a2db110ccc
* feat(auth): Nous free tier core: anonymous identity minted on first use, welcome inference, shared-store scoping A fresh install with no provider sets up a free Nous identity (anonymous auth method of the nous provider) instead of forcing the setup wizard. The identity is persisted through the same path a real login uses, so the resolver ladder is unchanged. Two seams differ: token acquisition re-exchanges the anon credential (no refresh token), and routing pins the welcome host's single model nous/welcome. One identity per shared store; nous.guest: false turns the free tier off. * test(auth): free tier core contracts: lifecycle, resolver precedence, exchange seam, model pin * docs(user-guide): free tier and signing in New page explaining what a fresh install gets before any key or sign-in (free inference on nous/welcome plus connectors), how the free tier coexists with a user's own API key, how to sign in with hermes auth upgrade and keep connectors, how to turn the free tier off with nous.guest, what hermes logout does in each state, a troubleshooting table, and a plain privacy note. Wired into the Using Hermes sidebar. * fix(auth): logout leaves the free tier alone and clears the shared store for a real Nous account Logging out of the free tier is a no-op: it is not a login, so nothing is cleared and the user is told they were never signed in. Logging out of a real Nous account now also clears the cross-profile store, so a profile logout is not silently re-adopted on the next boot. * fix(model): switching off the free tier points at signing in, never hops providers * Name the free tier in the gateway startup notice and tell explicit-provider installs about it once * Render the Nous free tier as free tier on auth status, auth list, hermes status and portal info, short-circuit billing copy for it, and skip the keepalive when there is no refresh token * fix(auth): free tier is set up where nothing is configured: resolver last rung and first-run check Both the provider resolver's terminal rung and the CLI first-run check now try to set up the free tier before declaring nothing configured. On a fresh install the first command lands in chat on nous/welcome; a failed setup still falls through to the existing guidance. * Add hermes auth upgrade: sign the free tier into a Nous account while keeping its connectors The device-code flow runs as usual, with a promotion intent registered on the portal between the code request and the token poll so the account that approves the code inherits the free tier's connectors. The promotion status decides the outcome: only a completed one is followed by the token grant, which is persisted over the free-tier singleton and the shared store. Declined, superseded, retired and busy outcomes each print their own plain copy, and a retired identity is cleared so the next use sets up a fresh one. User-facing text never names the free tier's internals. * Show the Nous free tier as one picker row with nous/welcome and hide it when nous.guest is off * fix(auth): upgrade opens the consent page for this sign-in; one mint attempt per process; forced free tier wins the first-run check The browser leg of hermes auth upgrade now prints and opens the promotion claim URL with the claim code, not the generic device page. A failed mint is attempted once per process so several bootstrap sites cannot hit a closed gate or a 429 twice; a retired credential resets that so re-minting still happens. HERMES_FORCE_GUEST is honoured ahead of the first-run provider check. * fix(auth): pin the welcome model on the selected route, not on profile state; background setup retries after a failure A credential-pool entry can select a paid Nous key while the profile singleton is still the free tier. The model pin now keys on the resolved endpoint (welcome host) in agent init and /model, and the pin in model normalization is removed since it had no route to look at. A failed background identity setup releases its latch so a later attempt in the same process can try again. * fix(auth): decide the Nous model together with the route on every credential-pool swap The credential pool can move a Nous agent between the welcome host and the portal host after init. One helper, pin_model_for_route, now runs at init and inside every pool swap, so the welcome host always carries nous/welcome and a paid endpoint always keeps the caller's model. * fix(auth): apply the route model policy on every wire mode during a pool swap; release the setup latch if the thread cannot start * fix(auth): free-tier lifecycle takes profile then shared lock, reconciles with the shared store, persists the mint before exchanging, and clears only the identity that died The shared store is the identity of record for a Hermes root: a profile holding a stale free-tier identity adopts a sibling's newer sign-in instead of keeping the guest, and never overwrites the shared account. Locks are taken in the documented order (profile, then shared). A minted credential is stored as soon as create succeeds, so a rate-limited or timed-out exchange does not lose it and trigger a second mint. Retiring a dead credential removes only that credential from both stores. Guest exchange uses the resolver's canonical portal URL. * fix(auth): a credential rotation never rewrites the conversation model; connectors honour the off switch and replace a retired free-tier credential The welcome host serves one model, so a rotation onto it is refused for any conversation on another model instead of silently switching that conversation to nous/welcome (the model pin applies only when a route is first chosen). The connector token path now treats the free tier as absent when nous.guest is false, including cached tokens, and shares the one dead-credential rule with inference: a retired identity is replaced once rather than returning its stale token. * fix(auth): plain login never imports the free tier as OAuth credentials; the gateway startup line reads persisted state only A free-tier identity in the shared store is not an OAuth credential to offer for import; a real sign-in replaces it. The gateway's startup notice now answers provider precedence from persisted state (no token refresh at boot), so an expired free-tier token cannot stall the online message.
