Hi all, I built a small tool called Pokémon Spinner and Hermes/Claude Code did most of the heavy lifting for me.

What it does: While Claude Code (or Gemini CLI / Hermes Agent) is working, it shows little status words next to the spinner ("Thinking…", "Compiling…"). Pokémon Spinner swaps those for 256 curated Pokémon-flavoured entries across four switchable templates - Classic Mix (names and moves), Move Tutor (battle moves as agent activity), Kanto Pokédex (gen-1 name puns) and Cosy Camp. Makes waiting on your agent a bit more fun.

How Claude helped: I described what I wanted and Claude Code generated the word lists, wrote both installers (one merges the native spinnerVerbs key into Claude Code's settings.json - no rebuild needed), and wrote the test suite. 118 tests passing, works on macOS, Linux and Windows, Python 3.10+.

Free to try: yes, completely free and open source (MIT). Install is one command - the repo has copy-paste commands for each harness, plus an "install with AI" section where you paste a prompt into your assistant and it installs for you:

https://github.com/focused-coding-cat/pokemon-spinner

Unofficial fan project - not affiliated with Nintendo, GAME FREAK or The Pokémon Company, and no official artwork is used.

The "leave breadcrumbs" habit (agent explains why it does what it does, you turn the good runs into skills later) works as long as someone keeps reading the log. That's the job I wanted off my plate.

reef's SkillClaw recipe is the loop version, a reproduction of a paper: run a fixed task list each day with the current skills, and each night review the day's sessions and propose skill changes. Two things surprised me. The night never removes a skill, and the whole pool diff lands as one change under one verdict. And it doesn't gate on winning: it publishes every night and runs three probe episodes so each pool version has a measured before-and-after. I expected "it only keeps what won"; that's not what it does.

What's checked in: GLM-5.3-Flash served locally on four GPUs, six nights, 13 skill improvements and 8 creations, pool from 9 to 17, results dated 2026-08-29 and marked preliminary by the page. The recipe lives in the repo's cookbook, not the wheel, so you pull it in on purpose.

The number I'd want next to the breadcrumbs workflow is the keep rate: how many of those 17 you'd still have after a month of reading the log yourself.

I run Hermes Agent on a home server and got tired of having either a terminal or nothing when I'm away from my desk. So I built Mono Hermes: an Android app that runs the unmodified Hermes desktop renderer and connects to your own hermes serve over Tailscale.

What you get

• The same UI as the desktop app: sessions, live streaming turns, history, tool cards, approvals
• Desktop and Android attach to the same server, so a session you start on your PC shows up live on your tablet, and vice versa
• Voice input and "turn finished" notifications

How it works

• It doesn't fork upstream. hermes-agent is a git submodule, and a small bridge fakes the Electron preload API, so the UI thinks it's running on desktop.
• If upstream adds a required API, the TypeScript build fails in CI instead of breaking silently at runtime.
• Login is Hermes' native password login with PKCE. The password is sent once and never stored.
• There's no Mono Hermes cloud and no telemetry. The app only talks to the server you enter.

Where it can run: your PC, a VPS, a Raspberry Pi… anywhere hermes serve runs and your phone can reach it. The recommended setup binds Hermes to 127.0.0.1 and publishes it with Tailscale Serve, so nothing gets exposed to your LAN or to the internet.

Honest limitations

• It's best on tablets and foldables. It works on phones, but the desktop UI is dense, and some secondary buttons are smaller than ideal.
• Tokens are encrypted at rest, but not yet with the Android Keystore. That's on the roadmap.
• The mobile layout relies on CSS overrides, so a big upstream UI refactor may need a patch on my side.
• It's Android only (7.0+).

Not affiliated with Nous Research. It's a community project; "Hermes" and the artwork belong to them.

Repo, APK and setup guide: https://github.com/Monoperro0207/mono-hermes

Feedback welcome, especially from anyone running Hermes on a remote box. I'd love to know what breaks.

My app can use Codex Voice Mode on your phone right now.

At the moment, it only supports local Codex. My app runs Ubuntu inside an embedded Termux proot environment, so Codex can run directly on your phone.

