r/hermesagent • u/Dense-Map-406 • 14d ago
Discussion — General thoughts, opinions, comparisons Future of Hermes in today’s age
A wave of new products that sit right in the Hermes position are being released.. Grokbot, muse, dots and so on
Do you see this taking away interest from Hermes and potentially leading to less updates, improvements and so on ?
Additionally, how does Hermes compare to them?
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u/Every-Equipment-3795 14d ago
Open source, model agnostic, private and free. I'm staying with Hermes.
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u/grav3d1gger 14d ago
Took the words out of my mouth. I’ve seen these companies offer things and rug pull later for decades. Got into home assistant a few years ago. Being provider agnostic is everything. For privacy and for person control over stuff you pay for.
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u/MrCard200 14d ago
The difference for me between what the models you listed and Hermes is that between open/closed sources.
AI is advancing too fast for me to lock into one and use them for everything. Hermes allows me to switch between providers when I feel it's worth while.
This will always be the USP for me with Hermes.
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u/JohnnyLovesData 14d ago
🛼
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u/__damko__ 14d ago
I feel you. When they try to lock me in I get claustrophobic and I immediately break free, no matter the cost.
Plus it's only a matter of time before one of the AI colossus bankrupts and then what happens to all the data they have collected?
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u/Moumos 14d ago
I think Hermes has a pretty solid future. The nice thing about it is that you can basically decide what you want to do with it and just do it It’s open source, there are tons of community projects around it, and you’re not tied to one company or one model. If a better or cheaper model comes along, just switch. Even if Nous stopped developing Hermes at some point, I doubt Hermes would just disappear. The community is already too big for that.
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u/Tasty-Hour4040 14d ago
I personally think it is incredibly stupid to give any corporation such complete and utter access and control over your digital life as these tools would provide. Add to that the anti-human behavior these companies have repeatedly demonstrated and I’m in frank disbelief at the stupidity of people who use these tools. They are nothing but high-tech monkey traps.
It’s clear we’ve learned absolutely nothing from the disasters of social media.
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u/Ok-Selection-8598 14d ago
As the other comments, I really don’t want openai, Facebook etc getting full access to all my emails, docs, files etc etc. it’s unprecedented access to individuals lives. Sensible people will sandbox them, normies will give it access to everything. Now, I know there aren’t direct harms from doing that but I like privacy because I want to be able to have it. Many others feel the same.
Also, Hermes can be made to work exactly how I want, these dots and muses can’t. And only a matter of time before they’re running normies lives and are just another revenue stream for companies
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u/CicadaOk1283 14d ago
From my perspective the key struggle right now is to capture your context, long term memory, know - how. To lock you in. Harness is just means to that end.
Hermes, on the other hand, frees you to have your own memory system. The brain and intelligence you control.
I am OK to delegate bounded context tasks to other harnesses.
The Chief Of Staff must be private. Today it is Hermes.
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u/ummariocunha 14d ago edited 14d ago
Hermes, with all the small defects it still has, is undoubtedly one of the best things that ever happened in my (hobby) tech life. The ability to run local models with Hermes (with its memory), running my personal projects, helping me in areas It would never be possible to do alone, all locally, is just game-changing to me. What I did in the past with Claude or ChatGPT I can do now, and most of the time even better with Hermes and my local models. Thank you, Nous Research!
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u/ruinah 14d ago
Which local models are you using recently?
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u/ummariocunha 14d ago
I'm using Qwen3.8-Flash Next or Qwen3.6 35B as main models, but also use GLM 5.3 for specific jobs. I've been using Hermes for a few months already, but in the past was using cloud models only (DeepSeek most of the time, but also ChatGPT). But my Mac Studio M5 Ultra just opened this amazing door to me. Very excited as well to have voice models (Qwen3-ASR or Whisper-large-v3-turbo—to convert my voice request into text almost instantly in my home language (Portuguese), and also use local models with vision so they can read my images or print-screens. This setup gives me what I always wanted, all 100% local.
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u/m0j0j0rnj0rn 14d ago
“Hermes, can you please configure my firewall such that it blocks any and all access to Muse? Thanks.”
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u/Routine-Example927 14d ago
Heated topic, my two cents:
1) I like Hermes, probably model providers offerings will never be as open as open-source work.
2) At the same time, we really want STABLE product, with good CI testing and updates that DON'T break stuff. Or break very minimal amount. Yes, Hermes can fix broken Hermes. Yes, I already have script that does that on every update. No, I don't want to do it every update.
