hermes gateway setup # set up messaging platforms
hermes doctor # diagnose any issues
