Hermes Desktop vs Web UI: What You Need To Know

So OpenWebUI versus Hermes Desktop. Which is the best use? This was actually a question we got from the AI Profit Boardroom. So you can see here we had a question inside the community that was asking about desktops apps for Hermes versus OpenWebUI.

Which one is recommended over the other? What are we using? And any tips on how to approach this sort of stuff? How to set up properly?

So you never use OpenWebUI. This is what it looks like. Now I can link directly to your Hermes agent. So I've actually got Julian, which is my Hermes agent profile, set up directly with Hermes, right?

Now if you actually look on the page for OpenWebUI, you'll see that there's no details for Hermes agent, right? So it's hidden. So how do you set this up? How do you get this working?

What you want to do is set up the OpenWebUI integration from Noose Research's notes right here. They've got a full guide on it here. And then you can set this up in one single command using this right here, right? And these are two different ways of managing Hermes agent directly.

Now I'm going to run through exactly which one is the best, how to use them, etc. So I've got Hermes desktop set up over here. And I've got Hermes OpenWebUI over here. And we can test them together and see what we get the best out of.

Now one thing I will note here is like some people say, why wouldn't you just use Hermes directly inside the chat here? Why don't you just use it on the TUI, the Terminal User Interface? The thing is, compare this, which is like great for technical people, great for developers, but 99% of people are not coders, not developers, and don't really know how to use a terminal, right? And so using the desktop UI or using OpenWebUI, it's much easier to organize this sort of stuff and to have a friendly user face.

It almost feels like you're using the full power of Hermes agent, which is crazy powerful, right? Crazy. It is the most popular and probably the most powerful AI agent in the world right now. And you compare using it here versus here, right?

Which one is easier to organize? Of course it's Hermes desktop. Which one is better to use day to day? It's going to be this for 99% of people.

And so that's the biggest difference that we're looking at here. And that's the reason why you would use OpenWebUI or Hermes desktop instead of using the Terminal User Interface. Now we've got that out of the way, let's run through the differences between both, right? And so here's what I would say, right?

The people winning with AI right now aren't the smartest people I know, right? They're the ones who just picked the right setup and ran with it. So what you can see over here, this is OpenWebUI and this is Hermes desktop. So we're going to compare these side-by-sides.

You can see them over here, right? So the first thing that I would say, if you look at them side-by-side, Hermes OpenWebUI is way simpler, right? And that feels like you're just using chat GPT or something like that, right? Whereas if you have a look at Hermes desktop, and these are both free add-ons that we can use directly, if you have a look at both of these, they weigh so different.

You've got so much more customization inside desktop, right? So you've got so much more customization with desktop. Whereas for example, something like Hermes OpenWebUI, it just feels too basic. You can't manage everything.

It's just got your chat history and the chat. That's really it. Now also, if we have a look at these two options, right? We've got integrations here and we can upload files and that sort of thing.

But if you have a look at the actual setup from Hermes desktop, it's going to automatically load all your skills. So if you look at, this is Hermes OpenWebUI on the left-hand side here, right? And you see how it's not picked up the skills, the prompts, the knowledge, the models, et cetera, automatically. Whereas for example, if you have a look at Hermes desktop, it's loaded all of my skills, it's loaded the persona, it's loaded the memory, right?

It can even remember how many messages were sent. And so you just get a lot better. It's a lot smoother as an integration, right? So Hermes OpenWebUI is not designed specifically to run with Hermes.

It's designed just as a nice way to use multiple different models. Whereas if you look at Hermes desktop, it gives you much more information on like memory, persona, skills, models, et cetera. Also when we look at the setup here, you can actually run Office with Claw 3D, right? And what this means essentially is that you can have an Office view with your AI agents.

So you can actually see your agents inside an Office inside this section here if you set it up. Whereas for example, inside OpenWebUI, you can see it's just a lot simpler. You just don't get the same sort of setup directly. Now, if you have any questions, feel free to post them in the chat.

Let's see what we got here. Christopher says terminal is horrible for copying and pasting. Yeah, 100% agree with that as well. So it's much easier to use like the UI and that sort of thing.

And then obviously you get a lot more tools and it's much easier to organize your channels here, right? So you see how it's got this gateway section. Overall, I would recommend that you use something like desktop instead of OpenWebUI because you just get so much more customization. I also think it feels nicer and it's more focused inside a desktop app.

So those are the biggest differences. Now, some people are going to say stuff, for example, the desktop app and OpenWebUI are competing products. You have to pick one. I actually think that's a limiting belief because they're not really competitors.

They're just two different ways of using the exact same engine, right? And using one doesn't stop you from using the other. If you look at my videos and when I'm showing stuff like this, I'll use everything because I like to test everything. I like to learn new things.

