Hermes Agent Setup
Hermes Agent is the self-improving agent built by Nous Research. It works with many LLM providers and communicates via ACP through the hermes acp command (available since v0.2.0).
Install and Configure
Open a terminal (Terminal on macOS/Linux, PowerShell on Windows) and run the following commands.
- Install Hermes Agent:
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bashiex (irm https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.ps1)The desktop installer and other options are listed in the Hermes Agent docs. Note that the hermes-agent package on npm is not an official distribution.
- Find the installation path:
which hermes
# Example output: /Users/username/.local/bin/hermeswhere.exe hermes- Open Settings → Agent Client. The default command (
hermes) works in many cases. If the agent is not found automatically, set the Hermes Agent path to the path found above, or click Auto-detect.
Authentication
Hermes Agent manages provider credentials itself, so there is no API key field for it in Agent Client.
- Run the interactive provider selector in your terminal:
hermes modelFollow the prompts to pick a provider and paste an API key or complete an OAuth sign-in. Alternatively, hermes setup --portal signs in to Nous Portal with OAuth in one step.
- Verify that a normal chat works in the terminal:
hermesCredentials are stored under ~/.hermes/ and are picked up by the hermes acp process that Agent Client starts.
Migrating from a custom agent
If you previously ran Hermes Agent as a custom agent, its settings are not migrated automatically. A custom agent with the id hermes-agent is renamed to hermes-agent-2 to make room for the preset — copy any custom path or environment variables into the preset settings, then delete the leftover custom entry.
Verify Setup
- Click the robot icon in the ribbon or use the command palette: "Open chat view"
- Switch to Hermes Agent from the agent dropdown in the chat header
- Try sending a message to verify the connection
Having issues? See Troubleshooting.