Hermes Agent

Terminal coding agent from Nous Research. Its gate is unusual: a model decides whether a command needs a human, and only shell commands that trip a risk detector are checked at all.

spec

Maker

Nous Research

Kind

terminal-agent

Version

0.20.4 · checked 2026-08-20

License

MIT

npm

Not applicable. It is a Python package.

Repository

github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

getting it

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

The script clones the repository and builds a Python environment managed by uv. A PyPI package exists but its newest release is 0.19.0 while the repository is at 0.20.4, so pip installs a version behind a full minor.

other channels

• PowerShell, per the README's Windows line beside the curl command

how it is built

Its gate works differently from the others here: rather than prompting on every call, a model decides whether a command needs a human, and only shell commands that trip a risk detector are checked at all. Commands run on your machine with no container between them and your files, so that gate is the only thing in the way.

Language

Python

Ships as

Install script (clone and build)

What it can enforce

Gate in the harness

Out of the box

Gated by default

Extends via

Not recorded yet. We have not opened this one up.

Embeds via

Not recorded yet. We have not opened this one up.

Runtime

Python

Licence

MIT

capabilities it claims

Taken from the project’s own documentation. Claimed, not verified by us. Verifying is what the playground is for.

• tools
• sessions

going deeper

We have not measured this one yet. Opening a harness up means reading its source, sizing every subsystem and recording a real session. That takes a while, and we would rather do three properly than eleven badly.

status: catalogue only · no measured pack