🤖 The Story of How "Hermes Agent," the AI Agent That Gets Smarter the More You Use It, Became the Most Used in the World

When I woke up this morning, the research I requested last night was already finished. News summarized by AI had arrived in my Slack. I received a response that casually incorporated the content we discussed three weeks ago.

This isn't a story from a sci-fi movie. It's something that has actually been possible since February of this year.

Hermes Agent is an AI that resides on your PC or server and runs 24 hours a day. The biggest difference between it and ChatGPT or Claude is that it "doesn't reset when the conversation ends." The more you use it, the more it learns your way of working and becomes smarter.

To be more specific, it can do things like this:

• Summarize news on specified topics and send it to Slack every morning at 8:00 AM

• Respond based on previous conversations when spoken to via Telegram or Discord

• Investigate code bugs and have the results waiting for you when you wake up

• Remember the content of last week's meeting so that "What happened with that matter?" is understood

If I were to compare it to a human, it's like "a staff member who just needs instructions to get things moving, and whose work performance improves as the months go by."

Hermes Agent is an AI agent that "gets smarter the more you use it."

🚀 The Open Source Agent That Became Number One in the World in 3 Months

Hermes Agent was created by Nous Research, an AI startup based in New York. It was released on GitHub on February 25, 2026.

The tweet immediately after the release was simple.

The initial reaction was apparently just "so-so." But things moved quickly after that.

It hit 57,000 stars in 6 weeks. It surpassed 140,000 stars in 3 months.

For comparison, there is an agent called OpenClaw (it's not very well known in Japan, but it's famous in the overseas AI developer community). OpenClaw was gaining about 3,000 stars per week during the same period. Hermes Agent gained 9,500 stars per week. In terms of follower count, it grew at nearly three times the pace.

And in May 2026, according to OpenRouter statistics, Hermes Agent became the "most used AI agent in the world."

It's open source, free to use, and runs on a VPS costing $5–15 a month. That is the story of how Hermes Agent became number one in the world.

🧠 Why it "gets smarter the more you use it"

This is where it differs decisively from other agents.

Ordinary AI agents finish once they complete a task. They don't retain the memory of 'we solved it this way last time.' They start from zero every time.

Hermes Agent is different. Every time it completes a complex task, it saves that experience as a 'skill file.' The next time a similar task comes along, it loads that skill to tackle it. As it repeats this over and over, the skill improves autonomously.

To use a human analogy, it's like a new employee who keeps writing down 'procedure manuals' for every job, and before you know it, they've become the most knowledgeable veteran in the company.

There is a real-world example from the community. A user reported on the r/LocalLLaMA Reddit AI community that Hermes automatically generated three skill documents during a two-hour work session, making subsequent repetitive research tasks 40% faster.

Another person wrote, 'Hermes casually mentioned some very specific details about something I had talked about three weeks ago, and it actually gave me the creeps.'

📦 The Memory Mechanism: Three Layers

Hermes Agent's memory has a three-layer structure. It's a technical topic, but understanding this reveals the secret behind Hermes' 'intelligence,' so I'll explain it simply.

Layer 1: Memory carried at all times

There are two files: MEMORY.md (the agent's notepad) and USER.md (the user profile). These are loaded from the start in every conversation.

What's interesting here is that there is a capacity limit. MEMORY.md is limited to 2,200 characters, and USER.md to 1,375 characters. If it exceeds that, you have no choice but to organize the old information.

It looks like a constraint at first glance, but that is the intention. It's a design philosophy of 'not remembering everything' but 'keeping only what is truly important.' Through the process of refining its memory, the agent comes to understand the essence of the user's work.

Layer 2: Long-term conversation archive

All past sessions are saved in a database called SQLite. It also supports full-text search, allowing you to pull up 'what we talked about regarding this matter three weeks ago.'

Layer 3: Skill memory

A layer that permanently saves the 'how-to' learned from experience as a Markdown file. This is the core of the self-improvement loop. The skills accumulated here become the agent's capabilities themselves.

📱 How can you use it?

I want to write this part properly. I don't want you to think, 'It sounds amazing, but it has nothing to do with me.'