And also the more you learn, the more you use and test this stuff, the more your skills improve, right? So you don't have to pick one or the other. The other thing that I would say here is some people say this stuff is only for developers and programmers, but Hermes Agent, it works in plain chat, right? And if you use something like desktop, you can see how easy it is to just use like chat GPT.

It's integrated really nicely, as you can see. And other people say, I'll set up desktop and OpenWebUI when I have more time, but the people who set this up today are building systems that save them hours every single day. So every day you wait is another day your competitors are pulling ahead. But the setup takes less time than watching something on Netflix.

You can get this done in 30 minutes and that sort of thing. Now, also you can see here inside the chat, we can manage our schedules. So this is really cool inside Hermes Desktop. Again, you don't get that inside OpenWebUI.

You do have this workspace section, but again, it doesn't find any knowledge, doesn't find the prompts, the skills, the tools. It doesn't integrate naturally with Hermes Agent, even when you use the adapter, which is what we did here. So it's just, you just don't get as much customization. Now you can also schedule tasks over here, so you can schedule tasks.

You've got the gateway, so you can see all of your different messaging platforms. You've got your memory, so you can add new memories, user profile providers, et cetera. Then you've got persona, so you can change like the personality of your Hermes Agent, the skills, the models, office, et cetera, right? Even the profiles, so you can manage multiple different profiles.

You can see, for example, here we have a whole team of 20 different AI agents that we've set up with Hermes, which is pretty cool. You can see all of your previous history across all of your different channels. So CLI, API, TUI, right? Terminal User Interface, Command Line Inference, and also the API, right?

So however you use Hermes, every single session will be logged here, which is pretty cool as well. So you might say, what is Hermes Desktop about? But it's just a program you install on your computer, like installing any other app. You download it from the releases page on GitHub, and it walks you through getting the agent set up, right?

Just gives you a clean way of managing it. It's like a dashboard for a car, right? You don't need to know what's happening underneath the bonnet. You just sit in the driver's seat and drive.

And that's what the Desktop app is for, right? It's designed for people who want to get moving fast without touching a terminal, right? So what you get inside here is you get a guided installation, clean chat interface, session history, memory management, tools, dashboard, schedule tasks, gateway connections, profile switching, which is pretty cool. Now, one of the cool things about open web UI is that you can actually share access to multiple users.

So that's one of the biggest differences, right? If you're using, for example, if you have a team and they all want to manage one agent, you can actually set up permissions and user groups. You can't do that with Hermes Desktop. So that is a big difference.

It's like you actually can give access to your whole team to open web UI, which you wouldn't be able to do with Hermes Desktop. So if you're running a team and need multiple user accounts, then Hermes open web UI is better. So I would start with both, but I would start with the Desktop app if you really feel like you need open web UI, then go with that. And if you want a full guide on both how they work, et cetera, then what I'm going to do is plug this full guide into the AI Profit Boardroom.

It has over 100 prompts on how to use Hermes Desktop and Hermes open web UI. It compares both of them side by side. Also gives you a step-by-step operating procedure and a 30-day roadmap for implementing this into your business. So if you want to get a full guide on this stuff, all the links, et cetera, you can get that inside the AI Profit Boardroom.

And this is my community. We drop like daily new tutorials and all this sort of stuff and loads of stuff on Hermes. We have an amazing community where you can ask questions and I'll create a video about it like you see today. And you can also request custom automations in there and I'll build them for you as well.

Inside the map, you can actually connect with people in your local city using AI agents like this. You can connect with me too. Inside the calendar, you get weekly coaching calls. You get four coaching calls per week where you can jump on coaching calls, share your screen, meet other people, et cetera.

And this is all inside the AI Profit Boardroom. We also have over 156 pages of wins and testimonials from people winning inside the AI Profit Boardroom like you can see right here. So this is just a community of 3,000 people who are all learning, all building with AI automation, all learning how to grow and scale with this stuff. And I think it's awesome that we can have such a great community where we all raise each other up and help each other like you can see.

So feel free to get that link in the comments description or go to the AI Profit Boardroom. Karen says, hey Julian, good to see you here. The new digital avatar is amazing. Thank you very much.

We've got loads of training on that inside the AI Profit Boardroom as well. If you go to the classroom here and then you go to the playbook, you can see that we have a full tutorial and a step-by-step operating procedure for using avatars. Have you used the Shopify MCP? No, I don't really use Shopify so I haven't used it.

Hermes versus reverse engineering. Is that like a specific app that you're talking about there or what is reverse engineering? I'm probably not aware of that but the AI world moves fast. What's your AI stack currently?

So I'm using a lot of Hermes agent, a lot of Claude desktop is super powerful as well. So those are like my two main two subscriptions right now. That's what I like to use right now. So yeah, the reason that I like to just keep it small is because I want to focus on mastering a few tools and also I don't think you need a massive stack.

I think you need to learn how to use that stack efficiently and those are two different things. So that's why I just have a small stack of skills and tools I use and then just go from there.