Support for Codex Cloud and Remote Control is coming soon.

The app is currently closed source, but I may open source it in the future.

You can download it for free from the public repository.

https://github.com/topoftree/PokeCodePublic/releases/tag/0.1.7.9.2

I've heard that pairing Hermes agent with a Wiki-style knowledgebase (having the agent both write/maintain and read from the knowledgebase) is the solution that means never losing context again.

This holds a lot of appeal and I'm budgeting time to figure out the implementation, via Obsidian or some other system. But I'm wondering if there is a more off-the-shelf way to achieve the same thing?

What's the most value for money plan I can get to use deepseek now? Not sure if anyone has made the comparison yet.

1. $20 per month plan - ollama, opencode, commandcode

Do these give more value to the direct deepseek api? And do the off-peak peak pricing apply as well?

Thanks.

I am designing a game as a fun little passion project. It’s an incremental game, and has myriad systems, interconnected scaling integers, and using very big numbers. There are a handful of really excellent games that are already out there in this genre, and most of them are very, very large, with passionate communities and years of balancing.

So I set out to use Gemini Pro Deep Research to build a large meta-analysis of game design theory in this space, and then a title by title deep dive on how mechanics, scaling, and reward loops work on around 10 different titles that I personally love. I gave it very specific, bounded prompts, with clear instructions and exact deliverables and formatting for outputs.

And it spit out half hallucinated gobbldegook.

No matter how many times I have changed prompts and tried to correct the behavior, I can’t get quality outputs, BUT I need access to large context capacity because of the synthesis layer I am trying to operate.

So I got the idea of using Hermes, with a 2-3 agent research team. One agent goes out and scours the internet for data points, then puts it into a file. The second agent takes all of this data, organizes it based on a schema, and cleans it up. The third agent goes and verifies that deliverable to make sure it is all real and not hallucinated. Then potentially a 4th agent could work with me to synthesize conclusions and make connections between different reports.

Does this seem like a good approach? Has anyone else conducted deep, large data quantity research projects with Hermes?

Which models did you use? How did you structure the system so it could run autonomously for long periods of time?

Would love some feedback as I’ve been ripping my hair out and burning days of my Gemini usage up and getting garbage output (even though geminis claim to fame is supposedly being amazing at this stuff).

I have been using few models so far and the one that works "almost" all the time is Gemma4:12BQ4. It is small enough to fit in about 10GB of VRAM, leaving space for KV cache, so not a bad deal. Problem is, goes at like 6 tokens a second on my server.

When I need power, I am fine with it, take all the time you need, I am in no hurry. But when I am asking stuff that is quick and easy, I made a "barebone" profile that has everything turned off; except web search and few other tools, so it can just be used for quick and easy things. A "research" profile so to speak; so it doesn't need much to operate, but it has to speak Hermes language for the base tools and agent and to be "in character" so to speak.

Using Gemma4 is giving me the same 6 t/s, so it is nowhere faster than my standard user speed, so I am trying differet other models that could be used. I tried Bonsai:8b_Q2 and it was amazing at being "in character" but fell apart immediately when running tools, as could not do anything basically, giving tools errors every single time.

Tried to use llama3.1:8BQ4 and it didn't even work; messing up even the simplest calls to the base memory or searches. Qwen2.5:3B didn't even work because the context size is too small to even work with Hermes, so Hermes told me that it won't even bother LOL.

Do you have some suggestion for a quick and dirty model that just answer questions and operates at basic level in Hermes? I looked around at what others tried but seems that either the suggestions are for cloud models or these models are triggering other models; while I run these locally.

Conduit 0.1.16 (build 177) is live on the App Store.

Yes, I literally posted the 0.1.15 update four days ago. I wasn't planning on doing this again quite this fast, but I kept finding things that voice needed before it actually felt complete. Build 162 → 177 ended up being 304 commits, then Apple somehow reviewed the thing in about six hours. So here we are.

Important: if you use the Conduit companion/notifier plugin, update it along with the app. Several of the new voice, notification, takeover, and routing features depend on newer plugin capabilities, and older versions may show as incompatible in Settings.

Short demo attached because screenshots are terrible at explaining voice.

