Hermes Agent is Nous Research's open-source agent with memory, skills, scheduling and chat gateways, and HagiCode is a workbench that runs Hermes as a coding executor over ACP. Use Hermes alone as an always-on assistant; add HagiCode for parallel coding sessions, proposals and commits.
Hermes Agent is an open-source, self-improving agent from Nous Research. You run hermes in a terminal, or reach it from Telegram, Discord, Slack and other chat apps, and it keeps memory and builds skills over time. HagiCode is a desktop and web AI programming workbench that drives agent CLIs, Hermes among them, as its executor. It does not replace Hermes; it runs hermes acp inside a repository and adds sessions, proposals and commit handling.
Hermes is broader than a coding agent, and that matters here. If you want an always-on assistant, scheduled jobs or a bot in your chat apps, stay with Hermes alone: HagiCode uses its ACP mode, where Hermes' own docs say messaging delivery and cron management are excluded. If your goal is coding work across repositories, HagiCode is the layer that organises it.
| Dimension | Hermes Agent | HagiCode |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source self-improving agent with memory, skills, scheduler and chat gateway; coding is one use | Workbench that runs agent CLIs, Hermes included, as coding executors |
| Interface and platforms | Terminal UI; Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Email; Linux, macOS, WSL2, native Windows, Termux; desktop app on macOS (Apple Silicon) and Windows | Desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux), Docker Compose container, Microsoft Store edition |
| Pricing and licensing | MIT-licensed and free; you pay your model provider, or an optional Nous Portal subscription | Desktop and Container free; Store edition free with optional one-time TurboEngine purchase |
| Model and provider access | Nous Portal (300+ models), OpenRouter, OpenAI, your own endpoint and more; switch with hermes model | Hosts no models; uses what Hermes is configured with; optional OmniRoute routing |
| Parallel work | Spawns isolated sub-agents; seven terminal backends including Docker, SSH, Modal and Daytona | Several sessions at once, each a named Agent with visible status |
| Spec and planning workflow | No proposal workflow; learns reusable skills from experience | OpenSpec proposals: propose, validate, apply, archive (3 concurrent free, 32 with TurboEngine) |
| Git and commit handling | Works through its terminal tools; the README documents no dedicated commit workflow | AI-composed commit messages with the repository locked during the commit; Git and GitHub integration |
| Setup effort | One-line installer that builds its own Python environment, then hermes setup | Desktop install, plus Hermes installed with its ACP support and a provider configured |
| Best for | An always-on personal or team agent across terminal, chat and cron jobs | Coding work across repositories with parallel sessions and traceable specs |
Hermes creates skills after complex tasks, improves them as it uses them, searches its own past conversations with full-text search and LLM summaries, and builds a model of you across sessions. It follows the agentskills.io open standard, so skills are portable. This is the feature to choose Hermes for.
One gateway process connects Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal and the CLI, with voice-memo transcription. A built-in cron scheduler takes natural-language jobs, such as nightly backups or weekly audits, and delivers results to any connected platform.
Hermes supports seven terminal backends: local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal, Daytona and Vercel Sandbox. Daytona and Modal can hibernate when idle, so you can run it on a small VPS and talk to it from chat while it works on a cloud machine.
hermes model switches provider and model without code changes; the Nous Portal subscription is optional and bundles models with web search, image generation and a cloud browser. Hermes can spawn isolated sub-agents and write scripts that call its tools over RPC. Releases are frequent and still 0.x (v0.22 in October 2026).
hermes model and optionally use Nous Portal.HagiCode is a workbench on top of the CLI. It starts hermes acp in the repository you open, so your own Hermes install and provider credentials do the work. Hermes keeps reading its provider setup from its own configuration, ~/.hermes/.env or config.yaml.
Nothing is locked in: Hermes stays a normal install, with its memory, skills and gateway untouched.
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash; Windows PowerShell: iex (irm https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.ps1)).hermes setup or hermes model to choose a provider, then check ACP with hermes acp --check; the ACP support may need its extra installed, as the Hermes ACP docs describe.hermes directly; nothing in your Hermes setup changed.Hermes can spawn sub-agents inside one conversation. HagiCode adds the level above: several Hermes sessions across tasks or repositories, each a named Agent whose status you can see.
Hermes learns from experience, but its memory is not a record of why a change was made. An OpenSpec proposal is: the problem, the agreed approach and the resulting code changes stay together and can be archived.
HagiCode drafts the commit message from the diff and locks the repository during the commit. Code Server opens the files Hermes changed in a browser editor, so review and edits stay in one window.
Monospecs declares sub-repositories in .hagicode/monospecs.yaml so a cross-repo change reaches Hermes as one proposal. Vault holds reference projects and notes shared across projects, next to what Hermes remembers about you.
OmniRoute can centralise model routing across agents. Hermes tool calls appear in the same typed view as every other agent's, and optional TokenMonitor shows today's tokens and cost in the status bar.
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash. On native Windows run iex (irm https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.ps1) in PowerShell, then start it with hermes.hermes acp in your repository.HagiCode is an agentic coding workspace. Rich, convenient UI interactions make planning, agent execution, and project work approachable and easy to navigate, creating an engaging development experience.
Explore an engaging development experience through rich, convenient UI interactions.
HagiCode is an agentic coding workspace. OpenSpec workflows plan the change, multi-agent execution carries it out, and Hero Scenario makes the long run visible, so ideas become shipped software.
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