Case 1: Sending a daily morning news summary to Slack

You just need to give the instruction once: 'Pick up the latest news about AI and agents and send it to the #ai channel on Slack at 8:00 every morning.' After that, it runs automatically. Moreover, as it does it every day, it learns the pattern that 'this user prefers comparison articles between Anthropic and OpenAI,' and the accuracy improves.

Case 2: 24/7 Code Review and Debugging

It monitors GitHub Issues, and when a bug report comes in, it reads the code, investigates the cause, and comments with potential solutions. When the developer wakes up, the investigation is already done. It might take time at first, but as it experiences similar bugs over and over, its diagnostic skills are honed.

Case 3: Using It as a Personal Secretary

It can integrate with Telegram and Discord. You just send chat instructions like, "Read the materials for next week's meeting and organize the key points," or "Identify any potentially risky clauses in the contract I just sent." Plus, because it remembers the context of the conversation, it understands vague references like "that thing from earlier."

Case 4: A Home Automation Hub

It can integrate with Home Assistant, an open-source smart home tool. You can build settings like, "Turn on the heat 30 minutes before I get home, and when I arrive, set the living room lights to 75% and play music," using natural language without any code.

💻 Now usable without a terminal via Hermes Desktop

Some people reading this might have thought, "But terminals and stuff sound difficult." In fact, Hermes was originally a tool operated via the command line.

But on June 2, 2026, the situation changed.

Hermes Desktop was released as a public preview. It is a native desktop app compatible with macOS, Windows, and Linux. Just by installing it, you can use Hermes without a terminal.

It has garnered so much attention that it was even demoed at NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's GTC keynote.

The memories and skills are exactly the same as those used in the CLI. It is designed so that "even if you start in the terminal and switch to the desktop app, the context is carried over as is." Even if the UI changes, the essence of Hermes—the experience of "nurturing" it—remains the same.

🔧 How much does it cost to run?

Let's talk about monthly costs.

• Infrastructure (VPS): Approx. 750 yen/month (runs on a $5/month VPS)

• AI Model: About $2–3/month if using DeepSeek. $0 if using local Ollama

In other words,for about 1,000 to 2,500 yen per month, your own AI agent can run 24 hours a day.

ChatGPT Plus is 3,000 yen a month, and Claude Pro is 3,000 yen a month. Compared to that, it's quite cost-effective. Moreover, it has the rare property that it gets smarter the more you use it, so the return on investment increases over time.

Installation takes just one command line.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

All you need is Git. The installer automatically sets up Python and Node.js for you.

🤔 Miccell's Perspective: The Essence of the "Nurturing" Design Philosophy

Let me share a bit of a personal story here.

The reason I find Hermes Agent interesting isn't because of its many features. It's the design philosophy that "constraints make it smarter".

That is why there is a limit on memory. Without a limit, it would just hoard everything and search through it. Because there is a limit, the agent is forced to judge "what is truly important." The repetition of that judgment leads to a deepening of understanding.

Isn't this the same structure as human learning?

You narrow down the main points because you can't write everything in a notebook. You narrow down the points, and the essence becomes visible. Perhaps that is the same reason why many people feel that physical notebooks are more "memorable" than clouds that can store an unlimited amount of data.

AI tools are becoming "bigger" and bigger. Context windows are expanding, the amount of memory is increasing, and the number of usable features is growing. That is a correct direction in its own right.

But Hermes is trying to achieve intelligence by doing the opposite: "narrowing down." I don't know yet if this approach is correct, but at the very least, it looks like an "interesting bet" to me.

What do you think? Do you expect AI to "grow"? Or are you the type who doesn't mind if it's reset every time?

📝 Summary: The Reason It Became Number One in the World Was Simple

I don't think Hermes Agent became number one in the world in three months because it had flashy features.

I think it's because the single concept of "getting smarter the more you use it" was something everyone thought, "Yes, that's what I wanted."

AI tools are increasing at a furious pace right now. But most tools are "only smart for this very moment." Once you're done using them, they forget, and you start over from the beginning.

Hermes is trying to bring "the accumulation of time" into that space.

It's still in public preview, and there are many rough edges. But I don't think the direction is wrong.

I'm testing it out right now, too. I'm enjoying watching it grow into whatever kind of agent it becomes.

If you're interested, I hope you'll try it out. A week or two from now, you should reach a moment where you feel, "Maybe something has changed."

Miccell - Once you understand how things work, the world becomes more interesting.