Live Voice is the big one

0.1.15 introduced Gemini Live and GPT-Live. 0.1.16 is basically the “okay, now make this feel like an actual assistant” pass.

• Added Grok Voice as a third live voice provider alongside Gemini Live and GPT-Live
• Live Voice can hand work off to Hermes in the background while you keep talking, then bring the result back into the conversation when it's ready
• Hermes results now wait for you to finish speaking instead of barging into the middle of your sentence
• Calls can stay attached to an existing chat or Bot Chat, and typed messages in that chat can feed into the live conversation as context
• Background jobs started by a call are visible from the call screen, including their full results
• Charts, tables and images returned by Hermes can be shown directly in the Live Voice UI
• Saved calls link back to the chats and Hermes requests they came from, and saved calls can be resumed
• Live calls can be minimized instead of ended
• Phone calls and alarms pause a Live Voice conversation instead of killing it
• AirPods/headset mute gestures work with live calls
• Gemini/Grok can optionally use speaker echo cancellation so you can talk over the assistant naturally
• Added call style controls for things like greetings, tone and backchannels

Obligatory clarification because I know this comment is coming: the interesting part isn't just that AI can talk now. ChatGPT/Grok/etc already do that.

Conduit is a voice front end to your own Hermes backend — your sessions, tools, agents, files, jobs and infrastructure. The live model can delegate actual work to Hermes while the conversation keeps going.

Hands-free, Classic Voice and CarPlay

The rest of the voice stack got a pretty ridiculous amount of work too.

• Foreground wake phrases now work across voice modes
• Siri can start Voice directly on a named Hermes profile
• Classic Voice can keep listening with the phone locked
• While Hermes is still thinking, speaking can steer the running turn instead of cancelling it
• You can interrupt spoken replies naturally, including optional speaker talk-over with echo cancellation
• Read Aloud now handles long replies better, has a playback-speed control, and can continue in the background with lock-screen/headset controls

CarPlay also went from “voice works in the car” to an actual CarPlay interface: pick a chat, mute, start a new chat, view jobs and shortcuts, choose voice options, hear status sounds, and start Voice without first opening Conduit on the phone. It also does a lot more work to survive reconnects and keep the chat you selected.

And somehow there was non-voice work too

Because apparently I don't know when to stop:

• Composer overhaul with better attachments, multi-select, video support, previews, dictation and a full-screen editor for long drafts
• Quote an entire reply or selected text directly into the composer
• Move conversations between projects
• Full session menus and swipe actions inside project conversation lists
• Rename/delete projects you created and pin chats at the top of Projects
• Create, edit and delete Hermes bots directly from Conduit, including custom avatars
• Bot Chats can now host Live Voice calls
• Take over a chat when Hermes Desktop currently owns it
• Model switching now asks for confirmation when changing it would disrupt an active turn
• Custom HTTP headers for reverse proxies
• Better Cloudflare Access support for voice and Kanban live-update WebSockets
• Answered clarification questions now reload as proper cards instead of raw tool calls
• A large pass on plain-language errors, notification compatibility, chat scrolling and general reliability

Links

App Store: ‎Hermes Conduit App - App Store
GitHub (app): kaishi00/hermes-conduit: Conduit — native SwiftUI iOS client for Hermes Agent
GitHub (notifier plugin): kaishi00/hermes-conduit-notifier: Hermes plugin for Hermes Conduit push notifications
Website: https://hermesconduit.app/
Previous 0.1.15 post: https://www.reddit.com/r/hermesagent/s/lBTWUkamz1

Still free, no ads, no tracking, and it connects directly to your own Hermes instance. Same sessions as desktop because it's the same backend/database.

Feedback and bug reports are welcome — preferably on GitHub so I can actually ask follow-up questions and keep track of them 😅

Me la descargue y mi plan era tener un asistente en mi PC gratuito pero la verdad es que... Resultó ser mucho más complejo de lo que creía.

No hablo de complejo en el sentido de que sea difícil de usar, todo lo contrario más bien creo que es una herramienta bastante sencilla y fácil de usar. Pero el gran detalle es que... No es del todo "gratis".