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.
| A real terminal interface | Full TUI with multiline editing, slash-command autocomplete, conversation history, interrupt-and-redirect, and streaming tool output. |
| Lives where you do | Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, and CLI — all from a single gateway process. Voice memo transcription, cross-platform conversation continuity. |
| A closed learning loop | Agent-curated memory with periodic nudges. Autonomous skill creation after complex tasks. Skills self-improve during use. FTS5 session search with LLM summarization for cross-session recall. Honcho dialectic user modeling. Compatible with the agentskills.io open standard. |
| Scheduled automations | Built-in cron scheduler with delivery to any platform. Daily reports, nightly backups, weekly audits — all in natural language, running unattended. |
| Delegates and parallelizes | Spawn isolated subagents for parallel workstreams. Write Python scripts that call tools via RPC, collapsing multi-step pipelines into zero-context-cost turns. |
| Runs anywhere, not just your laptop | Seven terminal backends — local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal, Daytona, and Vercel Sandbox. Daytona and Modal offer serverless persistence — your agent's environment hibernates when idle and wakes on demand, costing nearly nothing between sessions. Run it on a $5 VPS or a GPU cluster. |
| Research-ready | Batch trajectory generation, trajectory compression for training the next generation of tool-calling models. |
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~/.hermesas 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
uvand 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.
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
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.
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.
| Action | CLI | Messaging platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Start chatting | hermes |
Run hermes gateway setup + hermes gateway start, then send the bot a message |
| Start fresh conversation | /new or /reset |
/new or /reset |
| Change model | /model [provider:model] |
/model [provider:model] |
| Set a personality | /personality [name] |
/personality [name] |
| Retry or undo the last turn | /retry, /undo |
/retry, /undo |
| Compress context / check usage | /compress, /usage, /insights [--days N] |
/compress, /usage, /insights [days] |
| Browse skills | /skills or /<skill-name> |
/<skill-name> |
| Interrupt current work | Ctrl+C or send a new message |
/stop or send a new message |
| Platform-specific status | /platforms |
/status, /sethome |
For the full command lists, see the CLI guide and the Messaging Gateway guide.
Documentation
All documentation lives at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs:
| Section | What's Covered |
|---|---|
| Quickstart | Install → setup → first conversation in 2 minutes |
| CLI Usage | Commands, keybindings, personalities, sessions |
| Configuration | Config file, providers, models, all options |
| Messaging Gateway | Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Home Assistant |
| Security | Command approval, DM pairing, container isolation |
| Tools & Toolsets | 40+ tools, toolset system, terminal backends |
| Skills System | Procedural memory, Skills Hub, creating skills |
| Memory | Persistent memory, user profiles, best practices |
| MCP Integration | Connect any MCP server for extended capabilities |
| Cron Scheduling | Scheduled tasks with platform delivery |
| Context Files | Project context that shapes every conversation |
| Architecture | Project structure, agent loop, key classes |
| Contributing | Development setup, PR process, code style |
| CLI Reference | All commands and flags |
| Environment Variables | Complete env var reference |
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.
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
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.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
Built by Nous Research.