Hermes Agent Bot Mode is a free feature of the Hermes desktop app that turns your Hermes profiles into a roster of named bots, each with its own chat, model, memory, skills, avatar and schedule.
Nous Research made it, it is MIT licensed, and the official docs say it now ships built into the desktop app and is switched on by default.
This post is the operator walkthrough, so you'll get what it is, who made it, what it costs, the setup in order, how to create a bot, every feature, the limits and how it compares with Grok Bot.
I installed Bot Mode on launch day in August 2026 and documented that real install in my Hermes Bot Mode guide on agentos.guide.
Everything newer than that launch build comes from the official Bot Mode docs, which I re-read on 12 October 2026, and I'll tell you which is which.
What Hermes Agent Bot Mode Is In Plain English
Hermes Agent is the free, open-source AI agent from Nous Research.
A Hermes profile is one isolated agent setup with its own config, memory, skills, credentials and chat history in its own folder.
Bot Mode is an interface that sits on top of those profiles and shows each one as a named bot in a roster.
You click a bot and you land in its chat, the same way you'd click a teammate in a messaging app.
The docs put it in one line, which is that a bot is a profile and there is no new primitive to learn.
That design matters, because Bot Mode adds no core patches, no background daemons and no extra storage.
Who Made Bot Mode And What It Costs
Nous Research made Bot Mode, and Teknium from the Nous team shipped it as a public beta plugin in August 2026.
The plugin lived in the NousResearch/Hermes-Bot-Mode repository on GitHub under an MIT licence.
GitHub shows that repository was created on 13 August 2026, and my own guide documents my install the next day.
Somebody told Teknium it looked a lot like Grok Bot, and I reported his three-word reply in my guide, which was "That's the point."
The repository is now archived, and its README says Bot Mode became a bundled, default-on desktop plugin through pull request #87886 in the main Hermes Agent repository.
GitHub shows that pull request was merged on 17 August 2026.
Bot Mode costs nothing, and the only bill is the model usage behind each bot.
A bot pinned to a local model has no model bill at all.
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The Problem Bot Mode Solves
Before Bot Mode, Hermes worked in sessions.
My inbox summary lived in one session, my content research lived in another and my competitor tracking lived in a third.
They all looked the same from the outside, which was a long list of chats with no names and no jobs.
I was the routing layer between them, and that's a poor use of a human.
Bot Mode replaces that pile with a team you can see.
| With plain profiles | With Bot Mode |
|---|---|
| You get a pile of sessions per profile and pick one each time. | Each bot has one permanent Bot Chat that you return to with one click. |
| You switch profiles to talk to a different specialist. | Every bot sits in one roster with its avatar and latest message. |
| Profiles never talk to each other. | Bots message each other and share group chats. |
| Scheduled jobs live in the cron list, away from any chat. | Each bot's routines sit beside its chat. |
That table is my summary of the comparison in the official docs.
How To Set Up Hermes Agent Bot Mode
The setup is short now, because the feature is built in.
- Install Hermes Agent with the official script if you don't have it, which is
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash. - Run
hermes setupand connect a model provider. - Run
hermes updateso you're on a current build. - Open the desktop app, which the docs say you can launch with
hermes desktopwhen Hermes is already installed. - Look for the Bots tab next to Sessions in the left sidebar.
- Check that a Routines tile is docked beside the conversation while the Bots tab is active.
The docs say the desktop app runs on macOS with Apple Silicon, Windows and Linux.
If you already have Hermes profiles, they appear as bots straight away, and that saved me an afternoon on launch day.
If you need a full first install, my one-click Hermes Agent setup walkthrough covers it.
The Old Manual Install, For Older Builds
On launch day the install was one line, and I'm including it because older tutorials still show it.
git clone https://github.com/NousResearch/Hermes-Bot-Mode ~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/hermes-bots
You then reloaded desktop plugins from the command palette or restarted the app.
The archived README says no manual install is needed on current desktop builds, so skip this unless you're stuck on an old one.
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How To Create Your First Bot
Creating a bot took me about twenty seconds in my guide.
- Open the Bots tab and press New Agent.
- Type a Name, which becomes the profile name and the @handle.
- Type a Title, which is the job in a few words.
- Type a Description, which tells the bot and its teammates what it does.
- Press create, and the bot introduces itself as the first message in its new Bot Chat.
