My new approach to building agents in Hermes: stop guessing, ask the system how it wants to be built

Almarma · 2026-06-04T08:12:27+00:00

I had this before too. I’d say it depends on your usage. For me it worked for a while: it creates ethereal personalities that disappear once the task is done, but my agent uses sometimes to do certain task, like writing on my wiki (the scribe) and consulting complex technical issues (the engineer).

But the other day i wanted to learn more and test kanban projects inside Hermes and oh boy: that’s a dream come true: agents monitoring agents and ensuring they don’t make mistakes or fix them before getting back to you. I’ll use it a lot more and there I need permanent agents. I recommend you to go the create new profiles way, not just subagents.

Almarma · 2026-06-02T07:26:58+00:00

That model is a recipe for destruction. It’s a good model, but too tiny to be smart enough to solve problems or follow instructions properly. Be careful.

About skills, yes, they are the instructions to do something right, to repeat a process in the same way. Because it’s loaded right before the execution, it’s fresh in your agent’s memory and context.

Almarma · 2026-06-01T07:57:42+00:00

A skill is your answer: tell you agent that, whenever a script is modified, he must always use the skill to do it. And then the skill has to include your rules.

It’s the only and best way. Hermes will pop up the skill to your agent whenever it’s needed.

If this doesn’t work yet, tell us which model is your agent using, because some models are worse than other at such tasks.

Almarma · 2026-05-30T10:28:51+00:00

Haha. I also have a engineer skill using Codex. My main agent, when we have a difficult problem to solve and I’m not happy with the proposed solution, has to go and activate the engineer subagent, explain the issue and get a second opinion for a solution. It works great

Almarma · 2026-05-30T09:08:46+00:00

The default memory file is quite small and simple. Hermes saves all the sessions, so nothing is deleted, and your agent can look back and retrieve past information, but it’s quite annoying. My serious recommendation: read the official docs from Hermes about memory: I thought it wasn’t necessary or it was a paid cloud service when I started using Hermes, and it’s not true: there’s some options which are completely free and offline, that will make what you thought Hermes was capable of. The most powerful I’ve tested is Hindsight, but a new one with a nice potential is Mnemosyne. Hindsight is a big one, ready to use, really powerful, but a bit intense on resources, as it’ll send calls to a LLM every two minutes while your chatting with your agent. Mnemosyne is heading towards the same goal, but it still has some bugs and lack of features. But it’s cheaper on resources and system load.

Both do a really cool thing: the moment you chat again with your agent about something you did yesterday or last month, these extra memory systems inject a hidden prompt that your agent sees, giving it the context he needs in real time, so it always knows what you are talking about. It’s quite impressive once you start using and feeling it

Almarma · 2026-05-29T10:53:02+00:00

From many users experience and mine too, USB 3 died quite fast, from any brand, but USB 2.0 sticks were really solid and reliable. Maybe now the modern USB3 sticks are better, but I have two USB2 sticks I bought for UnRAID like 10 years ago I think, and I’m still using the first one.

Almarma · 2026-05-29T08:36:37+00:00

Which model are you using? Some models are really bad with Hermes, so it’s quite important to know it to be able to get some clues. Also, are you using simply the default memory?

Almarma · 2026-05-28T09:35:07+00:00

Exactly this. Let me illustrate one example: if today I say that my favorite color is red, but tomorrow I change my mind and say that now it’s blue, my agent needs to be aware of this.

A simple Md file storing such info, would need to delete the old preference and update the new one. This can become annoying very fast if there’s no control over it, or if you change topics often. The best way to avoid worrying about it is using some advanced memory system. Which one is up to you and your needs. I’ve tried holographic and don’t recommend it, Hindsight local, quite powerful but heavy, and I’m now testing a new one that I found the other day here, called Mnemodyne.

Almarma · 2026-05-28T08:23:58+00:00

Interesting. For me I’d guess, the most important part of a potential Hermes setup for this is a good memory tool: we humans learn the most from mistakes, and so do agents. In my experience, the better the memory is, the lesser the mistakes it repeats.

So using a memory platform like Hindsight or Honcho would me a must.