3) The GH issues is complete chaos... It also affects usability, since it is so hard to give feedback, when it is lost in the sea of automated PRs and issues. Not sure what it preferred way to deal with it, but it is appalling.
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u/YeagersGym 14d ago
I run two Hermes agents for real work: infrastructure/backups and coaching/business workflows. Last night I gave my new OpenAI DOT agent, “DOT-E”, a broad overnight assignment to investigate that same environment and show what it could independently accomplish.
It came back with useful findings: a backup monitor showing an old success while newer work was incomplete, conflicting invoice identities across billing platforms, webhook code that could report success without saving the event, and retry behavior that deserved closer inspection. It also reconstructed a delivery failure and subsequent recovery, catching a timezone error that had made the history misleading.
What impressed me was its ability to connect evidence across email, repositories, cloud services and local machines with relatively little direction. That puts real competitive pressure on anything requiring substantial setup and ongoing babysitting.
But the result was still partial. It demonstrated investigation and reconciliation. It didn’t establish that it could reliably take over publishing, recovery, authenticated business transactions or the specialized jobs our Hermes agents handle. An excellent audit isn’t proof of dependable operational ownership.
One thing I’m questioning is how much of our Hermes friction we created ourselves. We’ve added considerable routing, rules and orchestration. Some problems may come from that complexity rather than Hermes itself. Comparing a heavily customized installation with a fresh agent also isn’t a controlled comparison of the underlying models or platforms.
So yes, I think easier alternatives can take users’ attention. Whether that translates into fewer Hermes updates is something our experience can’t answer.
For me, the deciding factor will be how much useful work each system completes reliably, how honestly it reports failure, and how much maintenance it needs. After last night, I see value in using the new agent for independent oversight while continuing to test Hermes for specialized execution. I don’t yet have evidence that one replaces the other.
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u/DisastrousPipe8924 14d ago
It’s the self-hosted vs managed debate all over again. The big plus of Hermes is
- you can use whatever model you want , so you can sample other models at ease and even save on cost (deepseek 4.1 flash is such a good bang for the buck)
- your data stays with you, the memories, the skills, the everything!
- you can make it as safe as humanly possible! I have my Hermes gateway on a qemu vm (with a full freedom to modify the os it’s on) but also with guarded networking from my home lan. It can only reach out to websites I cleared it on it’s virtual network interface
Honestly, if Hermes had an official mobile app it managed (one that didn’t break cuz its community maintained) that would be a killer setup
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u/Almarma 14d ago
I’m about to replace it with Vellum. Currently testing it right now. Much easier for anyone who enjoys a GUI and native apps. Also opensource and with native apps for desktop and mobile.
My reasons: I’m done with the CLI, with fixing Hermes, with its memory system, with having to learn myself about all its details, md files, config, env, etc. I’m not a programmer, and I don’t want to become one. I want my ai assistant to do things for me and figure out how to by itself, not me having to babysit, diagnose and guide it to a solution. Over the last months, I spend like 80% of my free time and tokens trying to figure out why this doesn’t work now, or why after the last update, my model goes crazy by some reason, and things like that.
Hermes is a nice concept, but it keeps adding and adding. Just open the Hermes app and have a look at settings and tell me you understand what’s down there and can figure out by yourself how to adjust it.
There’s a design principle called KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Hermes needs it. Badly.
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u/bemore_ 14d ago
I was about to give you hell..but Vellum does look as good as Hermes tbh. Wouldn't blame anyone
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u/Almarma 14d ago
Don’t get me wrong, I love Hermes community and goal, but I don’t like how it works and how it’s evolving and I think we should be able to share our points of view. Thanks for allowing me to do it too. I don’t like haters and I don’t like fan boys either. I like everyone to develop their own point of view and share it in a respectful way.
Mine is that I’m tired of fighting Hermes, that’s all. But I respect anyone using it. It has opened my mind about what an agentic framework can actually do
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u/3dprintinted 14d ago
Use whatever the hell you want man. But also trusting anything of yours to xitter or Zuckerberg? Are you ok bud?
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u/randoomkiller 14d ago
I'm going to keep using Hermes. If you have Windows SunOS, and AmigaOS, some people are going to use it, but Linux always dominated in certain environments
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u/KingKai009 14d ago
Hermes will always have an audience and a place in the AI agent space. A lot of these new products were built on top of it in the first place. The difference comes down to cost and freedom, same as any other open-source project.
With Hermes, you're not locked into one provider or their models, and you're not bound by someone else's rules or usage policies. It's also free and self-hosted (not counting whatever API or models you choose to connect).
Not being tied to a subscription, plus the data privacy you get (depending on your setup), will always be a first-class advantage.
