Hermes Agent, in its own sandbox

Run Hermes Agent, Nous Research’s open source agent, always on, in a sandbox of its own: a workspace hermes, which is a separate account on your server with its own files and model keys, no sudo, and no way into your other workspaces.

You need: nothing beyond Getting started.

Before you start: machine, skills, workspace

curl -fsSL https://mydevmachine.sh/install.sh | sh
devmachine setup
devmachine skills add
devmachine workspaces new hermes
devmachine sync

Already have a machine? Skip setup. Already have the workspace? Skip the last two. See getting started for what each command does.

By hand

1. Install Hermes Agent

devmachine ssh hermes
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash

The installer sets up Python, Node and the other tools Hermes needs itself, so the workspace does not need them added first.

2. Add a model

hermes setup --portal

This walks through picking a model. It supports the Nous Portal (one login covers a model plus its tool set), or your own OpenAI or OpenRouter key — hermes model switches later, and hermes config set stores a key by hand. Whichever you pick, the choice and the key stay in this workspace’s own account, never in your configuration.

3. Start it, and keep it running

hermes

You do not need tmux yourself: every SSH login to a workspace already lands in a tmux session called main (the zsh package does this), and it stays up after you log out. Detach with Ctrl-b d, or just close the terminal — devmachine ssh hermes puts you back in the same session.

For messaging apps (Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal) instead of the terminal, run hermes gateway setup then hermes gateway start. To make Hermes survive a reboot too, not just a closed terminal, see the project’s own docs on daemon and background backends.

With your agent

Open a session on your own computer (devmachine skills add taught it the CLI) and say:

Create a devmachine workspace called hermes and install Hermes Agent
in it, following the project's own install script.

The agent creates the workspace, SSHes in, and runs the installer. Picking a model and running hermes setup --portal (or handing over an API key) is yours to do — a login or a key is not something the agent can do for you.

Check it: devmachine ssh hermes again, then hermes — it comes back to a working session with the model you configured.

Source: Hermes Agent, Hermes Agent on GitHub