Hermes Herald AI Agent: Set It Up In 2 Minutes (Free)

The Hermes Herald AI agent is Hermes Agent running as the whole interface of Herald OS, a free, open-source, agent-native operating system built by Luke The Dev.

I had Claude set the whole thing up for me in about two minutes, and this post walks you through doing the same.

I'll show you what Herald OS is, how it plugs into Hermes, how to install it step by step, and how to drive the agent across your machine once it's running.

There's also one short section on the naming clash, because Nous Research called a Hermes release "Herald" back in August, and that confuses a lot of people.

What Is The Hermes Herald AI Agent?

The Hermes Herald AI agent is simply Hermes Agent with Herald OS wrapped around it.

Herald OS describes itself as "an agent-native operating system, with Hermes Agent as the interface".

Instead of clicking through menus and folders yourself, you talk or type to Hermes, and it works across the whole machine for you.

It opens apps, finds and organises files, watches what's running, remembers what matters to you, runs routines on a schedule and builds software while you watch.

Question	Answer
Who made it?	Luke The Dev (iamlukethedev on GitHub), who also made Hermes3D.
Is it official Hermes?	No, it's an independent project and it isn't affiliated with Nous Research.
What does it cost?	Herald OS is free and open source under the MIT licence.
How mature is it?	It's alpha, version 0.1, and the first release landed on 6 October 2026.
What does it run on?	Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 13 or later, its own Linux system, Arch, Omarchy and other Linux.
What brain does it use?	Whatever model your Hermes install is set up with.

I used to run Hermes in the terminal back around March and April, and honestly it was messy.

Herald OS is the opposite of that, because it's a proper, beautiful interface that you can personalise.

I actually think it looks nicer than Hermes Desktop.

How Herald OS Talks To Hermes (The Bridge)

This is the bit operators need to understand before installing anything.

Herald OS does not fork Hermes, and it does not rebuild the agent in its own code.

It runs a standard Hermes Agent install and starts Hermes in the background with hermes serve, listening on your own machine only.

The Herald interface then talks to that Hermes runtime over a local connection.

Hermes still owns the real work, which means sessions, model calls, tools, skills, memory, scheduled jobs and approvals.

Herald OS adds its system powers as a regular Hermes plugin called herald-os-bridge.

On first start, the Mac app links that plugin into your Hermes plugins folder at ~/.hermes/plugins/herald-os-bridge and switches it on.

That plugin gives Hermes a small, typed toolset for your computer.

• The system_info, system_processes, system_disk_usage and system_find_files tools let Hermes read your machine's state and search your files.
• The system_apps and system_network tools let it see your installed apps, running apps, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
• The system_open tool lets it open an app, a URL, a file or a folder.
• The system_files tool lets it create folders, move, rename and trash files, and it never uses a permanent delete.
• The system_kill_process tool lets it stop a stuck program, and it always asks first.
• The os_ui tool lets Hermes operate the Herald interface itself, so it can open pages, add memories, run automations and start missions.

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How To Set Up The Hermes Herald AI Agent On A Mac

This is the route I'd recommend for most people, because it's the quickest way to try it.

You need an Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 13 Ventura or later.

Step 1: Install Hermes Agent and pick a model

If you don't have Hermes yet, the README tells you to run the official installer and then hermes setup.

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

The setup walks you through choosing a model provider and signing in.

You can use a Nous Portal account or an API key for OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, a local model and others.

If you build Herald from source, the README asks for Hermes Agent 0.21.3 or later, so run hermes update first if you're behind.

Step 2: Install Herald OS

Download the DMG file from the Herald OS releases page on GitHub, open it and drag Herald OS into Applications.

Step 3: Let macOS open it

The build isn't notarized by Apple yet, so macOS blocks it the first time.

The README gives you one command to clear that flag.

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Herald OS.app"

Then open Herald OS from Applications as normal.

Step 4: Learn the two keys that matter

Herald OS takes over your whole screen when it starts.

Press Cmd+Ctrl+F to leave or re-enter fullscreen, and press Cmd+Q to quit.

macOS will ask for Screen Recording, Accessibility or Microphone access the first time a feature needs it.

Step 5: Check the agent is wired in

Open the Hermes page with Cmd+2 and ask it something simple.

Then ask "what is using the most memory right now?" and it should answer with its system tool rather than a shell command.

Ask it to move a file, and you should see an approval card before anything happens.

If Hermes falls back to shell commands, run hermes plugins list to check the bridge is enabled, or turn it on with hermes plugins enable herald-os-bridge.