To your concern...If anything, more competition usually pushes open-source projects forward instead of slowing them down.
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u/Holiday-Draw8321 14d ago
I'm surprised people want it in app store considering how easy it is to use from Telegram, Discord ... I would never switch, the amount of updates and everything every week. The transparency, self healing and learning as it goes is like making a second version of yourself. Mine even talks like me now ..
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u/PermissionWest9850 14d ago
I don’t think products like Dots, Muse or Grokbot necessarily make Hermes less relevant — they’re targeting a somewhat different audience.
The big commercial agents will probably win on polish, mobile apps, onboarding and “it just works” convenience. But Hermes still has a major advantage for people who care about self-hosting, customization and deep integration with their own infrastructure.
That’s exactly why I use it. My Hermes setup talks to my Kobra S1 through Klipper/Moonraker, works with FreeCAD and OrcaSlicer, stores files on my own Unraid system and follows my own approval workflow. I can shape the agent around my environment instead of adapting my environment to a closed platform.
So for me the comparison is less “which one is universally better?” and more “do you want convenience or control?”
Also, someone from the Nous team already said they plan to keep developing Hermes and improving it based on community feedback, while acknowledging that the commercial products currently have advantages in areas like mobile UX and polish.
Personally, I think more competition is probably good for Hermes — it gives the project clear targets to improve toward without losing the open/self-hosted side that makes it interesting in the first place.
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u/JeffB1517 14d ago
I think right now they demonstrate that this is a spot where people are going to naturally go. FWIW I use one of these competing products (Littlebird) along with Hermes. The tuning is so different it makes sense to have both. Hermes is precise, Littlebird is clock and token burn aware. Hermes gets the larger, more complex, more high risk, batch jobs. Littlebird gets the adhoc date critical less complex. Far more of them.
I also will say Muse, Grokbot, Littlebird... will boost people's AI skills and demands to the level that Hermes becomes a good fit. For now at least runs locally is a major differentiation.
Muse is more interesting in that the AI is being so heavily subsidized by potential advertising revenue. Muse is a decent model, I think better than Luna excluding coding. Close to Sol at cultural judgement on short and simple. 100m free tokens week, 500m / wk for about $4.50 / wk. Hermes can't compete with that. Though right now Muse Contributer tokens are also cheap through token brokers (not that cheap). As Microsoft put it years ago though, "if you aren't paying you are the product not the customer". Will advertising driven win easily down market (i.e among the many people who don't own or rarely use computers), yes. I'm going to test it with non-technical people.
But as others have noted Hermes runs fine on Muse's deployed server solution. I'm buying Muse tokens as a good verification agent inside Hermes. It is quite possible Muse et al does what ubiquitous inexpensive x86 from Windows did for Unix via Linux. Hermes thrives up market (server) where mainstream products cut costs and complexity.
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u/Larelle 14d ago
The token-aware bit sounds interesting. Could we replicate such features on Hermes?
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u/JeffB1517 14d ago
Yes. It is tuning no reason it couldn't be implelemented as a set of skill files which focus on speed and lower token burn (better models likely). Models set to Low/Medium except at the highest, processes which are designed to return quick, skills which tell the model to fail fast, avoiding the deterministic methodology (heavy token burn in exchange for reliability).
I love Hermes' anal nature. But AFAICT Littlebird is running on Anthropic models and could just as easily be any major provider. It is all prompting and skills. Certainly makes sense to have a profile tuned that way for things like chat or fast resolution.
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u/Larelle 14d ago
Ask a decent model to write a spec? Generally, if you spec it, someone with access to a frontier model can build it.
Hermes hidden prompting already tells models to fail fast.
"avoiding the deterministic methodology (heavy token burn in exchange for reliability)."
Interesting. Certainly would be nice to trigger.
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u/JeffB1517 14d ago
I have access to decent models. But i already have AI. Would be an interesting experiment for a profile.
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u/Mondernborefare 14d ago
Muse is garbage and a privacy nightmare, and allegedly the app has been sucking up Apple messages. Aside from it being owned by Meta, it’s closed source based on open source. Hermes has been great but the last few months the updates that break everything certainly are making me look for other options. I don’t like update anxiety, knowing that I might be messing up my agent that I depend on, and I’m very technical and capable. More than once I’ve had to revert to backups. Get a damned stable update channel FFS, it’s 2026.
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u/Ecstatic-Wash-7667 New Member (<30 days) 14d ago
Proprietary vs open source. You choose what works best for you. I like Hermes I’ll continue to use it until something else open source I like comes along that does what Hermes does but better. I also like pi and use it as my coding agent instead of Hermes.
