Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent framework by Nous Research. It connects any AI model to your existing tools, orchestrates specialist agents, executes multi-step workflows, and learns from every interaction.
Hermes Agent
Open-Source AI Agent Framework by Nous Research
Automate. Delegate. Scale.
Overview
Executive Summary
⚡ End-to-End Automation
Hermes connects any AI model to your existing tools — Slack, Gmail, GitHub, Notion, Jira — and executes multi-step workflows autonomously. From drafting emails to shipping code, it handles the full pipeline without human intervention.
🤖 24/7 AI Workforce
Agents run around the clock on Telegram, Discord, Slack, or API. They never sleep, never forget context, and improve over time through a persistent skills system that learns from every interaction.
🔒 Your Data Stays Yours
Fully self-hosted on your infrastructure. No data leaves your environment. Supports local models, private API keys, and credential pooling across multiple providers for maximum security and cost control.
📈 Measurable ROI
Industry benchmarks show 171% average ROI from agentic AI deployments. Hermes delivers real cost savings from day one — automating repetitive tasks that consume 10-15 hours per employee per week.
Value
Why Hermes Agent — The Bottom Line
What it actually does for your business — no jargon, no hype
💰 Replace a Full-Time Role
A fully configured Hermes deployment costs a fraction of a single employee. No salary, no benefits, no office space. For the price of a few contractor hours, you get a 24/7 workforce.
🌙 24/7 Operations
Hermes never sleeps, never takes vacation, never calls in sick. Nights, weekends, holidays — your workflows keep running without interruption.
🚀 The Multiplier Effect
One person with Hermes produces the output of a small team. Research, reporting, outreach, monitoring — in parallel, across multiple specialists. You scale without hiring.
🔌 Works With What You Have
Email, Slack, Google Drive, Notion, Jira. Hermes connects to the tools you already use. No rip-and-replace, no vendor lock-in, no custom integration projects.
👥 No Hiring Risk
No onboarding, no management overhead, no PIPs, no turnover. You don't need to find, interview, train, or retain talent. The agent comes pre-trained.
⚡ Done in Hours, Not Days
Tasks that normally take a full day — research reports, competitive analysis, email sequences, data aggregation — are completed in hours. Set it up once, collect results on autopilot.
Real Use Cases
From the Trenches — Real Businesses Running on Hermes
Actual users, actual numbers — pulled from the community
@mvanhorn — Full Business Operations Pipeline
Achieved an end-to-end content operations and client workflow pipeline that runs 24/7. Built Hermes agents for pre-call client research (saving 20-30 min per call), automated podcast digestion converting 10+ hours of weekly listening into a 2-hour workflow, and auto-drafted meeting notes into client follow-ups. Added lead scraping from YC, Twitter, and Reddit, plus daily news briefings delivered automatically to Telegram and Discord.
@NathanWilbanks_ — $100K+ Client Work Automated
Delivered over $100,000 in client work value entirely through autonomous Hermes agents — the longest-running documented business automation on the platform with a 297-day continuous streak. Generated 5 billion+ tokens and 900,000+ seconds of compute time running 24/7, replacing an entire client service delivery pipeline without human intervention.
@akashnet — Real-Time Inventory Tracking
Built a live inventory tracking system for logistics ops using Hermes's persistent memory and subagent parallelization. The system maintains context over time, processes real-time inventory data feeds, and runs multiple parallel agents to monitor stock levels, orders, and supply chain events simultaneously — ideal for e-commerce and warehouse operations.
@adiix_official — Prediction Markets Trading Bot
Moved from guessing Yes/No prices to data-driven prediction market trading. Runs 4 analysis layers in parallel — order book depth, on-chain wallet movements, lag between news events and price action, and position changes. All coordinated through Hermes's Polymarket module and News Skill running simultaneously. The agent is self-improving: it writes strategy notes after every session and adjusts its approach.
Source: hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-stories
Pain Points
The Problem We Solve
🔄 Manual Repetitive Work
Employees spend 10-15 hours per week on tasks that could be automated: email triage, report generation, data entry, scheduling, and status updates.
🔌 Disconnected Tools
Data scattered across 5+ tools with no single source of truth. Teams waste hours copying information between Slack, email, project trackers, and docs.