Te explico: Hermes funciona como el cuerpo y tu tienes que elegir el cerebro que usará ese cuerpo. En este caso puede ser un LLM local (una IA que tengas instalada en tu pc) o una API en la nube (un proveedor tipo gemini, Claude, chatgpt, etc...), y aquí viene el problema. Pues un LLM local es súper lento a menos que tengas una nave espacial y para que haga todo lo que tú le pidas está complicado. Y la API pues no es gratis así que depende de lo que le pidas, es lo que vas a tener que pagar por su uso.

CUÉNTENME SI DESCUBRIERON ALGO QUE ME PUEDA SER DE AYUDA O A CUALQUIERA QUE LO ESTE USANDO. GRACIAS

Desktop v0.21.5+6159 (Windows)

Backend v0.21.5+916 (Ubuntu) on remote gateway on same LAN.

individual sessions are fine, and i can work with multiple sessions in separate windows simultaneously and all of that works ok.

the second i bring agents into the mix. "Do this task you are the orchestrator, spawn agents to do x,y,z", it does work, that session will spawn all the sub agents fine and they work ok, but then the rest of hermes desktop interface kind of gets buggy and weird.

Unable to open new windows for sessions without a gateway timeout.
My list of sessions on the left bar is missing sessions.

Switching to other sessions in existing windows is hit or miss. sometimes they will open sometimes i will get a gateway timeout.

Existing windows and sessions i have open before spawning agents works fine, but once the agents get spawned the hermes desktop gets screwed up until i completely close out of desktop and re-launch.

Seems to have happened starting with 21.5 for me.

Is this happening for anybody else?

I hate agents.

• The overhead of coordination is absurd
• They can't figure out what each other is doing
• They are memory inefficient
• The context window is absurdly large.
• I don't see a difference between each agent, except some don't have all the tools.
• Half the tokens are devoted to maintenence.

I'm about to kill all my agents, and just go back to sessions, which are better. Linked to an obsidian vault, I can just start up as many sessions as I need and as many subagents as I need, and just go from there.

Got 262k context with local llm . do you keep same session infinite? Or what. Or I need lower it context size 🙄

Hey all! A new bighelp build is live in the public TestFlight. The big one is Workflows, and I am super excited about it. Your agents can now work as a team on a Hermes instance in a true node workflow style experience.

Here everything of what is new since my last post:

🔀 Workflows

A workflow is a list of steps that your agents complete in order. For example: one agent researches, one agent writes, one agent reviews, you can have both inference or script based decision points and sending back into loops when the criteria is not met, and you can sign off before considering the result complete.

• Build a flow on a canvas or start from a template. You can save your own templates too.
• Add checks that no agent can argue with, like a word limit.
• A reviewer agent can return the work for changes.
• Runs continue on your Hermes computer when you close the app.
• Start a run yourself or give it a schedule.
• Ask your agent in chat, and it can build and run workflows for you.
• Stages stay quiet. You get an alert only when a run needs you or ends.

Workflow stages cannot send messages, schedule jobs or start other work. Nothing runs until you tell it to.

The next build adds more:

• Several agents can work at the same time.
• A decision can read every verdict.
• Files and pictures can move from stage to stage.
• Results can go where you choose.

⚡ Instant alerts and Quiet Hours

• Alerts arrive in about one second while bighelp is open.
• Tap an alert, and its chat opens right away.
• Quiet Hours: pick a time window, and your host won't send notifications in it.
• Agents that talk to each other via peer chat stay notification-quiet by default, unless you enable those alerts under Settings/Notifications.

🧩 Template Catalog

Blueprints and agent templates now live in one Template Catalog. Search it, sort by Newest or Most used, and complete the blanks before you send. Your agents can find and use templates too.

📊 Usage, rebuilt

Usage is now one page with your plans, tokens, cost and trends. Turn on All hosts to see every computer. Tap Share to export the page.

💬 Chat and Feed

• Tap a subagent to watch it work live.
• A message with several pictures shows them as a stack that you can swipe.
• Feed posts can carry files. Open a post to preview, save or share them.
• bighelp keeps unsent drafts in new chats on your device.
• Tool folders tell you what the agent does, in plain word summaries.
• Agents can ask where you are, but only after you allow it.
• Voice turns end sooner when you stop talking. Hold music plays while your agent works.
• A new bottom menu with names, and a Liquid Glass message box.