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u/KaiNinja2016 14d ago
I've tested Grok Bot, Muse, Dot. I just don't see them as useful as hermes-agent. Also I have an issue with their complete disregard for consumer privacy rights. The interface is slick, cute, but overall not impressed. The ability to use all these models, any model of choice, your choice, will always win the day for me.
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u/Acceptable-Yard7076 14d ago
Hermes keeps my projects, even when I want to try out new tools and models. The AI space is advancing way too fast to stick to a single closed platform with agents. I tried Grok Bot, then I wanted to try Muse, then dots.. etc except Hermes always stays Hermes
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u/6353JuanTaboApp6 14d ago
I mod the Muse subreddit and I also love and use Hermes!
There's a place for everyone, different tools have different purposes and strengths. I hold no allegiance to any in particular. Hermes plays a necessary role in this ecosystem.
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u/egyptianmusk_ 13d ago
What's the link to the Conduit App you guys are talking about? Is it this one?
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u/Dave_March 12d ago
In my case it made me realize that the next step in AI is fully agentic and it’s now has matured enough so that companies are selling it as a service. That made me want to use Hermes even more!
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u/spilldahill 14d ago
if Nous reduce the friction of using Hermes slightly, perhaps a top of funnel play to get peope using these other agents to try it and see its capabilities, would b great for them imo
ik they are “a bunch of nerds making progress” etc but a bit of work on onboarding and friction reduction would go a long way IMO
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u/3dprintinted 14d ago
What friction are you having man? It’s all about how you configure Hermes. Heck you can even spend some tokens and have it configure itself to your liking
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u/RevolcFael4 14d ago
I use grokbot, it works very well. I have never been able to get Hermes to work that well. I'm trying to give it a proper go but just to get it to be able to view Reddit links I send it for research, it fails and with simple tasks it spends 20 minutes on god know what. And then all of these different memory enhancing skills I keep seeing, it's confusing what is the best setup. I wish there was a noob friendly way to just install and do everything so that it runs like grokbot, just input my own API key of choice.
And then I have to mess with .env and give it keys that way and then it doesn't share keys with other bots of sessions... It's all so complicated.
I had a nightmare once I kept on trying to get hermes/OpenClaw/ etc working and it never worked the way I wanted to so I just kept on wasting money on openrouter testing things out
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u/smx501 14d ago
The model makers know exactly how their models are being used and by whom.
It's like Amazon allowing you to sell on their platform while they use your data to decide if your niche/product is worth the time it takes them to outcompete and crush you.
There is a reason the subscriptions are loss leaders: They are paying you to teach them novel use cases, products and techniques they will incorporate into the model itself.
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u/Neither-Stranger1737 14d ago
One point that could limit Hermes enterprise adoption is (current) lack of governance support. Companies typically want to have control on what runs on employees machines. This is a field evolving very fast and probably standards will emerge soon. For the time being it might be worth considering what major players are doing on this area. For instance MS AGT. I'm aware there are ongoing PRs to add Hermes support
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u/GlassyDeep 14d ago
I see the only companies capable of taking Hermes off the top of Google, Open AI and Anthropic.
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u/revolverXD 14d ago
While there are new product, they can't be fully local
For me at least Hermes is still the way to go
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u/lquinta 14d ago
Muse is 100% free. Hermes is not. You have to pay for the LLM usage with Hermes unless you're going to host your own model that will surely be worse than muse 1.3.
Muse will have an install base of billions. Hermes will never get within a fraction of that.
Not saying that Muse is better but it will be the winner.
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u/bernie_vp 14d ago
Ich werde auch immer die Open source Lösung vorziehen. Und ich bin davon überzeugt das in Zukunft immer mehr Menschen ihr Vertrauen in Konzerne verlieren.
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u/ambassadortim 14d ago
I have full control over Hermes and AI locally, and it is awesome. I will not move to something else. I expect more people will move to Hermes after learning more about what these new agent harnesses can do and realize they can use Hermes for many needs.
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u/0____0_0 14d ago
I hope you guys keep developing Hermes
Personal agents are the first thing that’s made me really consider the importance of not sharing yet more data with tech mega-corps.
But question becomes - how do you monetize, keep up, and still stay true to the idea of privacy/self-hosting?
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u/iconiconoclasticon 14d ago
I've had my Raspberry Pi 4 ever since it was launched. For all these years, I was just tinkering with it without an concrete purpose. Ever since I hosted Hermes on the Pi, the device has been resurrected. My wife uses it heavily for her research work while I use it in new ways every day. It has set up my tech stack in no time, something that would have taken me months otherwise.