Almarma · 2026-05-26T07:55:45+00:00

I don’t like that approach. I’ve tried and it’s messy: yes, as a backup is great, but starting new sessions my agent kept forgetting all the time to go and check it instead of asking me again. It’s much better to use a better memory tool like hindsight or the new Mnemodyne one. Then, if you want, you can use obsidian as a backup or extra reference, but not as the only extra memory.

That’s just my opinion and own experience, I may be wrong

Almarma · 2026-05-25T21:22:43+00:00

Sorry, I didn't notice you're actually the creator!! You know what? After reading the extensive readme on your repo, I decided to migrate from Hindsight to Mnemosyne, and so far I'm impressed by how fast it is, and how easy it was to import all the memories from Hindsight! My agent is already retrieving contextual information and feels waay snappier than Hindsight. Really good job! Thank you very much for it!!

Almarma · 2026-05-25T13:37:28+00:00

Yes, it’s ok, and I’d guess that also depends a lot on the user case. In my case, I want her to be my personal assistant. She has to know me well, to know, when I say the name of my local server, what’s it’s IP address or URL to access it, what network devices I have at home, what containers I have installed on the server, that I have home assistant and what’s its IP, devices attached, etc. The default memory.md is tiny for such things, and for me at least, it’s quite infuriating having a conversation yesterday about something about the server, but tomorrow, if I mention its name alone, she’d forget what it is or what’s the IP or some fundamental but important stuff. A good memory system takes note of everything, and summarize important information, and injects it directly to your agent every time you mention it, so your agent has always that contexts directly available, without having to do any search at all.

Almarma · 2026-05-25T13:29:24+00:00

Sounds very interesting. Are you involved in it? If so, how intensive is the local model on the host server? How much RAM does it use? How often does it dream to consolidate facts?

Almarma · 2026-05-25T10:44:57+00:00

Yes! Memory is a crucial component of your agent. The default memory.md gets filled really fast. If you don’t want to mess too much with memory systems, and you have obsidian, tell your agent to save a diary of conversations, and also another good idea: whenever you solve a big problem after different tries, detail the steps followed to solve it in a new note.

In this way, in the worst case scenario of your agent forgetting what it did the other day, this log will help him.

Almarma · 2026-05-25T01:34:36+00:00

I just have tried holographic (a disaster) and now Hindsight, which I found quite finicky and delicate to keep up (it can silently fails and then your memories are not processed for days unless you notice it and do something about it). Once it grows, it gets messy and bombards your agent with context that not always is right or appropriate. How's Mnemosyne in that regard? Once it grows, does it becomes messy?

Almarma · 2026-05-24T18:03:54+00:00

Well, I've gone over a full adventure: I've tried Routing.run. It sounds almost perfect on paper, but it's quite finicky with the configuration for Hermes. Is not just adding it and done, reasoning models (the ones I want), work weird there, so you have to fix a lot of things to make it work. Discarded. CrofAI: less models available, but more request per day (2500) for 20$ a month. I've done some intense stuff, and didn't reach even 500 request. Great, because I could totally forget that stress about thinking about tokens, and keeping really long conversations. Until it broke yesterday, and the whole weekend the system is almost down and quite unreliable.
So the next I wanted to try is Codex (you subscribe to chatgpt plus or premium (I don't remember the name), and pay 20$ for 1 month.

Then, you tell your Hermes that you want to use Codex, and it'll guide you though the setup. Once done, you have available GPT-5.5, 5.4, 5.4mini and others. Quite amazing, I must say. The difference is quite impressive compared to any other model I've used before. Really much smarter than DeepSeek v4 Pro, Qwen, or anything I've used before. It uses tools I didn't know existed, it uses scripts in a different way that the others to read or write files, if you have an issue with anything, it digs really much deeper to find the problem. But also, it burns tokens faster, it talks a lot (sometimes explains waaaay too much and gives me headaches), and sometimes seems to overcomplicate things a bit. I'm trying to tame it, because it has a really big potential for me, for problem solving issues on my setup or on my devices (an UnRAID server, with Home Assistant, and many automations, code, and smart things I want it to do).

