Agents · Nous ResearchFor technical users
Hermes Agent
A self-hosted autonomous agent that runs on your own infrastructure, remembers you across sessions and writes its own reusable skills. Powerful, and genuinely technical to run.
Visit Hermes Agent →What it does
Persistent memory and a learning loop
Keeps memory across sessions and turns experience into reusable skills it refines as it goes, building a picture of your recurring work over time.
For work An assistant that gets better at your specific repeated tasks rather than starting fresh each time.
Runs unattended on your own hardware
Runs as a persistent process on infrastructure you control, from a small server to a GPU machine, and keeps working when your laptop is closed. Scheduled tasks run on a built-in cron.
For work Standing automation that continues without you sitting there.
Lives where you chat
Connects through a gateway to more than twenty messaging platforms, including Telegram, Slack, Discord and WhatsApp, and has a real-time voice mode.
For work Driving the agent from whatever app you already use, by text or voice.
Model-agnostic, with a tool gateway
Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, a local model or Nous's own portal, and plugs in external tools and servers through MCP, plus web search, browsing and image generation.
For work Building a private agent that is not tied to one provider.
Permission and approval layer
Gates what the agent is allowed to run, so an autonomous agent that executes real commands still asks before sensitive actions.
For work Keeping a hand on an agent that can act on your systems.
Best for
Technical people who want to understand, hands-on, what an always-on agent with memory can do and are comfortable self-hosting.
Not for
Most working people: it is self-hosted software you install and run yourself, not an app you sign into. Reach for a hosted assistant's agent mode instead.
Real work with it
A developer or self-hoster
Standing personal automation on your own server
- Deploy it on a server you control and connect it through Telegram or Slack.
- Let it accumulate skills for recurring chores like triage or research digests.
- Use the scheduler for tasks that should run on their own.
Human checkpoint The approval layer exists for a reason: gate anything that spends money, sends an external message or writes to production before it can run unattended.
A privacy-conscious technical user
A private agent stack you own end to end
- Point it at your own model endpoint and wire in the tool servers you trust.
- Use subagents to run parallel jobs.
- Review the skills and memory it builds before relying on them.
Human checkpoint You own the operations, the security and the bill; decide the model, the budget and what the agent is never allowed to do.
The part that stays yours
An agent that runs unattended and remembers everything needs an owner, boundaries and an off switch. What it may touch, what it may do without asking, and who answers for what it does are the human decisions that make it safe.
When to pick something else
A hosted assistant's agent mode (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini)
You are not technical and just want an agent that works with zero setup and managed safety. For most people, this is the right choice.
Manus
You want to hand off a long task to the cloud and walk away, without running any infrastructure yourself.
Genspark
You want a polished, managed 'super-agent' platform for documents and multi-step work, hosted for you.
Watch-outs
- It runs real commands and acts autonomously, so its permission system is essential and a misconfigured agent on a networked server is a genuine security risk.
- 'Free open-source software' still means paying for model calls and hosting, and an autonomous agent that spawns subagents can run up token cost quietly.
- It is not for non-technical users: setup assumes comfort with a terminal, containers and API keys, and the quick-install claim understates configuring a model, tools and safe permissions.
- Nous does not publish pricing for its own model portal, so the running cost is unknown until you choose where to point it.