hermes-agent

Hermes Agent ☤

The self-improving AI agent built by Nous Research. It's the only agent with a built-in learning loop — it 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. 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.

Use any model you want — Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, your own endpoint, and many others. Switch with hermes model — no code changes, no lock-in.

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Quick Install

Linux, macOS, WSL2, Termux

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

Windows (native, PowerShell)

Heads up: Native Windows runs Hermes without WSL — CLI, gateway, TUI, and tools all work natively. If you'd rather use WSL2, the Linux/macOS one-liner above works there too. Found a bug? Please file issues.

Run this in PowerShell:

iex (irm https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.ps1)

The installer handles everything: uv, Python 3.11, Node.js, ripgrep, ffmpeg, and a portable Git Bash (MinGit, unpacked to %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\git — no admin required, completely isolated from any system Git install). Hermes uses this bundled Git Bash to run shell commands.

If you already have Git installed, the installer detects it and uses that instead. Otherwise a ~45MB MinGit download is all you need — it won't touch or interfere with any system Git.

Android / Termux: The tested manual path is documented in the Termux guide. On Termux, Hermes installs a curated .[termux] extra because the full .[all] extra currently pulls Android-incompatible voice dependencies.

Windows: Native Windows is fully supported — the PowerShell one-liner above installs everything. If you'd rather use WSL2, the Linux command works there too. Native Windows install lives under %LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes; WSL2 installs under ~/.hermes as on Linux.

After installation:

source ~/.bashrc    # reload shell (or: source ~/.zshrc)
hermes              # start chatting!

Troubleshooting

Windows Defender or antivirus flags uv.exe as malware

If your antivirus (Bitdefender, Windows Defender, etc.) quarantines uv.exe from the Hermes bin folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\hermes\bin\uv.exe), this is a false positive. The file is Astral's uv — the Rust Python package manager Hermes bundles to manage its Python environment. ML-based antivirus engines commonly flag unsigned Rust binaries that download and install packages.

To verify your copy is authentic:

# Install GitHub CLI if needed
winget install --id GitHub.cli

# Login to GitHub
gh auth login

# Run verification
$uv = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\bin\uv.exe"
$ver = (& $uv --version).Split(' ')[1]
[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12
$zip = "$env:TEMP\uv.zip"
Invoke-WebRequest "https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/releases/download/$ver/uv-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip" -OutFile $zip -UseBasicParsing
gh attestation verify $zip --repo astral-sh/uv
Expand-Archive $zip "$env:TEMP\uv_x" -Force
(Get-FileHash "$env:TEMP\uv_x\uv.exe").Hash -eq (Get-FileHash $uv).Hash

If attestation says "Verification succeeded" and the last line prints True, you're good.

To whitelist Hermes:

• Windows Defender: Run PowerShell as Admin → Add-MpPreference -ExclusionPath "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\hermes\bin"
• Bitdefender: Add an exception in the Bitdefender console (Protection > Antivirus > Settings > Manage Exceptions)
• Whitelist the folder, not the file hash — Hermes updates uv and the hash changes every version

For more context, see the upstream Astral reports: astral-sh/uv#13553, astral-sh/uv#15011, astral-sh/uv#10079.

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Getting Started

hermes              # Interactive CLI — start a conversation
hermes model        # Choose your LLM provider and model
hermes tools        # Configure which tools are enabled
hermes config set   # Set individual config values
hermes config get   # Print individual config values
hermes gateway      # Start the messaging gateway (Telegram, Discord, etc.)
hermes setup        # Run the full setup wizard (configures everything at once)
hermes claw migrate # Migrate from OpenClaw (if coming from OpenClaw)
hermes update       # Update to the latest version
hermes doctor       # Diagnose any issues

📖 Full documentation →

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Skip the API-key collection — Nous Portal

Hermes works with whatever provider you want — that's not changing. But if you'd rather not collect five separate API keys for the model, web search, image generation, TTS, and a cloud browser, Nous Portal covers all of them under one subscription:

• 300+ models — pick any of them with /model <name>
• Tool Gateway — web search (Firecrawl), image generation (FAL), text-to-speech (OpenAI), cloud browser (Browser Use), all routed through your sub. No extra accounts.

One command from a fresh install:

hermes setup --portal

That logs you in via OAuth, sets Nous as your provider, and turns on the Tool Gateway. Check what's wired up any time with hermes portal info. Full details on the Tool Gateway docs page.

You can still bring your own keys per-tool whenever you want — the gateway is per-backend, not all-or-nothing.

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CLI vs Messaging Quick Reference

Hermes has two entry points: start the terminal UI with hermes, or run the gateway and talk to it from Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, or Email. Once you're in a conversation, many slash commands are shared across both interfaces.

For the full command lists, see the CLI guide and the Messaging Gateway guide.

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Documentation

All documentation lives at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs:

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Migrating from OpenClaw

If you're coming from OpenClaw, Hermes can automatically import your settings, memories, skills, and API keys.

During first-time setup: The setup wizard (hermes setup) automatically detects ~/.openclaw and offers to migrate before configuration begins.

Anytime after install:

hermes claw migrate              # Interactive migration (full preset)
hermes claw migrate --dry-run    # Preview what would be migrated
hermes claw migrate --preset user-data   # Migrate without secrets
hermes claw migrate --overwrite  # Overwrite existing conflicts

What gets imported:

• SOUL.md — persona file
• Memories — MEMORY.md and USER.md entries
• Skills — user-created skills → ~/.hermes/skills/openclaw-imports/
• Command allowlist — approval patterns
• Messaging settings — platform configs, allowed users, working directory
• API keys — allowlisted secrets (Telegram, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs)
• TTS assets — workspace audio files
• Workspace instructions — AGENTS.md (with --workspace-target)

See hermes claw migrate --help for all options, or use the openclaw-migration skill for an interactive agent-guided migration with dry-run previews.

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Contributing

We welcome contributions! See the Contributing Guide for development setup, code style, and PR process.

Quick start for contributors — use the standard installer, then work from the full git checkout it creates at $HERMES_HOME/hermes-agent (usually ~/.hermes/hermes-agent). This matches the layout used by hermes update, the managed venv, lazy dependencies, gateway, and docs tooling.

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
cd "${HERMES_HOME:-$HOME/.hermes}/hermes-agent"
uv pip install -e ".[all,dev]"
scripts/run_tests.sh

Manual clone fallback (for throwaway clones/CI where you intentionally do not want the managed install layout):

Create the venv outside the cloned source tree — a venv inside the directory the agent operates from can be wiped by a relative-path command the agent runs against its own checkout, destroying the running runtime mid-session.

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv venv ~/.hermes/venvs/hermes-dev --python 3.11
source ~/.hermes/venvs/hermes-dev/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[all,dev]"
scripts/run_tests.sh

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Community

• 💬 Discord
• 📚 Skills Hub
• 🐛 Issues
• 🔌 computer-use-linux — Linux desktop-control MCP server for Hermes and other MCP hosts, with AT-SPI accessibility trees, Wayland/X11 input, screenshots, and compositor window targeting.
• 🔌 HermesClaw — Community WeChat bridge: Run Hermes Agent and OpenClaw on the same WeChat account.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Built by Nous Research.