Hermes Agent: Self-Learning AI on a 5-Dollar VPS

Most AI agents are stateless. Every conversation starts from scratch. They do not remember what you told them last week. They do not learn from past tasks. They do not build skills from experience. Hermes Agent, built by Nous Research with 228,000 GitHub stars, is different. It has a built-in learning loop: it creates skills from completed tasks, improves them over time, remembers facts about you across sessions, and builds a deepening model of who you are. And it runs on a 5-dollar VPS.

What Makes Hermes Different

Hermes Agent is not just a chatbot with tool access. It is designed around a closed learning loop:

• Autonomous skill creation: After completing a complex task, Hermes can create a reusable skill that captures the procedure. Next time you ask for something similar, it invokes the skill instead of reasoning from scratch. Skills self-improve with each use.
• Persistent memory: Hermes remembers facts about you, your projects, and your preferences across sessions. It periodically nudges itself to update its memory. When you return after a week, it knows what you were working on.
• Self-search: Hermes can search its own past conversations to recall context from previous sessions. If you discussed a project plan two weeks ago, Hermes can find that conversation and resume where you left off.
• User modeling: Using Honcho dialectic modeling, Hermes builds an understanding of your preferences, communication style, and recurring needs. This makes interactions more personalised over time without you needing to re-explain yourself.

This learning loop is what separates Hermes from agents like Claude Code or ChatGPT. Those tools are stateless. Every session is a blank slate. Hermes accumulates knowledge the way a human assistant would: by paying attention, taking notes, and getting better at understanding you.

Where Hermes Lives

Hermes is not tied to your laptop. It runs as a gateway process on a server, and you interact with it from any platform:

• CLI: A full terminal interface with multiline editing, slash commands, and streaming tool output. The experience is similar to Claude Code or OpenCode.
• Telegram: Send it a message. It responds. The same agent that runs on your server answers from your phone.
• Discord and Slack: Invite Hermes to a channel or DM it directly.
• WhatsApp and Signal: Talk to your agent from the messaging apps you already use.

This cross-platform design is powerful for a business context. You can ask Hermes a question from your phone during a meeting, and it responds with context from conversations you had with it on your desktop last week. The continuity is seamless because the agent is one persistent process, not separate sessions.

What Hermes Can Do

Hermes ships with over 40 tools out of the box. It can:

• Browse the web: Search for information, read web pages, and summarise findings
• Run shell commands: Manage servers, run scripts, and perform system administration
• Write and execute code: Python scripts for data analysis, automation, or quick prototypes
• Send emails and messages: Through your email provider or messaging platforms
• Schedule recurring tasks: Built-in cron scheduler. Ask Hermes to send you a daily summary at 9 AM, and it will
• Read and write files: Edit documents, update configuration, and manage your file system
• Access databases: Query SQL databases and return formatted results
• Generate images: Through DALL-E, Gemini, or local Stable Diffusion
• Voice transcription: Send voice memos via Telegram and Hermes transcribes them

All of this is configurable. You control which tools are enabled, which commands require approval, and which actions the agent can take autonomously. The security model is built around per-tool permissions and command allowlists.

Deploying Hermes on a VPS

Hermes is designed to be lightweight. It runs on a 5-dollar VPS with 1GB RAM. Install it with one command:

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

Run the setup wizard:

hermes setup

Configure your API provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, Ollama for local models, or Nous Portal for a unified subscription). Start the gateway to enable messaging platforms:

hermes gateway setup
hermes gateway start

Hermes is now running on your server, accessible from Telegram, Discord, CLI, and every other configured platform. It persists between sessions. It learns from every interaction. It works while your laptop is closed.

Hermes vs. a Team AI Subscription

A business paying for ChatGPT Team at 25 to 30 dollars per user per month for a 10-person team spends 3,000 to 3,600 dollars per year. Hermes Agent on a 5-dollar VPS with API access to Claude or GPT-4 costs roughly 60 dollars per year for the server plus API usage, which for a team of 10 using AI moderately throughout the day might be another 200 to 500 dollars per year. Total: 260 to 560 dollars per year versus 3,000 dollars. The savings are substantial, and you gain cross-platform access, persistent memory, and skill accumulation that no SaaS AI product offers today.

VPS1 deploys Hermes Agent on your own VPS and configures it for your team's platforms. We handle the installation, gateway setup, and tool configuration. You get a self-learning AI assistant that works from any device and remembers everything.