Hermes Agent: New FREE OpenClaw Alternative!

Hermes Agent, free AI agent that grows with you. There's a free open-source AI agent that actually gets smarter the longer you use it every single day. Most people have no idea it exists. It's called Hermes Agent and it's a competitor to OpenCore.

In fact, a lot of people are actually switching from OpenCore to Hermes. It was built by Noose Research, released in February 2026, and right now it's hitting around 15,000 GitHub stars because people who have tried it can't stop talking about it. Here's the thing that makes Hermes different from every other AI tool you've tried. So when you're using something like OpenCore, for example, you explain it, you give it a lot of context, but it forgets stuff.

It doesn't get better. In fact, sometimes it gets worse and it gets buggier and it breaks more over time. Hermes doesn't do that because it lives on your computer locally, but also it's designed to self-learn. So what this means is it gets more capable the longer it runs.

The reason why is because it actually saves the files and the lessons that it learns as sort of these patterns of learning so that it self-improves itself. And every task you give it, every problem it solves, it's building a picture of how you work, your preferences, your projects, your patterns, and it's completely free. So how does it work? Because it remembers stuff, sounds nice, but that's not the whole story.

So Hermes uses a multi-level memory system that mimics procedural learning. Its long-term power comes from something called skill documents. Here's what that means in English. So if you ask Hermes to do something complex, for example, write your client onboarding emails or set up your weekly reporting, handle your social media research, it does it.

And then it writes down exactly how it did it. A searchable file stored permanently. The next thing you ask it to do something similar. And the next time you ask it to do it, that it doesn't just start from scratch.

It queries its own library of skill documents to remember the successful steps that it took before. So think of it like this, right? Imagine you're hiring a virtual assistant. The first week you're explaining everything to that employee, right?

By month three, they just know. They get it, right? They know your tone. They know your clients.

The process. Hermes basically does the same thing, except number one, it doesn't quit. Number two, it's free. Number three, it never forgets.

And on top of that, it builds an actual model of who you are. So for example, how you work, what you care about. A persistent representation that evolves over time. So the more you use it, the more it knows you.

Now, this is very different to OpenClaw. They might seem the same in terms of their concept, but the biggest issue of OpenClaw is like it gets buggier. And I'll give you an example, right? The more scheduled tasks that I give to OpenClaw, the more it slows down.

The more API tokens it eats up, the less productive it becomes. And then when the new update comes out, sometimes you have to debug it for like two hours afterwards. In fact, some of their own development team have complained about that. And that's why some people are switching from OpenClaw over to Hermes, because Hermes doesn't do that.

It's cleaner. It's smoother. It feels easier to use. And it only gets better.

It doesn't get worse, unlike OpenClaw. Now, one thing I want you to understand before we go further, AI agents are becoming the biggest lever in business right now. And the businesses getting ahead are the ones building agents that work for them around the clock. If you want a step-by-step guide on how to set up Hermes agent for your business, how to use it to generate leads, follow up clients, and automate the repetitive work that's eating your week, the link's in the comments and description, or just go to the AIProfitBoardroom.com.

That's the AI Profit Boardroom. 2,700 business owners in there right now. Four weekly coaching calls on stuff like Hermes. Daily tutorials.

30-day roadmaps. We've got a specific roadmap on AI agents, including Hermes and OpenClaw, and how to implement them in your business starting from day one. Link in the comments and description, or go to the AIProfitBoardroom.com. Now, let's talk about what Hermes can actually do for a normal business owner, because this isn't just about memory.

It ships with 40 built-in tools. Web search, browser automation, vision, image generation, text-to-speech, code execution, task planning, cron scheduling, and more. You can send it a voice message on WhatsApp, for example. It transcribes and acts on it.

You can message it on Telegram during your commute and pick up the same conversation in your browser later, all from one setup. I was using it in the gym earlier today. An agency owner could, for example, set up Hermes to run weekly competitor research every Monday morning and have the report waiting in their Slack before they wake up. No prompting required, just scheduled.

Done. Boom, shakalaka. It has a built-in cron scheduler, basically, so you can set scheduled tasks. And then these automations work.

So that could be, for example, daily reports, nightly backups, weekly audits, you know, 24-7 social media content, all running unattended. You describe what you want in plain English, and then it handles the rest. And here's something nobody's talking about enough. You can use it through, like, 200 different models on OpenRouter, and it auto-switches, if that makes sense.

So you've got, for example, Claude, GPT, Gemini, open-source models inside OpenRouter, and you can switch models with a single command. So you just tell it what to do. That is quite different to OpenClaude, which typically, when you ask it to switch a model, it will just break on the API because it gets confused. And it's like, sure, let's switch.

