12Agent Harnesses: Hermes, Claude Code & More

What is a harness?

In Lesson 09 you wrote an agent loop by hand. A harness is production-ready software that provides everything around the model: the loop, a toolbox (files, terminal, web, browser), context management, memory, permissions, scheduling and interfaces (terminal, desktop, chat apps). You bring the model and the goals.

Hermes Agent (Nous Research)

Hermes Agent is an open-source (MIT-licensed) personal agent. Its standout feature is a learning loop: it creates skills from experience, improves them as it uses them, keeps persistent memory across sessions, and can run scheduled tasks and reach you on Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal or email. It works with cloud providers or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — including your own Ollama.

Step 1 — Install

curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
source ~/.bashrc        # or: source ~/.zshrc

iex (irm https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.ps1)

The installer sets up its own Python, Node.js and other dependencies. Run hermes doctor any time to diagnose problems.

Step 2 — Choose a model

# pick a strong tool-calling model that fits your hardware
ollama pull qwen3:14b

# start Ollama with a 64K context window
OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH=65536 ollama serve

hermes model
#  → choose "Custom Endpoint"
#  → Base URL:  http://localhost:11434/v1
#  → Model:     qwen3:14b

hermes model          # pick a provider (OpenRouter, OpenAI, and others) and paste your API key
# or the one-step option from Nous Research:
hermes setup --portal # OAuth login + model + web search, image, TTS & browser tools

Step 3 — Start working

hermes          # classic CLI
hermes --tui    # modern terminal UI
hermes -c       # continue your last session

Try real tasks:

› Read ~/clients/kape/discovery-notes.md and draft a one-page website proposal
  in proposal.md using my usual structure: goals, scope, timeline, price.

› Search the web for 5 cafés in Iloilo with no online ordering, and save
  name, link and notes to ~/leads/cafes.csv

› /tools          (see what tools are enabled)
› /model          (switch models mid-session)

Step 4 — Skills & memory

When Hermes completes a multi-step task, it can save the procedure as a skill — a reusable instruction file it reloads next time a similar task appears, and refines as it goes. Its memory stores facts about you and your projects across sessions. Skills follow the open Agent Skills format, so you can also write or share them.

Step 5 — Reach it from your phone

hermes gateway setup    # connect Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email…

With the gateway running (on your computer or a small always-on server), you can message your agent: “Every Monday 8am, summarize last week's leads and send them here.” Hermes supports scheduled tasks with delivery to your chat platform. See the messaging guide for platform-specific steps.

Step 6 — Add tools with MCP

Hermes can connect to MCP servers — like the invoice server you built in Lesson 11. Follow the Hermes MCP guide to register servers, then control which tools each platform may use with hermes tools.

Other harnesses worth knowing

Which should you use?