In my guide I typed "scout", then "Competitor scout", then one line about its job.
A real profile appeared on disk with its own memory, skills and inbox, and it slid straight into the roster.
What The Advanced Section Adds
Most people will scroll past the Advanced section, and that's a mistake.
| Advanced option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Clone from | It starts the bot from another profile's config, skills, SOUL and memory, or from a fresh profile. |
| Create empty | It skips the bundled skills for a minimal profile. |
| Model and provider pin | It gives this one bot its own model, and different bots can run different models side by side. |
| Custom SOUL.md | It sets the bot's persona and standing instructions. |
| Skills, toolsets and MCP servers | It lets you tick exactly the capabilities this specialist needs. |
| Copy API keys | It copies static API keys from the main profile and is on by default. |
| Create on | It picks which connected machine the bot lives on when you have more than one connection. |
The model pin is the setting I called out in my video, because every bot can think with a different brain.
I run research on one model, writing on another and the inbox bot on a small, fast model that never leaves my machine.
One gotcha is worth knowing before you create ten bots.
The docs say single-use OAuth logins for Anthropic, OpenAI Codex and xAI are not copied to a new bot.
You sign that bot in itself with hermes -p <name> auth add <provider>.
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Every Bot Mode Feature And How To Use It
The Bots Pane
The roster shows one row per profile with an avatar, a latest-message preview and a timestamp.
An Active now filter shows bots that are working, which includes any bot that wrote within the last 90 seconds.
Search filters the roster as you type.
You can right-click a bot and hide it, and the docs say a hidden bot still answers @mentions and still runs its routines.
The Permanent Bot Chat
Every bot has one canonical conversation called Bot Chat, and it is created the moment the bot is born.
Typing /new in that chat compacts the context instead of forking a new session, so the relationship never splits.
On launch day this conversation was called the Agent Inbox, and that is the name you'll see in my August guide.
Routines
A routine is a recurring task attached to the bot that does it.
In my guide I gave my inbox bot a routine called "Evening wrap-up", set it to 6pm and described the job in one sentence.
Routines are plain Hermes cron jobs named [bot:<name>] <routine>, so they also appear in hermes cron list.
The results land in that bot's own chat history, so the summary is waiting when you click the bot.
@Mentions And Bot-To-Bot Messages
You type @researcher have a look at this in any chat.
The bot you're talking to hands the work off, and the reply comes back in the same conversation with the sender named.
The docs say the active bot composes its own message with a tool called message_agent, and your text is never forwarded word for word.
Every message arrives with attribution, which looks like "Message from 🤖 researcher (@researcher):".
I showed this live in my guide by asking my writer bot to pull one line from my researcher bot.
Group Chats
Group chats did not exist on launch day, and the answer back then was "not yet".
The docs now describe shared rooms for two to six bots.
Your message triggers up to three rounds of turns, and each bot either replies briefly or passes.
A bot can escalate a judgement call to you with @user, and the room then shows a "needs you" badge.
Hard caps of ten messages per send and three rounds stop a room from spinning.
I haven't documented group chats in my own guide yet, so treat this part as the docs talking.
Avatars, Pets And Voices
Every bot gets a face.
The docs list blob faces drawn from the bot's name, the classic geometric faces in seven shapes and ten colours, an uploaded image, an AI-generated portrait and a pixel pet.
The pet bounces beside the avatar while the bot is busy, which works as a status light with a personality.
The docs also say each bot speaks with its own profile's text-to-speech settings, so two bots can sound different.
Edit, Duplicate, Delete And Sections
Right-click a bot to edit its profile, which reopens the same options on the live bot.
Duplicate makes a full clone, including config, skills, SOUL.md, memory and its look.
Delete Profile now sits in the right-click menu behind a destructive confirmation, and the default profile can't be deleted.
Sections are folders you make yourself, such as Clients or Team, and you drag bots into them.
Bots Across Machines
The docs say the roster shows bots from every backend you register in Settings, including remote gateways, SSH hosts and Hermes Cloud.
A bot on your laptop can message a bot on a server, and each bot's work runs on its own machine.
There is also a hermes peer command for always-on messaging between two machines with no desktop in the loop.
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How I Wired Bot Mode Into My Agent OS
I run an Agent Operating System, which is one dashboard for all my agents.