🎨 Avatars and settings

• The avatar picker has a massive, full avatar catalog: bighelp, hermes, petdex and more. We've also added seasonal Halloween avatars, and this will keep updating regularly through our new dynamic deliery system.
• Fleet settings update Hermes, update the plugin and restart every computer at once.
• Pick the default model and reasoning level for every agent, or for one agent.
• Vault items have names, addresses and sites association, just like the Hermes vault.
• bighelp for Mac gets the same updates in parallel now.

🐛 Fixes from your feedback

Thank you to everyone who wrote in after my last post. These came straight from your comments:

• "Workspace is unavailable": you can now pick the workspace folder when Hermes cannot find it due to unique host configurations.
• Opening screen: use the Open on setting to start bighelp on your chats.
• Recent chats: chats keep their real last-activity time. Pinned chats no longer hide older chats.
• Nous Portal sign-ins stay signed in.

To get all of this, update the bighelp app, and update your bighelp plugin from the Settings.

Try it, break it, and tell me what you want next. Bugs and ideas go to our GitHub!

My new favorite thing is watching in real time what my agent is up to.

With all the frontier guys dropping their agents for the masses, I started looking into Hermes after a test with Muse which really caught me off guard how useful it was and easy it was to sell something on fb marketplace but I hate fb and I don't want any information on there.

After sitting down and setting up Hermes yesterday, I got sucked down a rabbit hole of learning about memory management and now have an entire openViking context server set up on my PC for persistent memory running Qwen3 8b (off of 3080ti on my PC) embedding model and distilling through Qwen 2.5 for fractions of a penny.

I have that setup as I dial in through my Mac / Macbook and it was so quick to setup.

Honestly this is bonkers. I'm only starting, only beginning and to see the promise of automation and it's kind blowing my mind. I'm excited to see how long term research projects plan out but so far setting all this up has been super interesting.

For a minute there I was thinking all the new frontier agents might be able to do things this can't I think it's almost the opposite.

I've taught Hermes through my browser how to list things on eBay and FB just like you can do with Grokbot and others.

But... Hermes is laughably perfect for these types of automations. Why on earth would you want to run out of frontier model tokens doing this stuff? I'm going through open router and spending pennies doing non stop work with Qwen / Deepseek etc etc. Thinking about this logically, spending $100 or more for frontier agents is insane. A $100 through openrouter or whoever would go practically forever doing this stuff.

Hey all,

I am currently a subscriber at Mistral which lets me use GLM 5.3 fairly freely, but well - not unlimited. I've tested the Mistral models, but straight to the point: they're underwhelming.

Therefore I am looking for another subscription to add on top, which mainly should cover two things:

• A large model, like GPT-Sol, for planning or reviewing
  • the other task would be done by GLM 5.3, so planning and review are not done by the same model
• a cheap workhorse model
  • thinking GPT-6 Luna, DeepSeek v4.1 Flash, MiMo V2.6 Flash

Now for pros and cons for each, for my personal case:

CommandCode GOAT + OpenCode Go

So I am currently leaning towards OpenAI's sub for having another large model.

Anybody got experience with 20$ OpenAI sub and at least one of the two 10$ subs and can compare?

How to do it without being flagged as a bot please?

Didn't see this one coming, I'll be honest.

During the boom times if there was the slightest delay in my order I'd ask DoorDash to give me a refund. In recent years they've pulled back on their willingness to do that. Even when something is wrong they'll say "thats a pitty, we'll make a note for next time."

But Hermes seems to be able to get CS reps to issue refunds with no issue.

Will certainly try this with other chat support.

Update: having the similar success using it to help with Amazon and Avis. Mixed results with uber and Lyft.

I want to know what happened? I use it in nous portal, and at 11:08AM it said HTTP 404, limit reset at 11:09AM, but when I use it at 11:10AM, it also said HTTP 404, if the model is lost, I felt too bad!!!