Hermes Desktop

Hermes Desktop is a community-maintained desktop companion for Hermes Agent by Nous Research, wrapping the full power of the self-improving AI assistant into a native Electron app for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Instead of managing the CLI by hand, the app guides you through install, provider setup, and daily use with a first-run wizard, making it approachable even for users uncomfortable with terminals. It's designed for developers, power users, and researchers who want a private, self-hosted AI agent that learns from every interaction, remembers context across sessions, and can automate tasks, schedule jobs, and delegate work to subagents. Under the hood, Hermes runs a closed learning loop—after complex tasks it autonomously creates reusable skills and refines them over time. It supports 14 built-in toolsets including web search, browser automation, code execution, vision, image generation, and TTS. It offers seven terminal backends (local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal, Daytona, Vercel Sandbox) and works with 300+ models via providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama, LM Studio, Hugging Face, NVIDIA NIM, xAI, and custom endpoints. A built-in cron scheduler, deep memory with FTS5 search and LLM summarization, and multi-platform messaging (Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, CLI) complete the package. Hermes is open source (MIT), free, and runs anywhere from a $5 VPS to a GPU cluster, costing nearly nothing when idle. The learning loop means the agent gets better the more you use it—curating memory, writing skills, and refining them autonomously. Unlike most AI assistants that forget sessions or lock you into one provider, Hermes is provider-agnostic and preserves context across sessions. While powerful, the learning curve is real: setup may still require some command-line familiarity despite the GUI wizard, and the desktop app is not mobile-first. Best for users who want total control and don't mind occasional terminal use.