The lazy route I actually used

I didn't type any of that myself, because I pointed Claude at the GitHub repo, told it to set Herald OS up, and it was done in about two minutes.

If you've already got Claude Code or Codex on your machine, that's the fastest way in.

The Other Install Routes

Herald OS isn't only a Mac app, so here are the other routes the README covers.

Your machine	What you install
A spare 64-bit PC	The full Herald OS Linux installer, which is Fedora underneath, written to a USB stick of 8GB or more.
Arch Linux	The Arch package with makepkg -si, then herald-os setup once per user.
Omarchy	The Arch package, then herald-os omarchy install to add it as an app.
Another Linux	The tarball, then herald-os setup and herald-os-app.
An Apple Silicon Mac, as a trial	A virtual machine that one script downloads and boots.

On Herald OS Linux, herald-os update updates the whole system, and herald-os rollback takes you back if something breaks.

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How To Use The Hermes Herald AI Agent Day To Day

Once it's running, this is how I'd drive the agent from page to page.

Overview: your day, already in motion

The dashboard greeted me with "Good morning, Julian. Your day already in motion."

It shows today's schedule from your scheduled tasks and a "here's what needs attention" section.

You can talk to it with voice input straight from the Overview.

It also surfaced recent screenshots from my desktop, which is handy when you're half way through something.

Pick up where you left off

This feature looks at the names of your recent documents, project folders, conversations and calendar events.

Then it suggests up to three threads of work you might want to continue.

It's off until you turn it on, and it reads names and dates only, never file contents.

Those names do go to your model provider, so you can exclude folders and words, such as a client's name, in Settings.

Hermes chat

The Hermes page is normal Hermes chat with a Preview pane and Sources.

You can add sources and files that Hermes can read, and start a new conversation whenever you want.

Spaces

My screen had Spaces for Ideas, Work and Personal, and you can add a new one, for example for a client.

This answers the question I get all the time in the AI Profit Boardroom about running separate companies or clients from one agent OS.

You can also set a default Space in Settings.

Missions

Missions are where you give Hermes an active job, like "build out a new website", and it plans the job step by step.

Under the hood, a mission is just a Hermes session viewed through its goal, its to-do plan, the files it produced and the agents working on it.

Memory

The Memory page shows everything Hermes remembers about you.

I spotted my Telegram details in there on camera, so be careful what you screen-share.

Files

Files gives you recent, favourites, projects, downloads, shared and deleted items.

Automations

Automations is where you manage your scheduled routines and switch each one on or off.

This is the part that impressed me most, because my automations synced across Herald OS, Hermes Desktop and my Agent OS.

That works because Herald reads and writes Hermes's own scheduled jobs, so every front end sees the same list.

Mine included a daily 6am to-do recap, a daily Japanese learning routine and morning inbox summaries.

Connections

Connections is meant for tools, apps and external accounts.

It didn't work or sync for me, which is fair enough for an alpha, and you could ask Claude to fix it in the open-source code.

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The Settings Every Operator Should Check

The settings page is where you decide how much freedom the Hermes Herald AI agent gets.

Setting	What it controls
Autonomy	You choose Ask first, Balanced or Independent, which sets how often Hermes checks in before acting.
Preferred model	This picks the model Hermes uses for most tasks, and mine showed "GPT-6 Astra" through a CLI I had plugged in.
Run on	This sets where agents run tasks, such as this device or another backend like Docker.
Background agents	This sets how many background agents can run at once, from 1 to 32.
Remember preferences	This lets Hermes remember your settings and learn from your choices.
Ask before sending messages	This makes Hermes confirm before it sends messages on your behalf.
Activity history	This shows the background work Hermes did, which is great for jobs you forgot about.
Usage	This shows tokens used, your plan and your token balance, with a warning at 90%.
Voice	This lets you switch the voice engine, change speed, test it and see every voice command.
Software	This adds or removes coding agents and local models such as Claude Code, Codex and LM Studio.
Plugins	This lets you paste a GitHub link to add a plugin.

The General section also has launch fullscreen, default Space, default and projects folders, do not disturb, stay awake, screensaver, dictation and quit.

There are colours and themes, plus privacy, notifications, networks, storage and accessibility.

Permissions: How The Agent Asks Before It Acts

Every system tool has a permission tier, and this is what makes it safe to hand an agent your whole machine.

• Read tools, like system info and file search, run straight away and get logged.
• Act tools, like opening an app, run straight away, get logged and show a notification.
• Mutate tools, like moving or renaming files, ask first, and you can allow them for the session or always.
• Destructive tools, like stopping a process or trashing files, ask every single time.