I rebuilt the same roster inside it as a Bots tab in the Hermes section.
That tab reads the same Hermes profiles the desktop app reads, so nothing is duplicated.
My guide shows 46 bots in that roster, and every one is a real Hermes profile on my machine.
Oracle watches my competitors, Astros pulls keyword ideas out of search data and Apollo handles voice.
Before Bot Mode those were separate profiles I hopped between.
Now one bot can message another without me copying and pasting between windows.
Limits And Gotchas To Know First
- Bot Mode lives in the desktop app, so a headless server with no desktop app won't show a Bots tab.
- The docs say the
message_agenttool never appears on a headless install unless you add two markers by hand. - Bot-to-bot delivery is per-invocation, so the receiving bot picks up the message when it next runs.
- Live interrupt of a bot in the middle of a conversation is listed as future work.
- The desktop keeps three local bot backends warm by default, and the docs put each one at about 60 MB.
- A bot you open while every slot is busy waits up to 30 seconds, so raise Warm Bot Backends if you run a big team.
- OAuth logins are not copied to new bots, so a fresh bot can fail until you sign it in.
- Bots don't invent work, so a bot without a routine sits idle until somebody messages it.
One viewer told me the interface looked a bit ugly next to Grok Bot at launch, and that was a fair hit on a one-day beta.
Hermes Agent Bot Mode vs Grok Bot
This is the comparison from my video and my Hermes Bot vs Grok Bot post, which I made in August 2026.
| What I care about | Hermes Agent Bot Mode | Grok Bot |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of the software | It is free, and you choose the model spend. | It is a paid platform. |
| Model per bot | Any model works, and each bot can use a different one. | It runs on xAI models only. |
| Where it runs | It runs on your own computer. | It runs in xAI's cloud. |
| Your data | Each bot's memory stays in a folder you own. | Bot memory sits on their servers. |
| Code | It is MIT licensed and you can read it. | You can't read the code. |
| Interface polish at launch | It was rough, as a one-day beta. | It was smoother on that day. |
Grok Bot isn't bad, and it showed the world what a named agent team looks like.
Bot Mode gives you the same shape with different ownership.
One tester in the community had Hermes rebuild their whole Grok Bot team, the coordinator and every worker, inside Bot Mode.
Grok Bot may have changed since August, so check its current page before you decide.
FAQ: Hermes Agent Bot Mode
What is Hermes Agent Bot Mode?
It is a feature of the Hermes desktop app that shows your profiles as a roster of named bots.
Each bot has its own chat, model, memory, skills, avatar and routines.
Is Hermes Agent Bot Mode free?
Yes, it is free and MIT licensed.
You pay only for the model usage behind each bot.
Do I still need to install the plugin from GitHub?
The archived README says no manual install is needed on current desktop builds.
Update Hermes and open the desktop app.
Can each bot use a different model?
Yes, the Advanced section has a model and provider pin for each bot.
A bot with no pin inherits the model from the launch profile.
Can I turn Bot Mode off?
The docs say you can switch it off in the desktop app's plugin settings without a restart.
Your profiles, sessions and cron jobs stay untouched either way.
Does Bot Mode work on a VPS?
The Bots tab lives in the desktop app.
Your gateway can live on a VPS, and the desktop app connects to it as a remote connection.
Related Guides On This Site
- My Hermes Agent bot guide covers Hermes as a bot on Telegram, Discord and Slack.
- My Hermes Agent background guide covers cron, background tasks and the gateway service.
- My best Hermes Agent UI ranking shows where the desktop app sits against other front ends.
- My Hermes Agent plugins marketplace post covers the wider plugin catalogue.
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 How a business would use a Hermes bot team
- 🌐 Every Bot Mode feature explained and scored
- 🌐 The Bot Mode quick-start and where it fits in an Agent OS
- 🌐 Which model to pin to each bot, with real scores
📺 Video notes + links to the tools 👉
🎥 Learn how I make these videos 👉
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About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an SEO entrepreneur, author and founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
- I've built a 7-figure SEO and link-building agency, Goldie Agency, with 70+ people in Bangkok.
- I've grown a YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
- I wrote the book "Link Building Mastery", which covers nine link building strategies.
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Update Hermes, open the Bots tab, create one bot with one job and one routine, and you'll understand Hermes Agent Bot Mode by tomorrow morning.