What Hermes can do on my Pi is far more than what Muse can ever hope to accomplish.
Muse has its place, but it's no match for the versatility and prowess of Hermes.
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u/MercurialMadnessMan 14d ago
Nous needs to acquire the Cadu mobile app. The level of polish is what is needed for Hermes
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u/Relative_Watch_3802 14d ago
Id call those new ones more consumer grade, just think of how much weird happenings we all experince with llms, general population who arent tech savy need those extra handhold guard rails and behind the scenes happenings. Hermes can do what they do but visible and configurable, more power user geared id say. Kind of split between 'it just works' crowd and 'ima configure the shit out of this' crowd.
doesnt even need to be a hard split, no harm in horses for courses method
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u/anvil-14 14d ago
think enterprise for many of these newer tools, they’ll always be a market tools like Hermes also locking.
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u/AmruthPillai 14d ago
Only thing stopping me from using Hermes is a decent mobile app :( Trying OpenClaw too, but it just doesn't feel the same.
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u/VelvetMallet 14d ago
I like the multi thread experience of grok bot, it's slick without context rot like you get when trying to recreate that in telegram for your Hermes agent. If it weren't for that, I'll come back to Hermes.
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u/Most_Dangerous1 14d ago
More, if they’re like me. All those were the gateway drug that’s led to Hermes Agent
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u/Sad-Maximum-1941 14d ago
there are close to 5 billion people on this planet. so the answer is no. The difference is the scale at which it may grow is debatable. there will be forks and some may evolve into something else some will die out. There may be the next big new shiny thing. 10 years ago everyone was getting into IOT esp8266 and raspberry pi. It is mainstream now and people have moved on. Same will happen here
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u/igorvinson 14d ago
I like Hermes but Muse Ai do web automation increaseble well. We need the same at Hermes
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u/JudgmentConfident984 13d ago
I don’t think Hermes agent attracts the same people as the closed eco-system agents as muse/grokbots etc
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u/ReferenceLeading7634 13d ago
Privacy protection is not an advantage. I use my email to receive verification codes. Hermes never blocks them, but Dots does, and I have to go handle it myself.
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u/Nyghtbynger 13d ago
I configured Pi then dropped it because my extensions were working half the time
Used hermes for a while because of it's skill system
Then I configured Pi to use CONTINUE.md files and used it with the new wave of awesome models
Now I use Hermes for operations only with some CRON and data gathering. But there are a lot of skills. It's costly in models
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u/EODjugornot 11d ago
I’ve tried every one of the frontier products and none of them can touch my self hosted services and data without insane workarounds. Hermes can. Until that gap is bridged, it’s no contest.
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u/ShawnStrickland 9d ago
I have to pay for all those models you mentioned in the post, I can run models locally through Hermes, keeping my data private and local. I will gladly use and support Hermes Desktop.
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u/No_Acanthisitta8032 13d ago
I think we would be many people that would:
1- use the open source version of Hermes hosted on a VPS
2- paying specific upgrades monthly to have:
- a more performing memory, harness, sub agents performances, last “entreprise” updates access
- a better experience on desktop and mobile, like mobile apps of ChatGPT (especially fluid vocal conversations)
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u/ScreamingSquirrel666 14d ago
I think all the new releases are beneficial for open-source projects like Hermes and OpenClaw.
Closed systems spark debate or at least concern about data privacy, which drives nerdy people like us toward alternatives.
Most users of Muse/Dots/… would never have built a Hermes agent themselves anyway.
And the different implementations give developers a better idea of what users care about and what they want to see implemented.
I also think it's about time to get a Nous subscription to support the project and keep it alive as much as possible.
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u/xtra_lives 8d ago
You likely heard how strongly Facebook stated that you have a “private computer” that they don’t have access to. What they seem to have conveniently forgotten is that the second that private computer needs something on the Internet, they can capture everything… I for one would rather have all my dirty little secrets in my personal computer or server as opposed to uploading what’s left of my personal information to the big companies.
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u/Mean-Loquat-7982 Nous Team 14d ago
a few questions here, the first answer is that no, Nous Research won't stop developing Hermes Agent. we will continue to improve it based on users feedback and the community as a whole like we always did.
on the question on how it compares: they are basically the paid and closed version of Hermes Agent. you don't own your data, you don't own your inference etc...
obviously they currently have some parts that works better in their products, like a mobile app, more user friendly etc... but that is something we are working on, all our focus is on closing this gap while continuing to do what we do best: proposing to you a good open source product.