Installing Hermes Agent.
Or: Introducing the Best AI Agent for 2026.
Thank you for reading this post.
My name is Brian and I'm a developer from New Zealand. I've been interested in computers since the early 1990s. My first language was QBASIC. (Things have changed since the days of MS-DOS.)
I am the managing director of a one-man startup called Digital Core (NZ) Limited. I have accepted the "12 Startups in 12 Months" challenge so that DigitalCore will have income-generating products by April 2024.
This blog will follow the "12 Startups" project during its design, development, and deployment, cover the Agile principles and the DevOps philosophy that is used by the "12 Startups" project, and delve into the world of AI, machine learning, deep learning, prompt engineering, and large language models.
I hope you enjoyed this post and, if you did, I encourage you to explore some others I've written. And remember: The best technologies bring people together.
TL;DR.
An Introduction
This guide explains how to install Hermes Agent inside an isolated Miniconda environment on a Debian‑based Linux distribution, like Ubuntu.
Attributions:
Various ↗.
An Introduction.
This post walks me through, step‑by‑step, updating my system, creating and activating a dedicated Miniconda environment, installing the Hermes Agent into that environment, and verifying the installation with a simple agent command.
The Big Picture.
My aim is to provide developers, system administrators, and AI generalists with a reproducible, low‑impact installation process for Hermes Agent.
Prerequisites.
A Debian-based Linux distro, like Ubuntu, and
Updating the System.
APT (Advanced Package Tool) handles the installation and removal of software on Debian and Debian-based Linux distributions. The following commands are used to keep my Ubuntu system (a Debian-based Linux distro) up-to-date.
- From the terminal, I update my system:
sudo apt clean && \
sudo apt update && \
sudo apt dist-upgrade -y && \
sudo apt --fix-broken install && \
sudo apt autoclean && \
sudo apt autoremove -y
- Or, I can go to
Settings > System > Software Updatesto update my system.
Installing Hermes Agent.
- I run the following command to install Hermes Agent into the Hermes environment:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
Updating Hermes Agent.
- I run the following command to update Hermes Agent:
hermes update
Uninstalling Hermes Agent.
- I can use the following command to uninstall Hermes Agent:
hermes uninstall
NOTE: I can manually delete the ~/.hermes directory if I encounter an error regarding a missing profile.
Hermes Agent: Special Features.
Hermes Agent has an ever-expanding list of special features. Here is a collection of my favourite tools.
(pending)
In Conclusion.
The next steps are to:
Read the Hermes Agent documentation for configuration and best practices.
Test basic workflows to ensure the agent behaves as expected in my environment.
Keep the environment isolated to avoid dependency conflicts and for making upgrades simpler.
Reach out to the Nous Research Discord channel if I hit issues I can’t resolve locally.
Agent Zero is good, but it is a one-shot agent. Hermes Agent, on the other hand, support loops and promises to improve itself if I use it often.
Using this agent promises to be fun.
Until next time: Be safe, be kind, be awesome, kia kaha (be strong).
Tags
#hermes-agent #hermes #miniconda #conda #conda-environment #debian #ubuntu #linux #installation #setup-guide #tutorial #how-to #ai #ai-generalist #ai-agent #agent-installation #system-administration #isolated-environment #troubleshooting #automation #security #best-practices
