Meet Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent is an open-source personal agent from Nous Research, an AI lab known for open models. It was released in February 2026 under an open MIT license, which means the software itself is free to use and inspect.

You run it yourself, on your own desktop, a home server, or a rented server. It comes as a terminal app and as desktop apps for Mac, Windows and Linux. It can reach you through messaging services, including Telegram, Discord and Slack, so you can message your agent the way you message a person.

Its main ideas are memory that persists between sessions, kept as plain text files on your machine, and skills, which are reusable procedures the agent can write and refine from its own experience. It can also speak, and it can coordinate with other agents.

It is not tied to one AI company. It can use models from several providers, from a router service, or from models you run yourself. That flexibility is a real strength, and it is also a reason it takes more setup than an app you download and open.

Nous Research is one example. Other open-source projects follow the same pattern, and the names and the leaders in this space change quickly, so treat Hermes as a way to understand the category rather than a permanent recommendation.

Takeaway: Hermes Agent is a free, open-source personal agent you run yourself and message through chat apps. It is a good example of the category, not the only choice.

Tools, prices and features in this area change quickly. Last reviewed September 2026.