Hermes Agent Bot Mode is a free, built-in feature of the Hermes desktop app that turns each Hermes profile into a named bot with its own chat, model, memory, skills, avatar and routines.

Nous Research made it, it is MIT licensed, and my overall verdict is 8 out of 10, because the design is excellent and a few rough edges remain.

This page is the feature-by-feature reference, so every feature gets a plain explanation, a how-to and a score.

I installed Bot Mode on launch day in August 2026, and that install is documented in my Hermes Bot Mode guide.

Features added after launch are described from the official Bot Mode docs, which I re-read on 12 October 2026, and I mark those clearly.

The scores are my opinion as a daily Hermes user, and they are not benchmark results.

Hermes Agent Bot Mode At A Glance

Item Answer
What it is It is a roster of named bots built on Hermes profiles.
Maker Nous Research made it.
Licence The plugin repository is MIT licensed.
Price The software is free, and model usage is your only cost.
Where it lives It lives in the Hermes desktop app as a Bots tab next to Sessions.
Install The docs say it is built in and on by default.
Platforms The desktop app runs on macOS with Apple Silicon, Windows and Linux.
Launch It launched as a public beta plugin in August 2026.
My verdict I score it 8 out of 10.

What Bot Mode Is And Who Made It

Hermes Agent is the free, open-source agent from Nous Research.

A Hermes profile is an isolated agent setup with its own config, memory, skills, credentials and chat history.

Bot Mode is a user interface over profiles, and the docs say there is no new primitive to learn.

Teknium from Nous Research shipped it as a public beta plugin in the NousResearch/Hermes-Bot-Mode repository.

GitHub shows the repository was created on 13 August 2026.

The repository is now archived, and its README says Bot Mode became a bundled, default-on plugin through pull request #87886, which GitHub shows was merged on 17 August 2026.

The problem it solves is simple.

Sessions pile up, every chat looks the same and you become the person carrying answers between them.

A roster of named bots gives each job one owner and one memory.

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How I Scored Bot Mode

I scored each feature from 1 to 10 on three things.

  • I asked whether the feature does a real job for a non-developer.
  • I asked whether it is reliable and built on standard Hermes parts.
  • I asked whether I've used it myself or only read about it in the docs.

A feature I've only read about can't score above 8, because I won't give top marks to something I haven't run.

Every Bot Mode Feature, Scored

Feature Score Basis Why
Bots pane and roster 9 Hands-on Existing profiles appear as bots automatically, so you rebuild nothing.
New Agent 9 Hands-on A bot takes three fields and about twenty seconds.
Per-bot model pin 10 Hands-on Every bot can think with a different model, including a local one.
Per-bot memory 9 Hands-on Each bot's history stays in its own folder and never blurs.
SOUL.md and cloning 9 Hands-on A trained bot can be duplicated with its memory.
Routines 9 Hands-on Recurring jobs are plain Hermes cron and results land in the bot's chat.
@mentions 8 Hands-on A handoff works in one conversation, but it waits for the other bot to run.
Bot-to-bot messages 8 Hands-on at launch Attribution is clear, and delivery is not a live interrupt.
Group chats 7 Docs only Rooms for two to six bots arrived after launch and I haven't documented them yet.
Avatars and pets 7 Hands-on A moving face is a useful status light, although it is partly cosmetic.
Voices 7 Docs only Each bot uses its own text-to-speech settings.
Sections and hide 7 Docs only Folders and hidden bots keep a large roster tidy.
Bots across machines 8 Docs only Laptop, server and cloud bots can share one roster.
Install and switch-off 9 Docs and README It is built in, and turning it off leaves your data untouched.

The Roster And The Permanent Bot Chat: 9 Out Of 10

The Bots pane shows one row per profile with an avatar, a message preview and a timestamp.

An Active now filter shows which bots are working, including any bot that wrote in the last 90 seconds.

Clicking a row always opens that bot's canonical conversation, which the docs call Bot Chat.

