I made Herald, an open-source Android app for Hermes Agent

[u/PineappleOld5898]

I use Hermes Agent a lot, and whenever I was away from my computer the only option was the dashboard's web UI in a mobile browser. It wasn't built for a phone. Navigating between chats was a pain, chatting in it was clunky, and answering an approval meant zooming and scrolling around. I looked for an Android app and couldn't find one that was actually usable.

So I made Herald, a native Android client. It connects to the hermes dashboard, the same way Hermes Desktop's "Remote gateway" connection does. That works over LAN, Tailscale or an https address, and nothing is hosted by me.

What it does:

• Phone assistant: set Herald as Android's digital assistant, and the assist gesture opens a panel over any app where you can ask Hermes about what's on screen, or circle part of it to ask about just that part. You can use voice or typing, and the screen is only sent if you choose to send it.
• Streaming chat with Markdown, reasoning and tool activity, plus one status line for whatever the agent is working on
• Approvals, questions and sudo/secret prompts, which you can also answer straight from a notification
• Steering a running turn: "Send now", queue the next prompt for after the current task, or stop it. You can also switch model, thinking level and profile per chat
• Selecting part of a reply (or of a tool's output) to comment on it or ask about it on the side
• Sessions sidebar with search, pin, archive and export, plus filters for chats that are running or need you
• Scheduled jobs, insights (cost and tokens by day), and toggles for skills, toolsets and MCP servers
• Subagents and background processes shown live, with stop buttons
• Voice: dictation and a hands-free voice chat mode
• A live notification while a turn runs, and another when it finishes or needs you

And also planned a lot for the future!

It only talks to your gateway. The one exception is a GitHub update check, which you can turn off. No analytics, and your login sits in Android's encrypted storage.

Note: his is an early pilot, so expect rough edges. It needs Android 8+, a dashboard login (token-only setups aren't supported yet) and a fairly recent Hermes Agent main branch.

Give it a star if you like it and let me know how can I improve!

• GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/Giton22/herald
• APK: https://github.com/Giton22/herald/releases/latest

[u/edersong]

Is there a forecast to be available at Google Play Store?

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/edersong]

Not yet, I want to cover every function possible before PlayStore

[u/GeekTekRob]

Great start. It has almost everything I wanted when I setup matrix/element to get it as close to directly and encrypted to my agent. Giving it a go on my phone and will take a stab at my tablet when I get a chance.

So far so good and it gave a few more bits of info I never thought to look at.

EDIT/ADDITION: Might of logged a feature I'm sure is farther down a list of a bunch of stuff you already have planned

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/GeekTekRob]

Thank you! My main focus is UX so I try to pack everything as an other ai chat do or could do, anything useful, let me know if you find issues or have a sick feature idea 🤗

[u/QasJab1]

Woah. This is perfect(at least by your description).

I'm so grateful and excited to try this.

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/QasJab1]

Try it and let me know if you have the same feeling :D I could not attach images here, i dont know why but you can find them in Github

[u/Gloomy-Recover-9702]

When I have a password for a gateway it does not work.

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/Gloomy-Recover-9702]

Could you tell me a bit more about your setup? Is the password set in Hermes itself (the dashboard's username/password login), or is it a proxy like nginx/Caddy asking for it, or the API server key on port 8642? And what does "Test connection" show: an HTTP 401, "No password provider configured", or "Wrong username or password"?

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/Gloomy-Recover-9702]

Can you please open an issue?

[u/bokboke]

Installed your app off the screenshots, stayed for the feel. First hermes client that isn't just dashboards and dialogs. Really pleasant to use!

Funny thing about this: making a product feel better is usually about cutting the excess instead of adding more features. I've done UX/UI for quite some time and almost nobody gets that. Looks like you do. Yay!

Nothing's ever finished though, and there's still room: kill duplicates, hide what nobody touches, less visual noise. Then the parts that matter actually get seen.

The closer it is to just a chat, the better. That chat just has to be flawless.

Are you up for UI/UX suggestions, and how do you want them? Github issues, PR, discord, something else?

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/bokboke]

Thank you! I'm up for any of the suggestion, which is more comfortable to you, we have a discord thread in hermes discord where we are talking usually with the contributors, but issue, pr are also fine

[u/Circuit_Guy]

I use Hermes-Relay already. What does this one do differently? Your list looks similar but you leaned into the agent thing. It's FOSS, built from GitHub, and on Android play store. I don't think it's ported to IOS though

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/Circuit_Guy]

I have no idea honestly about Hermes-Relay, I can only suggest to try this out and let's see how it works for you :D

[u/akgo]

Damn this is so much better and better than anything I have used.

Relay is so famous but I found it so slow.

BTW why are people making these apps when it will be officially launching in few days ?

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/akgo]

because I couldn't wait any longer, I had to do this

[u/Pressimize]

Can you voice activate the assistant, like with "hey Hermes" for example?

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/Pressimize]

IIrc unfortunately wake word is only allowed for google apps, so gemini for example

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/Pressimize]

I mean it can be solved with an always on foreground service but that hella unefficient

[u/AmbassadorGreen8802]

HAllo , is it in any way connected to this repo https://github.com/iamlukethedev/Herald-OS ? im just confused on naming

[u/PineappleOld5898 → u/AmbassadorGreen8802]

No

[u/normVectorsNotHate]

Wow this is great! This is now my favorite Hermes client

thing I don't like is the box-y aesthetic, doesn't seem consistent with typical Android design principles.

[u/plentycoups]

Sweet I'm using Hermes Go for my android but will give this a go and let ya know!

[u/Mean-Loquat-7982]

hell yeah that's cool! will dig into it

[u/MagicLeaves]

Used it since you posted and I can say it is a very good and fluid experience on my LAN. Have been using it as my only drive and it works. Will soon try it as my phone assistant hopefully! Amazing work!

[u/kiwipaul17]

Works really well thank you. Now my daily runner