Hermes Agent

A self-improving AI agent from Nous Research that turns experience into reusable skills, remembers you across sessions and works from chat or a terminal.

259k stars, 57k forks Python On GitHub since July 2025

Visit website View on GitHub How to run it

What is Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent is a long-running agent with a learning loop: after complex tasks it creates skills, refines them as it uses them, and keeps curated memory and searchable past sessions. It has a full terminal interface and a single gateway for Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp and Signal, so it can work on a cloud server while you message it from your phone. A built-in scheduler runs tasks like daily reports unattended, and subagents handle parallel work. It runs on a small VPS, a GPU cluster or serverless infrastructure, with any model provider.

Good fit if

  • You want one agent that gets better at your recurring tasks instead of starting fresh each time.
  • You want scheduled jobs and reports described in plain language.
  • You are moving from OpenClaw, Claude Code or Codex CLI: it can import settings, memories and skills.

Look elsewhere if

  • You mainly want an assistant inside many chat apps with native apps on every platform: OpenClaw.
  • You need a coding agent for your repository: OpenCode or Goose.

Before you adopt it

Hermes Agent is MIT-licensed, and the company sells no paid tier inside the repository; Nous Portal is one of several model providers you can pick. An agent that runs shell commands and keeps memory needs careful limits on what it can touch.

Drafted with AI from the project's README and repository data, then checked against that data on 30 October 2026. Report a correction

Hermes Agent health: is it still maintained?

76 of 100, actively developed

  • Activity
    40,462 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 1 November 2026.
    30 / 30
  • Contributors
    7 people wrote the latest 100 commits; the most active wrote 51% of them.
    12 / 20
  • Releases
    15 releases in the last 12 months; the latest, v0.22.5, on 23 October 2026.
    19 / 20
  • Replies to issues
    Too few recent issues from outside the team to measure, so this part gets a neutral score.
    10 / 20
  • Security practices
    No OpenSSF Scorecard for this repository yet, so this part gets a neutral score.
    5 / 10

Read from GitHub on 1 November 2026. How the score works

Hermes Agent license: is it open source?

Hermes Agent uses MIT, an open-source license approved by the OSI.

  1. July 2025First published on GitHub.
  2. TodayMIT.

How to run Hermes Agent yourself

Docker
Dockerfile or compose file in the repository
Compose file
docker-compose.yml: 2 services
Setup effort
2 of 5, judged from the compose file
Kubernetes
No Helm chart in the repository
Desktop and mobile
No app builds in GitHub releases
Interface languages
15 languages

Install instructions: hermes-agent.nousresearch.com or the README on GitHub.

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Questions about Hermes Agent

Is Hermes Agent open source?

Yes. Hermes Agent is published under MIT, an OSI-approved open-source license.

Is Hermes Agent still maintained?

Its health score is 76 of 100 (actively developed). It had 40,462 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 1 November 2026, and its latest release came out on 23 October 2026.

How do I run Hermes Agent?

You can run it with Docker. The README on GitHub has the exact steps.

What are the alternatives to Hermes Agent?

Close alternatives in the AI chat & local LLMs category include LibreChat, LobeHub, Chatbox.