Some locations are always refused, including your SSH keys, your keychains and Hermes's own credentials.

Every action is written to an audit log that you can read in Settings under Privacy.

My advice is to start on Ask first and only loosen it once you trust what the agent is doing.

Voice: Turning Hermes Into Jarvis

Press Alt+Space on a Mac, or switch on the "hey Hermes" wake word, and you can just talk to it.

Hermes answers out loud, and simple commands like "open missions" run locally without using any tokens.

The free voice engine is the default, and the docs put a turn at about two seconds.

There's also an opt-in Live engine using OpenAI's gpt-live-1, which the docs price at $0.05 a minute with a daily cap you control.

You can switch between local voice and live voice, set the speed, test it and read the full list of voice commands.

Herald OS vs The Hermes "Herald Release"

This is the naming clash I promised to clear up.

Nous Research codenamed Hermes Agent v0.20.0 "The Herald Release", and it shipped on 3 August 2026.

That release was an update to Hermes itself, adding conversational voice with barge-in, A2A agent-to-agent support, signed webhooks and grounded citations.

I covered it in my Hermes v0.20 Herald upgrade guide.

Herald OS is a completely separate, independent project by Luke The Dev, and it isn't affiliated with Nous Research.

It simply runs on top of Hermes, and the from-source route asks for Hermes 0.21.3 or later, which came after the Herald Release.

So if you searched "Hermes Herald" wanting the August update, that's the release, and if you wanted the full-screen agent OS, that's Herald OS.

Tips, Limits And Honest Gotchas

Herald OS is alpha, so expect rough edges and keep backups of anything you let an agent touch.

The UI was cut off slightly at the top on my screen.

Connections didn't sync for me at all.

Don't screen-share the Memory page without checking it first.

If you already use Hermes Desktop and you're happy, you don't have to switch, because your automations will show up in both anyway.

If you haven't got Hermes running at all yet, start with how to set up Hermes Agent in one click.

For the full feature tour of the OS itself, read my main Herald OS explainer.

🚀 Want the automations I run inside Hermes every morning? The AI Profit Boardroom has my Hermes automation blueprints, the Hermes v0.20 update training and four coaching calls a week where you can get your setup checked. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom

My Verdict On Running Hermes This Way

Herald OS is super clean, and it synced with my existing Hermes setup quickly.

It's great for people who want a nice UI but don't like Hermes Desktop.

The bridge plugin is the clever part, because Hermes gets real system tools with real permission tiers instead of raw shell access.

It's alpha, so treat it as something to try on a spare machine or alongside your current setup, not your only workflow yet.

Related Reading

• My Solar Mini 4 Hermes setup shows you how to give Hermes a free brain to run inside Herald OS.
• The Hermes plugins marketplace walkthrough shows you how to add new abilities with one click.

Also On Our Network

• 🌐 How businesses and agencies actually use the Hermes Herald AI agent
• 🌐 Our scored, feature-by-feature Hermes Herald review
• 🌐 A five-minute Hermes Herald quick-start for your Agent OS
• 🌐 Which brain to run the Hermes Herald agent on, with GoldieBench scores

FAQ: Hermes Herald AI Agent

What is the Hermes Herald AI agent?

It's Hermes Agent running as the interface of Herald OS, a free, open-source, agent-native operating system by Luke The Dev.

Herald OS runs your normal Hermes install and adds system tools through a plugin called herald-os-bridge.

Is Herald OS made by Nous Research?

No, Herald OS is an independent project and isn't affiliated with Nous Research.

Nous Research makes Hermes Agent, and it codenamed Hermes v0.20.0 "The Herald Release", which is a different thing.

Is the Hermes Herald AI agent free?

Herald OS is free and open source under the MIT licence.

You still need a model provider for Hermes, and that can cost money unless you use free models.

Will Herald OS break my existing Hermes setup?

It doesn't fork Hermes, so your memory, automations and model settings carry over.

My automations synced straight across from Hermes Desktop and my Agent OS.

Can the Hermes agent delete my files in Herald OS?

Changes go through permission tiers, and trashing files or stopping programs asks every single time.

Herald OS never deletes permanently, and secret folders like your SSH keys are always refused.

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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 agency, Goldie Agency, with a team of around 50 people.
• I've grown a YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
• I wrote the Amazon best-sellers "SEO Link Building Mastery" and "Agency Marketing Mastery".
• My Udemy courses have taught over 50,000 students.

→ Get my best AI training inside the AI Profit Boardroom

Install Hermes, add Herald OS, keep approvals on, and you'll have the Hermes Herald AI agent running your machine in minutes.