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!

Languages

• English: README.md
• 简体中文: README.zh-CN.md
• 日本語: README.ja-JP.md
• 🌎 Español (LATAM): README.es-LATAM.md

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

Windows

Windows users: The installer is not code-signed. Windows SmartScreen will warn on first launch — click "More info" → "Run anyway".

WSL users: If the installer stalls at Switching to root user to install dependencies..., Playwright is waiting for a sudo password that has no TTY to read from. Grant passwordless sudo for the install, then revert when finished:

echo "$USER ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL" | sudo tee /etc/sudoers.d/hermes-install
# …re-run the installer; once it finishes:
sudo rm /etc/sudoers.d/hermes-install

Tracked in #109.

Fedora (RPM)

sudo dnf install ./hermes-desktop-<version>.rpm

Fedora users: The .rpm is not GPG-signed. If your system enforces signature checking, append --nogpgcheck to the install command. Auto-update is not supported for .rpm builds (limitation of electron-updater); reinstall the new .rpm to update.

Preview

Chat	Profiles
Models	Providers
Tools	Skills
Schedules	Gateway
Persona	Kanban
Office	Settings

Features

• Guided first-run install for Hermes Agent with progress tracking and dependency resolution
• Local or remote backend — run Hermes locally on 127.0.0.1:8642, or connect the desktop app to a remote Hermes API server with URL + API key
• Multi-provider support — OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Nous Portal, Qwen, MiniMax, Hugging Face, Groq, and local OpenAI-compatible endpoints (LM Studio, Atomic Chat, 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

How It Works

On first launch, the app:

1. Asks whether you want to run Hermes locally or connect to a remote Hermes API server.
2. Local mode: checks whether Hermes is already installed in ~/.hermes; if not, runs the official Hermes installer with dependency resolution (Git, uv, Python 3.11+).
3. Remote mode: prompts for the remote API URL and API key, validates the connection, and skips local install.
4. Prompts for an API provider or local model endpoint.
5. Saves provider config and API keys through Hermes config files.
6. Launches the main workspace once setup is complete.

In local mode, chat requests go through http://127.0.0.1:8642 with SSE streaming. In remote mode, the app talks to your configured remote URL with the same streaming protocol. The desktop app parses the stream in real time, rendering tool progress, markdown content, and token usage as it arrives.

Screens

Screen	Description
Chat	Streaming conversation UI with slash commands, tool progress, and token tracking
Sessions	Browse, search, and resume past conversations
Agents	Create, delete, and switch between Hermes profiles
Skills	Browse, install, and manage bundled and installed skills
Models	Manage saved model configurations per provider
Memory	View/edit memory entries, user profile, and configure memory providers
Soul	Edit the active profile's persona (SOUL.md)
Tools	Enable or disable individual toolsets
Schedules	Create and manage cron jobs with delivery targets
Gateway	Configure and control messaging platform integrations
Office	Claw3d visual interface setup and management
Settings	Provider config, credential pools, backup/import, log viewer, network settings, theme

Supported Providers

LLM Providers

Provider	Notes
OpenRouter	200+ models via single API (recommended)
Anthropic	Direct Claude access
OpenAI	Direct GPT access
Google (Gemini)	Google AI Studio
xAI (Grok)	Grok models
Nous Portal	Free tier available
Qwen	QwenAI models
MiniMax	Global and China endpoints
Hugging Face	20+ open models via HF Inference
Groq	Fast inference (voice/STT)
Local/Custom	Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint

Local presets are included for LM Studio, Atomic Chat, 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
npm run build:rpm    # Fedora/RHEL .rpm only

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
• Atomic Chat
• 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