Hermes Agent by Nous Research
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 10 agent harnesses
An easy-to-set-up personal AI agent that connects to chat apps and home tools and keeps long-term memory, though critics find it bloated and slow on local models.
An easy-to-set-up personal AI agent that connects to chat apps and home tools and keeps long-term memory, though critics find it bloated and slow on local models.
161 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 129
- criticize it
- 32
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 1 month
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 129 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Connects to chat and home tools
“Native gateway support. I've been primarily using mine through Element and it has largely been great.”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Semgrep: GLM 5.2 beats Claude in our Cyber Benchmarks” “It's been wonderful for stuff like, say, giving Hermes an account on my Home Assistant server”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “A self hosted AI software factory” “having Hermes in slack where multiple teammates can share a context window is indeed nice”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Claude Tag” - Comment from 31 Aug 2026 in “OpenClaw 2.0, Accidentally”
- Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “HarnessTax: How Much Does the Harness Matter for Coding Agents?”
- Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “What Is a Harness?”
Easy setup, low barrier
“I like Hermes because it simultaneously lowers barrier of entry and shows you what possibilities are unlocked by agents.”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “qm” “It was really easy to setup and I've been getting some value out of it but hasn't been the craziest thing in the world.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?” “it took hermes just around 10-15 minutes to build first iteration. I am impressed.”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Local, CPU-Friendly, High-Quality TTS (Text-to-Speech) with Kokoro” Memory, skills and multi-agent orchestration
“Hermes also supports project-scoped kanban boards and can orchestrate across multiple specialized Hermes profiles.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Migrate from OpenClaw” “It has long-term memory (vs project by project) and constantly reviews its output to improve its skills”
Comment from 24 May 2026 in “What I Actually Use Hermes and Obsidian For (Full Setup and Use Cases)” “It can be set up to delegate to OpenCode for better multitasking and context usage as well.”
Comment from 7 Aug 2026 in “Qwen3.8 Max now ranked as the best overall model by agentic index” Works reliably with little maintenance
“Yeah maybe Claude/OpenCode/KiloCode/Hermes/whatever are not as minimal as Pi but they also work right now.”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage” “Hermes usually works without maintenance more or less but I don't really trust these agents much”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “What Meta got right with Muse” “This setup is so plain and simple that it just works, and it works wonders.”
Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Omnara – Open-source alternative to Claude Managed Agents”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Bloated with rarely used features
“it's packed to the gills with stuff you'll probably use one time just to test it”
Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “qm” “Hermes seems to suffer from the same problem: why do I need to download skills for managing Spotify playlists or pokemon or minecraft”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Migrate from OpenClaw” “they've each become so bloated with features that they're far more difficult to use and bug prone”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Muse – Meta’s personal AI agent” - Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Token-maxxing is dead, OpenRouter's token usage plateaus”
Heavy prompts, slow on local models
“hermes is not optimized right for local agents which will somewhat affect your work balance”
Comment from 23 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: Which harness do you use with Qwen3.8 27B? And why?” “inflated by the massive overhead that is the system prompt hermes generates for each request”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Token-maxxing is dead, OpenRouter's token usage plateaus” “Models are too slow and expensive for this to work with tools like OpenClaw, Hermes, etc.”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: What's the AI Revolution "Model T Ford"?” Limited real productivity gains
“Hermes in particular is a very well-built system, very easy to have fun with, but I had hard time improving my actual day-to-day productivity with it”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “You Need a Windows Remote Desktop, Not an OpenClaw” “It was really easy to setup and I've been getting some value out of it but hasn't been the craziest thing in the world.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Is anyone actually using OpenClaw?” Barred from Claude subscription plans
“I can't even have Claude assist in creating a Hermes or OpenClaw agent that utilizes a 3rd party API?”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Claude Code refuses requests or charges extra if your commits mention "OpenClaw"” “restricting third-party agent systems like OpenClaw and Hermes from using the monthly plan”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “HERMES.md: Anthropic bug causes $200 extra charge, refuses refund”
Other agent harnesses people recommend
The four most recommended other agent harnesses, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hermes Agent by Nous ResearchThis page | 129 | 32 | 80% | 10 | 1 mo3 owners | Approved |
| Munder Difflin | 11 | 10 | 52% | 1 | — | — |
| Omnigent | 10 | 1 | 91% | 4 | — | Approved |
| Raven | 8 | 3 | 73% | 3 | — | — |
| Gambit agent harness | 8 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 187 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“This setup is so plain and simple that it just works, and it works wonders.”
“inflated by the massive overhead that is the system prompt hermes generates for each request”
“I use hermes on my work windows computer and grok bot in the cloud on everything else that computer use is so useful and important”
“Hermes usually works without maintenance more or less but I don't really trust these agents much”
“Aspects of all harnesses are great, but there is always something that bugs me.”
“hermes is not optimized right for local agents which will somewhat affect your work balance”
“you can be reasonably sure that behavior change is coming from the model and not the harness”
“desktop, web and mobile interfaces are already provided by or available for Hermes”
“they've each become so bloated with features that they're far more difficult to use and bug prone”
“With local llms they seem to work well with maximalist harnesses like omp, Hermes etc.”
“When people talk about things like OpenClaw and Hermes being a new operating system paradigm”
“My wife has countered this by using Hermes and some handcrafted master files/db.”
“how much feedback they give about what they are doing. They take you along for the ride, which builds trust”
“I can run any task in any of my 30 or so self hosted tools from a single chat interface”
“Tie it into something like Hermes and you have a pretty powerful AI assistant in a box.”
“Hermes has /handoff to go from cli or desktop to IM, possibly other ways.”
“It's been wonderful for stuff like, say, giving Hermes an account on my Home Assistant server”
“Models are too slow and expensive for this to work with tools like OpenClaw, Hermes, etc.”
“Hermes injects the date/time into the stream, and you tell it to web search for anything newer than the training cutoff date. Works like a charm”
“comparing CPU and RAM usage of the whole container over time w/ OpenCode, hermes, pi, codex, smol”
“It can be set up to delegate to OpenCode for better multitasking and context usage as well.”
“Yeah maybe Claude/OpenCode/KiloCode/Hermes/whatever are not as minimal as Pi but they also work right now.”
“I like Hermes because it simultaneously lowers barrier of entry and shows you what possibilities are unlocked by agents.”
“it's packed to the gills with stuff you'll probably use one time just to test it”
“I ended up switching to Hermes and aggressively disabling tools/skills and it's been pretty fine so far.”
“mature great open source tools that don't require a anti-consumer company's hands in the jar”
“it took hermes just around 10-15 minutes to build first iteration. I am impressed.”
“Native gateway support. I've been primarily using mine through Element and it has largely been great.”
“having Hermes in slack where multiple teammates can share a context window is indeed nice”
“Hermes seems to suffer from the same problem: why do I need to download skills for managing Spotify playlists or pokemon or minecraft”
“Hermes also supports project-scoped kanban boards and can orchestrate across multiple specialized Hermes profiles.”
“It has long-term memory (vs project by project) and constantly reviews its output to improve its skills”
“with the likes of Opencode / pi / hermes I don't really find the "Claude Code agent loop" part particularly interesting.”
“restricting third-party agent systems like OpenClaw and Hermes from using the monthly plan”
“As I play more with Agents like Hermes and Openclaw I've come to realise these truly are the new GUI.”
“I can't even have Claude assist in creating a Hermes or OpenClaw agent that utilizes a 3rd party API?”
“It was really easy to setup and I've been getting some value out of it but hasn't been the craziest thing in the world.”
“I also don't think the Hermes harness is good enough for development-via-text like openclaw+opus is.”
“Hermes in particular is a very well-built system, very easy to have fun with, but I had hard time improving my actual day-to-day productivity with it”
“Hermes and QuickJS both come out looking very good in these (in terms of performance vs. binary size)”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.