👁️ No Governance or Audit Trail
Automated workflows run without visibility. No logging, no accountability, no way to trace what happened or why a decision was made.
📊 Unclear AI ROI
Companies invest in AI tools but can't measure impact. Generic chatbots add noise, not value. There's no structured way to connect AI to real business processes.
Platform
Hermes Agent: Your AI Operations Platform
- Choose any AI model — Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, or local models via OpenRouter
- Connect to 50+ tools — Slack, Gmail, GitHub, Drive, Jira, Notion, APIs, databases
- Deploy 900+ skills — search, code, email, analysis, calendar, documents, social, automation
- Run on any platform — CLI, Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Slack, API, or webhooks
- Specialist agents handle domains — engineering, marketing, revenue, QA, infrastructure
- Persistent memory — agents remember context across sessions and improve over time
01
Architecture
How It All Works Together
Architecture
Architecture — How It Works
🧠 AI Model Layer (The Engine)
Your choice of any AI model. OpenRouter routes requests to the best model for each task. Supports Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, and local models. Credential pooling rotates across multiple API keys automatically.
⚙️ Hermes Gateway (The Orchestrator)
The central brain that routes tasks, manages agents, and orchestrates multi-step workflows. Runs on CLI, Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, or API. Includes context compression, session management, and security enforcement.
📚 Skills Layer — 900+ Capabilities
Reusable skill documents that encode procedures, workflows, and domain knowledge. Skills accumulate over time — the agent learns from corrections, discovers new workflows, and persists them for future use.
🔗 Your Tools & Data
Connects to Slack, Gmail, GitHub, Google Drive, Jira, Notion, Airtable, Linear, and 50+ more. MCP server integration for custom tools. Full API access via webhooks and cron scheduling.
Architecture
Agent Structure — Your AI Workforce
MARK_II orchestrates 10 specialist agents across 3 teams
👑 MARK_II (CEO)
Orchestrator — routes tasks, manages agents, coordinates workflows
🏗️ Engineering
5 agents
🏗️ Ingegno
💻 Codice
🔧 Arco
✅ Guardia
📝 Memento
📊 Marketing
2 agents
📋 Stella
🚀 Idea
💰 Revenue
3 agents
💰 Faro
🔬 Oracolo
⚠️ Avaro
| Agent | Role | What They Do |
|---|---|---|
| 👑 MARK_II | CEO Orchestrator | Routes tasks, selects specialists, coordinates workflows |
| 🏗️ Ingegno | Lead Architect | System architecture, technical design, multi-tenant systems |
| 💻 Codice | Senior Engineer | Deep coding, code review, patterns, performance optimization |
| 🔧 Arco | Infrastructure Engineer | DevOps, deployment, monitoring, security hardening |
| ✅ Guardia | QA Manager | Testing strategy, quality standards, acceptance, code review |
| 📝 Memento | Memory Steward | Wiki management, knowledge organization, long-term memory |
| 📋 Stella | Product Strategist | Requirements analysis, UX design, feature opportunities |
| 🚀 Idea | Growth Hacker | User acquisition, retention, marketing, viral loops |
| 💰 Faro | Revenue Architect | Business models, monetization, financial planning, pricing |
| 🔬 Oracolo | Tech Innovator | Emerging tech research, prototyping, feasibility analysis |
| ⚠️ Avaro | Devil's Advocate | Risk analysis, critical thinking, edge cases, threat modeling |
Use Cases
What Hermes Delivers — Real Use Cases
🛒 E-commerce Owner
Auto-generate product descriptions from specs, compile inventory reports from multiple sources, draft customer support emails, and monitor competitor pricing — all running on a nightly cron schedule.
🎯 Recruitment Lead
AI screens incoming CVs against job requirements, ranks candidates, schedules interviews via calendar integration, and sends personalized status updates to applicants automatically.
🚀 Startup Founder
Ship MVPs in hours: generate landing pages, write cold outreach sequences, set up automated onboarding flows, and create investor update decks from raw metrics.
📋 Product Manager
Real-time dashboards from Jira/Linear data, automated roadmap updates, weekly stakeholder digests, and feature request triage — all synced to your project management tools.