It switches, but then once you restart the gateway, it stops working again. What that means is that if you're using and switching between different models, and we all know, like, one single AI update that comes out, it can totally change everything. It can become suddenly the leader when it was way far behind. We've seen that with Google and Gemini and its model versus previous models like BARD.

The main point here is, like, you're not trapped paying one company forever inside your AI agent. You pick the model that makes sense for each job. Now, let's talk about the OpenClaude comparison because a lot of you are probably using OpenClaude right now. OpenClaude was created by one person who then left for OpenAI.

Now, obviously, he's still behind OpenClaude, but the point here is, like, he basically sold to OpenClaude, to OpenAI, right? Like, they bought him, they bought his time, they bought his ideas, and they bought his, you know, probably favoritism. That's okay. They paid for his business.

But Hermes is built by Noose Research, a proper AI research lab with a team of researchers, published papers, and a direct incentive to keep improving the agent. So they built migration in from day one. What that means, if you're coming from OpenClaude, Hermes can automatically import your settings, memories, skills, API keys with one command. Everything just moves over so that you're not starting from scratch.

The other thing people mention constantly about OpenClaude, and you've probably experienced this yourself, is that updates break things, right? So there's all sorts of people who are active users of OpenClaude, and then they find, like, whenever they update to the latest update, everything breaks. I've experienced it, all sorts of people on the internet have experienced it. Maybe if you're watching this, you've experienced it too.

And that's a real problem, right? If I can't update my own agent, and it's supposed to be the smartest software on the planet, then we've got a problem, haven't we, right? That's a big deal. So here's what the actual cost looks like, because free always needs a real explanation.

The software itself is free and MIT licensed. You can run it through local models, which means they will be free. You could also run it locally, which means that you don't have to pay for a VPS, a virtual private server, and it's free to use with the messaging apps. Now, if you wanted a smarter or better model, or you don't have the hardware to run local models that are powerful enough to use tools inside AI agents, then you can just use a cheap API, right?

So you just use something like Minimax M2.7, or you would use, for example, GLM, right? These are cheap APIs that work fine. They're really powerful APIs. In fact, Minimax built itself, like 30% of it was built by a self-improving agent.

So those two together work pretty well. Now, compare that to the cost of the tools most business owners are running right now. You've got multiple subscriptions, you've got multiple logins, none of them talking to each other, none of them remembering anything. In fact, the latest version, 5.0, just dropped recently, and it's exponentially getting better.

I think they've actually dropped five updates since its launch in February, which means in like 30 days, it's had five different updates. They're all substantial and actually good. Now, is there a catch? Yes, it's still early stage, right?

The documentation has a lot of gaps. The community is still small. Reliability varies depending on which model you pair it with. So if you want something polished and plug and play, this might frustrate you, right?

It's an open source project. It's more powerful than most tools, but it asks a bit more from you and your time and your energy to set up. And also, it's reliable to breaking, right? And I'll tell you an example.

So for me, I set up an automation for finding and looking at my competitors. Now, the more complex I make that automation, the slower it becomes. The slower it becomes, the more likely it is to break to the point where sometimes it just kept getting stuck and I had to simplify the automation itself. That's just an example of how it can break and how you can overcomplicate things to the point where your AI agent stops working.

And then you have to backtrack and you kind of have to either shut off the automation or get something that isn't 100% to your needs. But again, this is experimental stuff. This is some of the most powerful software in the world. So if you want to use AI agents the right way, you've just got to accept like, okay, it's not going to be super smooth right now.

Now, Hermes agent represents one of the most important developments in practical AI agents right now. The autonomous skill creation is impressive and it's not just remembering, it's genuinely evolving. Every AI tool today has an amnesia problem, right? Even Hermes sometimes, even OpenCore.

And so sometimes you have to keep re-explaining. But what I would say is that Hermes is like the first free open source tool I've seen that's actually self-learning and gets better the more you use it. And even if you do, for example, have to re-explain things a couple of times, it's like, whatever, it's free, right? I've got one of the most powerful AI agent running locally on my laptop, it's free and I can pretty much automate anything with it.

And all it takes is my focus, that's it. So I do think it's fantastic. And honestly, when I've tested both OpenCore and Hermes, I'm going with Hermes personally. Now, if you want to get Hermes agent set up properly for your business with the right model, the right automations and a clear plan for using it to save time, get more customers, that's exactly what we cover inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

Four weekly live coaching course, step-by-step tutorials, 30-day roadmaps built specifically for business owners using AI agents and a community of 2,600, sorry, 2,700 people now automating their businesses right now and a local member map so you can connect with people near you getting the same results. Link in the comment subscription or just go to the AIProfitBoardroom.com to get access. Thanks for watching.