Typing /new in that chat compacts the context instead of starting a separate session.

My August guide calls this conversation the Agent Inbox, because that was its name on launch day.

Creating A Bot And The Advanced Panel: 9 Out Of 10

You press New Agent and type a Name, a Title and a Description.

In my guide I created a bot called scout with the title "Competitor scout" in about twenty seconds.

The Advanced section is where the real control lives.

  • You can clone from another profile, which copies its config, skills, SOUL and memory.
  • You can create an empty bot that skips the bundled skills.
  • You can pin a model and provider to this one bot.
  • You can write a custom SOUL.md for its persona and rules.
  • You can enable skills, toolsets and MCP servers one by one.
  • You can choose which connected machine the bot is created on.

The docs flag one catch, which is that single-use OAuth logins are not copied into a new bot.

You fix that with hermes -p <name> auth add <provider>.

The Per-Bot Model Pin: 10 Out Of 10

This is the feature I called the setting nobody will notice.

My research bot runs one model, my writing bot runs another and my inbox bot runs a small local model.

A bot with no pin inherits the model from the launch profile.

It gets my only 10, because it lets you put expensive models only where they pay for themselves.

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Memory, SOUL.md And Cloning: 9 Out Of 10

Each bot keeps its own memory, and Teknium confirmed that at launch.

My research bot remembers what it researched, and my content bot remembers my style.

Every bot has a SOUL.md file that defines how it talks and what it never does.

Duplicate copies everything, including the memory and the bot's look.

That means a bot you've trained for weeks can become the starting point for the next project.

Routines: 9 Out Of 10

A routine is a recurring task that lives next to the bot that does it.

I gave my inbox bot an "Evening wrap-up" routine at 6pm in my guide, and Hermes cron returned the next run time.

Routines are stored as cron jobs named [bot:<name>] <routine> and they appear in hermes cron list.

The docs describe a schedule picker with an Advanced field for the raw schedule string.

@Mentions And Bot-To-Bot Messages: 8 Out Of 10

You type @researcher and a request in any chat.

The active bot hands the request over, and the answer comes back attributed to the bot that wrote it.

The docs say the bot composes its own message with the message_agent tool, so your words are not forwarded verbatim.

Delivery is described as fire-and-forget, which means the sender finishes its turn and the reply arrives as a notification.

I knock two points off because the receiving bot only picks the message up when it next runs.

An early tester named Devin Davis said he'd spent a week trying to coordinate two profiles with a kanban board, and he had bot-to-bot coordination running in one morning.

Group Chats: 7 Out Of 10, From The Docs

Group chats were not in the launch build.

The docs now describe rooms of two to six bots, opened from a group row.

Your message triggers up to three serial rounds, and each bot replies briefly or passes.

Bots can pull each other in with @name and escalate to you with @user.

A cap of ten messages per send keeps rooms from spinning.

The score stays at 7 until I've run a real room myself.

Avatars, Pets And Voices: 7 Out Of 10

The docs list five kinds of face.

  • A blob face is drawn from the bot's name, so the same name always gets the same face.
  • A geometric face comes from seven shapes and ten colours.
  • An uploaded image can be any picture you like.
  • An AI-generated portrait works when an image backend is configured.
  • A pixel pet bounces beside the avatar while the bot is busy.

With six bots on a roster and three mid-task, a moving face tells you who is working.

Each bot also speaks with its own profile's text-to-speech settings.

Sections, Hide, Edit And Delete: 7 Out Of 10

Sections are folders you name yourself, and you drag bots into them.

Hiding a bot removes it from view while its routines keep running.

Edit Profile reopens the full options on a live bot.

Delete Profile now sits in the right-click menu behind a confirmation, and the default profile can't be deleted.

On launch day deleting was command-line only, on purpose, so that changed.

Bots Across Machines: 8 Out Of 10, From The Docs

The docs say the roster shows bots from every backend you register, including SSH hosts and Hermes Cloud.