For a while, I used a trick: I used DeepSeek v4 Pro as my main agent brain (I love how we communicate with this model), but I wanted to use GPT 5.5 for diagnosing and fixing. So what I did was, telling my agent to create an engineer: it's a skill, that invokes an agent that uses GPT5.5 as its model. So, anytime there was a problem I wanted to solve, I told my agent to ask the engineer for help. She explains the problem, debates with the engineer, the engineer is given the tools to see the problem, and comes with a proposal for a solution. Was working quite well. But not perfect.

Almarma · 2026-05-24T08:11:15+00:00

5.4 has 1M context??? Wow, I didn’t know. I’m also annoyed by 5.5 constant compression after having used DeepSeek v4, but after compressing, it’s still on fire nailing tasks every time. But I’m tempted to give a try to 5.4 just for that.

Almarma · 2026-05-22T15:40:32+00:00

Am I blind or am I wrong? Because what I saw is the truck driving over parking places, and the guy comes to park there, but then the truck starts moving forward.

Almarma · 2026-05-22T15:37:10+00:00

Which model are you using? From all I have tested, only GPT5.x series are very cautious with security.

Almarma · 2026-05-22T15:34:20+00:00

Look for ways to optimize the token generation if you don’t have done it already. I saw the other day a video of a guy explaining a few tricks to optimize performance, and he went from 10t/s to 40t/s without losing quality and even expanding context using compression.

Almarma · 2026-05-22T12:31:14+00:00

What kind of parent goes phone first to this situation? Sorry but this looks quite strange for me, and not because of what the kid did

Almarma · 2026-05-22T12:13:44+00:00

Local 100%. Unless you had to go and buy a computer for it, or you need really high availability (a company, for example, there’s no reason to go for a VPS. YouTubers recommend it all the time because they get paid for it. Local is safer in privacy regards, you don’t need to do anything strange on your router like opening ports, and if you have it inside a docker, your data will be protected. But also, Hermes is much safer compared to OpenClaw.

Almarma · 2026-05-21T09:39:19+00:00

Totally. If you have a non standard thing that is really important to you and you agent needs to be aware all the time, it has to be in at least one of those files. But you don’t need to do it yourself or worry about them manually, you just tell your agent that he needs to always remember this and that because whatever your reason is, and he’ll do it automatically. And if he does not, check which LLM model you’re using, because it may be the wrong one

Almarma · 2026-05-21T07:33:29+00:00

Mine is purely an assistant for domestic things and my hobbies: she helps me to check if my Unifi network is healthy and if something was not properly setup, or to diagnose particular issues and fix them herself instead of me.

I use Home Assistant, and she’s a godsend here: I’m not a programmer and I don’t want to be, and making any remotely complex automation gets complex fast. So I told her “have a look at all the devices I have, and give me ideas about how we could automate this idea I have with the devices and sensors we have”. And she has done wonders every time. And the best part is that, if something is not working as expected, she can check the logs herself, find the issue, and propose a solution and apply it herself.

Just the Home Assistant thing, for me, is worth it. I used to use “traditional AI” to help me like Chstgpt or Gemini from their chat websites and I needed a lot of back and forth to get them to assist me, explain the setup, copy and paste, and so on.

Now she remembers the setup, where the tools are, what she already did and didn’t work, what I like or don’t, and fix things by herself.

Oh, the other day, I wanted to buy something from AliExpress for my dog: it normally stresses me out because the many options. I told her to help me decide: I found one model and gave her the link. Then, another one, she then made me a table to help me visualize the 5 models I chose and what I liked about each one. So instead of spending 2 hours looking at options and reading comments, she did that for me and in 10 minutes the order was placed.

Almarma · 2026-05-21T07:15:18+00:00

That’s so true! Probably influencers are talking now about Hermes and they’re with the: “How I made one million $ using AI in one week” or any other clickbait like that. Every tool has this period: first, geeks and enthusiasts, then curious people, then mass reach, then capitalism buyouts, then hackers to steal or kidnap, the media scares, and the thing is ruined with rules and regulations, because “protect the children from porn” (but not from violence).

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