Hermes Agent Tutorial

TUTORIAL

Hermes Agent Tutorial

The Complete Guide to Autonomous AI Operations

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Hermes Agent by Nous Research is a CLI-based AI assistant with 42 built-in tools and 952+ community skills. This guide covers installation, configuration, and real-world usage.

42
Built-in Tools
952
Community Skills
v0.15
Latest Version

Table of Contents

  1. What is Hermes Agent?
  2. Installation
  3. Configuration
  4. 42 Built-in Tools
  5. Skills System
  6. Cron Jobs & Automation
  7. MCP Server Integration
  8. Real-World Use Cases
  9. Pro Tips & Pitfalls

1. What is Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent is an autonomous AI assistant built by Nous Research that runs from your terminal. Unlike chat-based AI tools, Hermes can actually do things — execute shell commands, browse the web, manage files, send emails, control smart homes, deploy code, and much more.

Think of it as a junior developer that lives in your terminal and can handle complex multi-step tasks with minimal supervision.

Key Capabilities

  • ✓ Execute shell commands and scripts autonomously
  • ✓ Browse the web, fill forms, take screenshots
  • ✓ Read, write, and edit files across your system
  • ✓ Schedule cron jobs for recurring tasks
  • ✓ Connect to MCP servers for extended tool access
  • ✓ Send messages to Telegram, Discord, Slack, and more
  • ✓ Generate images, videos, and audio
  • ✓ Manage GitHub repos, PRs, and CI/CD pipelines
  • ✓ Delegate tasks to sub-agents for parallel execution
  • ✓ Persistent memory across sessions

2. Installation

Quick Install (Recommended)

# One-line installer curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

UV Pip Install

# Install via uv pip uv pip install hermes-agent # Verify installation hermes version

From Source (Development)

# Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent.git cd hermes-agent # Install in development mode uv pip install -e .
Tip: Hermes requires Python 3.11+ and an OpenRouter API key. The installer handles most dependencies automatically.

3. Configuration

After installation, run the setup wizard to configure your API keys and preferences:

# Run interactive setup hermes setup # Set your model provider hermes config set model.provider openrouter hermes config set model.model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4 # Configure terminal working directory hermes config set terminal.cwd /your/project/path

Config File Location

Configuration lives at ~/.hermes/config.yaml. Key settings include:

  • ⚙ model.provider — OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, or custom providers
  • ⚙ model.model — Which LLM to use (e.g. anthropic/claude-sonnet-4)
  • ⚙ terminal.cwd — Default working directory for commands
  • ⚙ gateway — Web gateway settings for remote access
  • ⚙ tts — Text-to-speech provider configuration

4. The 42 Built-in Tools

Hermes comes with 42 tools organized into categories. Here are the most important ones:

Terminal & File

💻

terminal

Execute shell commands with timeout control and background mode

📄

read_file

Read files with line numbers and pagination

✎

write_file

Write content to files, auto-creates directories

🔎

search_files

Ripgrep-powered file content and name search

🔧

patch

Targeted find-and-replace edits in files

💾

execute_code

Run Python scripts with tool access (up to 50 calls per script)

Web & Browser

🌐

browser_navigate

Navigate to URLs and get page snapshots

🖱

browser_click

Click elements identified by ref ID

⌨

browser_type

Type text into form fields

📷

browser_vision

Take screenshots for visual inspection

Automation & Communication

⏰

cronjob

Schedule recurring tasks with cron expressions

💬

send_message

Send messages to Telegram, Discord, Slack, etc.

👥

delegate_task

Spawn sub-agents for parallel task execution

🎧

text_to_speech

Convert text to audio via TTS providers

🎨

image_generate

Generate images from text prompts

📝

memory

Persistent memory across sessions

5. Skills System

Skills are reusable procedures that teach Hermes how to handle specific tasks. There are 952+ community skills covering everything from WordPress management to cybersecurity to creative writing.

Using Skills

# List available skills hermes skills list # View a specific skill hermes skills view wordpress-manage

Popular Skill Categories

  • 🏠 Web Development — WordPress, Next.js, React, Tailwind, Shopify
  • 🛡 Cybersecurity — 400+ skills for security analysis, forensics, pen testing
  • 📊 Data Science — Jupyter notebooks, ML training, model evaluation
  • 📡 Marketing — SEO, content strategy, email campaigns, social media
  • 💻 DevOps — Docker, CI/CD, deployment, monitoring
  • 🎨 Creative — Image generation, video, music, ASCII art

Creating Your Own Skills

# Hermes auto-suggests saving successful workflows as skills # Skills are stored as SKILL.md files with YAML frontmatter # Location: ~/.hermes/skills/

6. Cron Jobs & Automation

Hermes can schedule tasks to run automatically — either as LLM-driven jobs or as pure script executions:

# Schedule a daily briefing at 9 AM hermes cron create –schedule “0 9 * * *” –prompt “Generate daily briefing” # Run a script every 5 minutes (no LLM, just watchdog) hermes cron create –schedule “*/5 * * * *” –script “health_check.sh” –no-agent # List all scheduled jobs hermes cron list
Note: Cron jobs run in fresh sessions with no conversation context. Prompts must be self-contained. Jobs with --no-agent skip the LLM entirely and just run the script.

7. MCP Server Integration

Hermes has a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) client that connects to external tool servers:

# Add an MCP server in config.yaml hermes config set mcp.servers.my-server.command “npx” hermes config set mcp.servers.my-server.args ‘[“@my-org/mcp-server”]’

This gives Hermes access to any MCP-compatible tools — databases, APIs, custom workflows, and more.

8. Real-World Use Cases

💰

Business Automation

CRM management, email outreach, pipeline reviews, daily journal generation

💻

Web Development

WordPress management, deployments, SEO audits, content publishing

🔎

Research

Web scraping, data analysis, competitor monitoring, academic paper review

🛡

Security

Vulnerability scanning, log analysis, incident response, threat hunting

📡

Content Creation

Blog writing, social media posts, email newsletters, image generation

🏠

DevOps

Docker management, server monitoring, CI/CD, automated deployments

9. Pro Tips & Pitfalls

  • ⚠ Cost awareness — Use free models (Gemini Flash Lite) for cron jobs, premium models for complex tasks
  • ⚠ Gateway restart — Don’t restart the gateway from within an agent session; it kills your connection
  • ⚠ Cron prompts — Make cron prompts self-contained; fresh sessions have no conversation context
  • ⚠ Skills first — Always check if a skill exists before building from scratch; 952+ are available
  • ⚠ Memory limits — Keep memory entries compact; they’re injected into every turn
  • ⚠ execute_code — Use for 3+ tool calls with logic between them; single calls are better as direct tool invocations
  • ⚠ Sub-agents — Use delegate_task for reasoning-heavy subtasks; keeps parent context clean

Ready to Get Started?

Hermes Agent is open source and free to use. You only pay for the LLM API calls.

View on GitHub →

Read the Docs →

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