Bots on different machines can message each other while the desktop app relays the messages.

A hermes peer command covers always-on messaging between two machines with no desktop involved.

I haven't tested the cross-machine relay, so the score is capped at 8.

How To Set Up Hermes Agent Bot Mode

  1. Install Hermes Agent with curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash.
  2. Run hermes setup and connect a model.
  3. Run hermes update to get a current build.
  4. Launch the desktop app with hermes desktop.
  5. Open the Bots tab next to Sessions.
  6. Press New Agent and create your first bot.

Older guides show a git clone into ~/.hermes/desktop-plugins/hermes-bots, and the archived README says that step isn't needed on current desktop builds.

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How I Use It Inside My Agent OS

I rebuilt the roster as a Bots tab in the Hermes section of my Agent Operating System.

It reads the same Hermes profiles, so the desktop app and my dashboard show the same team.

My guide shows 46 bots there, including Oracle for competitors, Astros for keyword ideas and Apollo for voice.

Bot Mode Limits

Limit What it means in practice
It lives in the desktop app. A headless server alone won't show a Bots tab.
Delivery is per-invocation. A bot reads a teammate's message when it next runs.
Live interrupt is future work. You can't pull a busy bot off its current task with a message.
Three backends stay warm by default. A big team needs the Warm Bot Backends setting raised.
OAuth logins aren't copied. A new bot may need its own sign-in.
The message tool needs desktop markers. The docs say a headless install needs two manual steps before message_agent appears.
Bots don't invent work. A bot with no routine waits until somebody messages it.

A viewer of mine said the interface looked a bit ugly next to Grok Bot at launch, and I agreed with that for a one-day beta.

Hermes Agent Bot Mode vs Grok Bot

This is my comparison from August 2026, taken from my video and my Hermes Bot vs Grok Bot post.

Round Hermes Agent Bot Mode Grok Bot Winner
Software cost It is free. It is a paid platform. Bot Mode wins.
Model per bot Any model works for any bot. It runs on xAI models only. Bot Mode wins.
Where it runs It runs on your machine. It runs in xAI's cloud. Bot Mode wins on ownership.
Memory location Memory stays in your folders. Memory sits on their servers. Bot Mode wins.
Open code It is MIT licensed. The code is closed. Bot Mode wins.
Interface at launch It was rough. It was smoother. Grok Bot wins.

Grok Bot isn't a bad product, and it showed people what an agent team looks like.

When somebody told Teknium that Bot Mode looked like Grok Bot, he replied, "That's the point."

Grok Bot may have changed in the two months since, so read its current page before you choose.

My Verdict On Hermes Agent Bot Mode

I score Bot Mode 8 out of 10.

It earns that score because a bot is just a profile, so it can't break the way plugins that patch the core break.

It loses points because delivery waits for the next run and the best new features need the desktop app.

It suits anyone who already runs Hermes and wants each job owned by a named specialist.

It doesn't suit someone who only ever uses one chat.

FAQ: Hermes Agent Bot Mode

What is Hermes Agent Bot Mode?

It is a built-in feature of the Hermes desktop app that shows your profiles as named bots.

Each bot has its own chat, model, memory, skills, avatar and routines.

Is Hermes Agent Bot Mode worth using?

It is worth using if you run more than one job through Hermes.

It is free, and you can switch it off without losing anything.

What is the difference between the Agent Inbox and Bot Chat?

The Agent Inbox was the launch-day name for a bot's persistent conversation for agent messages.

The current docs call each bot's permanent conversation Bot Chat.

Does it have group chats?

The docs describe group chats for two to six bots.

They were not available on launch day.

Can I delete a bot?

The docs say Delete Profile is in the right-click menu behind a confirmation.

The default profile can't be deleted.

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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.

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Open the Bots tab, pin a model to one bot, give it a routine, and judge for yourself whether my 8 out of 10 is fair for Hermes Agent Bot Mode.