💻 Developer / Agency
Automated PR reviews with inline comments, CI/CD monitoring with failure alerts, bug report summaries from GitHub issues, and codebase documentation that stays current.
📝 Content Marketer
Weekly newsletters drafted from RSS feeds and trending topics, social media posts scheduled across platforms, SEO briefs generated from keyword research, and content calendars maintained automatically.
03
Memory & Knowledge — The Wiki System
Persistent, structured, agent-maintained
Memory
Persistent Knowledge — The Memory Stack
Your agent never forgets — wiki-primary architecture with multi-sync
📚 Wiki-First Architecture
Long-term memory is stored in a structured Obsidian wiki vault (mark_ii_wiki/). Every session compounds knowledge — Memento specialist curates 50+ interconnected pages covering agents, concepts, operations, and projects.
🔄 Multi-Platform Sync
The wiki vault syncs seamlessly across all devices via Obsidian Sync (paid tier), iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or OneDrive. Changes made on any device reflect everywhere — your knowledge is always up to date.
🧠 Session Memory + Skills
Short-term context lives in Hermes session memory and session_search. Reusable workflows are saved as Skills (SKILL.md documents) that the agent loads automatically when relevant tasks appear.
🌙 Nightly Auto-Sync
A daily cron job (02:00 UTC) runs Memento — the Memory Steward — to perform gap analysis between Hermes memory and the wiki. New discoveries are auto-documented, stale entries flagged, and the knowledge base stays current.
The Wiki
The LLM Wiki — A Self-Building Knowledge Base
53 pages, 6 domains, maintained by the agent itself
The wiki is built on Obsidian — a powerful knowledge management tool that turns plain Markdown files into an interconnected knowledge graph. The vault (mark_ii_wiki/) lives on the user's local machine and syncs seamlessly across all devices via Obsidian Sync, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or OneDrive. Every file is plain Markdown — no lock-in, no proprietary format, fully portable. The wiki covers 53 pages across 6 domains: entities (agents, users), concepts (protocols, architecture), operations (schedules, recovery), projects, plans, and raw research — each with structured frontmatter, confidence scores, sources, and last-evaluated dates.
The wiki is the sole long-term memory — MemPalace was fully removed. Memento (Memory Steward) maintains it, adding cross-references, pruning stale entries, and validating facts. The graph view shows how specialists, concepts, and projects all interconnect.
The graph view reveals how 50+ wiki pages interconnect — agents, concepts, operations, and projects visualized as a knowledge graph.
02
Security and Privacy
Your data is protected at every layer
Reliability
Disaster Recovery
Your system is protected — here is how
☁️ Daily iCloud Backup
Automated backup every 3AM — full ~/.hermes/ state, skills, profiles, wrappers, sessions stored as compressed archives on iCloud Drive.
⏱️ 7-Day Retention
Rolling 7-day backup window ensures you can recover from any incident within the past week — even if corruption went unnoticed.
🔄 ≤20-Minute Restore
One-command restoration from iCloud with bash restore.sh: verify integrity, extract archives, replace ~/.hermes/. Full operational recovery in under 20 minutes.
🛡️ Wiki Immunity
The Obsidian wiki on iCloud Drive is completely outside the ~/.hermes/ backup scope — survives even total agent loss. Knowledge is never lost.
3-layer defense: daily encrypted backups + WSL VM export + wiki on iCloud. Integrity checks every Sunday.
Extensibility
Skill Curation System
Your agent grows smarter with every task
🧠 Persistent Skills
Hermes saves reusable procedures as skills — build a growing library of expertise that loads automatically into every session. Skills accumulate over time, making the agent better at your specific stack.
📌 Pin What Matters
Pin critical skills so they're always active — no need to load them manually. The curator manages lifecycle: create, update, delete, and organize skills into categories.
🔄 Self-Improving
When Hermes solves a complex problem or gets corrected, it persists that knowledge as a skill. The system continuously refines itself through real usage — not just static documentation.
🔍 Skills Hub
Browse, search, and install from a growing public registry. Community-contributed skills for everything from DevOps to data science — or publish your own with a single command.