Quick answer

Hermes Agent is Nous Research's open-source autonomous agent, released under the MIT licence in February 2026. It keeps memory across sessions, writes reusable skills as it works, ships 70+ tools (web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, text-to-speech), connects through 20+ messaging gateways (Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Signal, email), works with any model provider from local to OpenRouter, and runs locally or in the cloud on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Version 0.20 in August added streaming voice and an agent-to-agent protocol. Hermes for Businesses, funded by a $90M round in October, adds SSO, audit logging, workspace controls, SLAs, and self-hosting.

Most agents you can download are coding agents. Hermes is a general one: it will write code, but its design centres on remembering you, improving itself, and being reachable wherever you already type.

What makes it different

  • Memory: persistent across sessions, so it remembers projects and preferences
  • Skills: when it works out how to do something, it writes a reusable skill for next time
  • Gateways: talk to it from Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, Signal, or email rather than a new app
  • Models: any provider; switch between local models, OpenRouter's catalogue, OpenAI, or Anthropic
  • Deployment: seven backends from a laptop to serverless, per the May v0.13 release

What it costs to run

The software is free. You pay your model provider per token, or nothing if you run a local model, plus whatever your hosting costs. Nous sells hosted subscriptions through its Portal for people who do not want to self-host. For a company, Hermes for Businesses is priced separately and bundles governance: single sign-on, audit logs, workspace controls, SLAs, and deployment on your own cloud or on-premises, with the code staying open per coverage.

Cautions

  • An agent with 70 tools and your messaging accounts needs careful permission scoping; start narrow
  • Self-hosting means you own updates, secrets, and uptime
  • Adoption numbers (24M+ clones, 2.5% of global tokens) are the company's own; star counts vary by source
  • Release-date claims differ across directories; the MIT licence and the feature set are not in dispute

Related reading

Nous Research raises $90M for Hermes What is an always-on agent? Open-source coding agents compared

Bottom line

If you want an agent you control, that remembers you, and that answers in Slack or Telegram, Hermes is the most capable open option. If you want a coding agent specifically, OpenHands or Cline are more focused. If your company wants both the openness and a contract, the enterprise edition is now the path.