Hermes' free desktop app makes AI agents easy, but an agent operating system stays more powerful.
Desktop removes the terminal barrierHe argues 99% of people will never use the terminal, so a desktop app with manageable models and APIs is what grows adoption.
Preview and voice are the weak spotsArtifacts open in an external editor instead of previewing, and the voice agent could not get permissions during the test.
An agent OS beats a single agent appHermes is like a brilliant employee, while an agent operating system is the whole company around it, with Kanban, studio and any model plugged in.
Executive SummaryAI
The presenter walks through a brand new free desktop app that ships with Hermes Agent, available on Windows, Linux and macOS, with persistent memory, web browsing and isolated sandboxing.
Inside settings you can change the context window, pick the model per function (he has plugged in Minimax M3), set the chat personality, and switch to dark mode with themes such as midnight.
Voice settings let you choose a provider like xAI, 11 Labs or OpenAI, turn speech to text off, and even respond in your own ElevenLabs-cloned voice.
His main complaints: artifacts open in Visual Studio Code as .md files so you cannot preview what you created, sessions do not sync fully, the voice conversation never gets microphone permissions, and there is no Kanban section.
He concludes Hermes desktop is one brilliant agent worth trying, but an agent operating system is the command center that runs Hermes alongside Claude, OpenClaude, Gemini and others, so he would not switch back.
Key Quote
“And also 99% of people are just not going to use the terminal.”
— Speaker
Key Quote
“you can't really preview what you've created.”
— Speaker
Key Quote
“So I think you see this has been released by News Research officially.”