Hermes Agent
Nous Research's open-source and self-hostable AI agent, officially available for free under the MIT license, supports persistent memory, automatic skill generation, multi-platform access, and isolated sandboxes. It can be downloaded for desktop or terminal installation.
Updated: 2026-10-26
What is Hermes Agent?
Hermes Agent is an open-source agent developed by Nous Research. The tagline on its official website is "The Agent That Grows With You". Its differentiator lies not in the model itself, but in treating the agent as a long-running resident process: it can remember your projects, develop skills on its own, and be attached to chat software to be summoned at any time. The official FAQ clearly states that it is licensed under MIT and can be self-hosted, with model service providers and optional hosting services charged separately.
Who is it for?
- Developers who want to have full control over their data and deployment: the official provides desktop versions for macOS 12+ / Windows 10/11 and installation commands for the Linux terminal.
- People who want to attach the agent to their daily chat apps and don't want to specifically open the terminal for a single task.
- Teams working on scheduled tasks and pipelines that use sub-agents to isolate context and terminals.
- For tech-savvy enthusiasts, the official website also offers cloud deployment hosting options and a community portal.
Key features
6Lives Everywhere
Officially supports Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email and CLI. One agent has one memory, covering multiple entry points.
Persistent Memory
The official description states that it learns your projects, automatically generates skills, and remembers how it solved problems previously.
Focused Automation
Automate tasks using natural language, allowing reports, backups, briefings and other such tasks to run unattended.
Tasks Multiplied
Isolated sub-agents each have independent conversations, terminals, and Python RPC scripts, and the official states that this enables zero-context-cost pipelining.
Browse the Web
Web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, speech-to-text and multi-model inference.
Isolated Sandboxing
The official version states that it provides five backends: local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, and Modal, with container hardening and namespace isolation.
How to use Hermes Agent
- The official installation command is `curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash`.
- Before executing it, it is recommended to open the script and check it first to confirm.
- This is an operation where you directly hand executable code to the shell.
- The official FAQ reminds: Be sure to back up the Hermes data directory before changing computers.
- Stopping the local agent only ends the process.
- the saved conversations, memories, and skills will not be automatically deleted.
- The Free tier only includes free models and standard speed limits.
- the official prices for Plus / Super / Ultra are $20 / $100 / $200 per month respectively.
- All tiers include 200+ models, usage of managed tools, higher speed limits and monthly quotas.
- Estimate your own usage before subscribing.
- Sandboxes and automatically generated skills all perform external actions, and you are responsible for judging the security of third-party skills.
- the official website reminds that community services and model quotas are subject to the current description on the Nous Portal.
Traffic & popularity
Data month Sep 2026
Hermes Agent receives about 1.9M visits per month.
Monthly visits
11 monthsTraffic sources
- Search52.8%
- Direct31.4%
- Referrals11.5%
- Social3.2%
- AI assistants1.1%
Top countries
- United States19.4%
- China17.4%
- Indonesia7.6%
- India5.6%
- Brazil4.0%
Estimated from third-party traffic data.
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