01What Hermes CUA Spaces is and how it works
Hermes CUA Spaces lets a Hermes AI agent build a brand new computer for a job. It does the whole job inside that computer and then throws it away.
The idea comes from a company called CUA, and the Hermes plugin is free. Julian Goldie says it fixes the one thing that stops most people from letting an AI agent loose on their stuff.
A space is a full computer that lives inside your own computer, on another machine of your own, or in the cloud. It has its own screen, its own files and its own apps. It can run Linux, Mac or Windows.
When Hermes needs to run a command, write a file or run some code, that work happens inside the space. It does not happen on your machine. Julian compares it to a sandbox where someone can dig, build and make a mess, but none of it ends up in your living room.
02The problem Hermes CUA Spaces solves
Right now, when you give Hermes a job, it works on your computer. That means your files, your folders and your stuff. Most days that is fine.
Every so often, though, an agent runs a command it should not have run. Julian lists a few things that can go wrong.
- It deletes the wrong folder.
- It fills your drive with junk.
- It installs something you never asked for.
To stay safe, Hermes asks before it does anything risky. It asks if it can run this or delete that. That is good for safety, but you have to sit there and click yes, over and over again.
This means you cannot walk away, and the agent is not really saving you much time. Julian calls this a trade off everyone has been stuck with. You either let the agent run free and risk your computer, or you keep it on a short leash.
03Main features: three big changes in Hermes CUA Spaces
Julian compares the old way with the new way. In the old way, Hermes runs on your machine. If you want it safe, you say no to a lot.
If you want it fast, you say yes and hope.
Running two Hermes agents at once also needs separate profiles or installations, which gets messy. The new way brings three big changes.
- A throwaway computer. Each time you start Hermes, the plugin makes a fresh space with a name like Hermes, then the task, then a random code. It deletes the space when Hermes finishes.
- You can watch. Open the CUA Spaces app, click on the space and see its screen live while Hermes works.
- The space can be any computer you want. It can be on your laptop, on another machine you own, or elsewhere.
Because every job starts clean, there is no leftover junk from yesterday and no odd settings from an old job.
04How to set up Hermes CUA Spaces
Julian says setting up the Hermes plugin takes three simple steps. Here they are in order.
- Install CUA.
- Install the Hermes plugin.
- Tell Hermes to use it.
The first space takes a few minutes to build. This is because CUA has to fetch the machine image. After that, it is pretty quick.
By default, the plugin waits up to 600 seconds for a new space to be ready. That is about 10 minutes, and Julian says most of the time you will not need anywhere near that.
The plugin has an MIT license. That means it is free, and you can use it however you want. The main CUA project is open source, with around 17,400 stars on GitHub and over 1,100 forks.
It is also backed by Y Combinator.
05How to use Hermes CUA Spaces to run and watch agents
Once the plugin is on, Hermes makes a space for you each time it starts. You do not need to build one by hand. Here is how Julian describes using it day to day.
- Give Hermes a job as you normally would.
- Hermes builds a space and does the work inside it.
- Open the CUA Spaces app and click the space to see the screen live.
- If Hermes gets stuck, click in and take over, while it keeps working right next to you.
Most of the time with agents, you give a job, wait and get a result, with no idea what happened in the middle. With a space, you can literally just look and check each step.
CUA also says your team can jump into the same space. So several team members, and several agents, can work together on one project.
06Safety, speed and running two agents at once
Because the space is the sandbox, Hermes stops asking you for permission on risky commands inside spaces. It does not need to. If something breaks, it breaks in a computer that is about to be thrown away anyway.
Julian sums it up this way: the agent gets more freedom and you get more safety at the same time. Usually you have to pick one.
On speed, CUA says on its Y Combinator page that its setup runs up to 97% of native speed on Apple Silicon Macs. So the computer inside your computer runs almost as fast as the real one.
Two Hermes agents running at the same time get two different spaces, so they never touch each other's files. You can run as many as your machine can hold. Julian also notes that with tools like Grokbot you cannot have multiple computers, because it is one computer shared across all your agents.
07Who Hermes CUA Spaces is for and why it matters
This update is for anyone who wants an agent to work on its own without risking their files. Julian gives a clear example from his own agent OS, which has SEO agents, video tools and AI avatar tools plugged in.
In the old setup, all of those share one machine. With spaces, each agent can get its own little computer. The SEO agent checking a client site does not get in the way of the agent making a video.
- People who want to walk away while the agent works.
- People who run more than one Hermes agent.
- Teams who want to watch or join the same space.
- Anyone with an old computer in a drawer, which can become the place where the agent does the work.
Julian says it is like having a virtual employee you sit right next to. The question stops being how much you trust the agent on your computer, because the job happens on another computer that goes away afterwards.
