hermes-desktop

This project is in active development. Features may change, and some things might break. If you run into a problem or have an idea, open an issue. Contributions are welcome!

Hermes Desktop is a native desktop app for installing, configuring, and chatting with Hermes Agent — a self-improving AI assistant with tool use, multi-platform messaging, and a closed learning loop.

Instead of managing the CLI by hand, the app walks through install, provider setup, and day-to-day usage in one place. It uses the official Hermes install script, stores Hermes in ~/.hermes, and gives you a GUI for chat, sessions, profiles, memory, skills, tools, scheduling, messaging gateways, and more.

Install

Download the latest build from the Releases page.

macOS users: The app is not code-signed or notarized. macOS will block it on first launch. To fix this, run the following after installing:

xattr -cr "/Applications/Hermes Agent.app"

Or right-click the app → Open → click Open in the confirmation dialog.

Features

• Guided first-run install for Hermes Agent with progress tracking and dependency resolution
• Multi-provider support — OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Nous Portal, Qwen, MiniMax, Hugging Face, Groq, and local OpenAI-compatible endpoints (LM Studio, Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp)
• Streaming chat UI with SSE streaming, tool progress indicators, markdown rendering, and syntax highlighting
• Token usage tracking — live prompt/completion token counts and cost display in the chat footer, plus a /usage slash command
• 22 slash commands — /new, /clear, /fast, /web, /image, /browse, /code, /shell, /usage, /help, /tools, /skills, /model, /memory, /persona, /version, /compact, /compress, /undo, /retry, /debug, /status, and more
• Session management — full-text search (SQLite FTS5), date-grouped history, resume and search across conversations
• Profile switching — create, delete, and switch between separate Hermes environments with isolated config
• 14 toolsets — web, browser, terminal, file, code execution, vision, image gen, TTS, skills, memory, session search, clarify, delegation, MoA, and task planning
• Memory system — view/edit memory entries, user profile memory, capacity tracking, and discoverable memory providers (Honcho, Hindsight, Mem0, RetainDB, Supermemory, ByteRover)
• Persona editor — edit and reset your agent's SOUL.md personality
• Saved models — CRUD management for model configurations across providers
• Scheduled tasks — cron job builder (minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, custom cron) with 15 delivery targets
• 16 messaging gateways — Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Matrix, Mattermost, Email (IMAP/SMTP), SMS (Twilio/Vonage), iMessage (BlueBubbles), DingTalk, Feishu/Lark, WeCom, WeChat (iLink Bot), Webhooks, Home Assistant
• Hermes Office (Claw3d) — visual 3D interface with dev server and adapter management
• Backup, import & debug dump — full data backup/restore and system diagnostics from Settings
• Log viewer — view gateway and agent logs directly from the Settings screen
• Auto-updater — check for and install updates via electron-updater
• i18n ready — internationalization framework with English locale covering all screens, ready for community translations
• Test suite — SSE parser, IPC handlers, preload API surface, installer utilities, and constants validation with Vitest

Preview

Office	Chat
Profiles	Tools
Settings	Skills

How It Works

On first launch, the app:

1. Checks whether Hermes is already installed in ~/.hermes.
2. If not installed, runs the official Hermes installer with dependency resolution (Git, uv, Python 3.11+).
3. Prompts for an API provider or local model endpoint.
4. Saves provider config and API keys through Hermes config files.
5. Launches the main workspace once setup is complete.

Chat requests go through a local API server (http://127.0.0.1:8642) with SSE streaming. The desktop app parses the stream in real time, rendering tool progress, markdown content, and token usage as it arrives.

Screens

Supported Providers

LLM Providers

Local presets are included for LM Studio, Ollama, vLLM, and llama.cpp.

Messaging Platforms

Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Matrix/Element, Mattermost, Email (IMAP/SMTP), SMS (Twilio & Vonage), iMessage (BlueBubbles), DingTalk, Feishu/Lark, WeCom, WeChat (iLink Bot), Webhooks, and Home Assistant.

Tool Integrations

Exa Search, Parallel API, Tavily, Firecrawl, FAL.ai (image generation), Honcho, Browserbase, Weights & Biases, and Tinker.

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js and npm
• A Unix-like shell environment for the Hermes installer
• Network access for downloading Hermes during first-run install

Install dependencies

npm install

Start the app in development

npm run dev

Run checks

npm run lint
npm run typecheck

Run tests

npm run test
npm run test:watch

Build the desktop app

npm run build

Platform packaging:

npm run build:mac
npm run build:win
npm run build:linux

First-Time Setup

When the app opens for the first time, it will either detect an existing Hermes installation or offer to install it for you.

Supported setup paths in the UI:

• OpenRouter
• Anthropic
• OpenAI
• Local LLM via an OpenAI-compatible base URL

Local presets are included for:

• LM Studio
• Ollama
• vLLM
• llama.cpp

Hermes files are managed in:

• ~/.hermes
• ~/.hermes/.env
• ~/.hermes/config.yaml
• ~/.hermes/hermes-agent
• ~/.hermes/profiles/ — named profile directories
• ~/.hermes/state.db — session history database
• ~/.hermes/cron/jobs.json — scheduled tasks

Tech Stack

• Electron 39 — cross-platform desktop shell
• React 19 — UI framework
• TypeScript 5.9 — type safety across main and renderer processes
• Tailwind CSS 4 — utility-first styling
• Vite 7 + electron-vite — fast dev server and build tooling
• better-sqlite3 — local session storage with FTS5 full-text search
• i18next — internationalization framework
• Vitest — test runner

Notes

• The desktop app depends on the upstream Hermes Agent project for agent behavior and tool execution.
• The built-in installer runs the official Hermes install script with --skip-setup, then completes provider configuration in the GUI.
• Local model providers do not require an API key, but the compatible server must already be running.
• Alternative npm registry routes are supported for environments with restricted network access.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Check out the Contributing Guide to get started. If you're not sure where to begin, take a look at the open issues. Found a bug or have a feature request? File an issue.

Related Project

For the core agent, docs, and CLI workflows, see the main Hermes Agent repository:

• https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent