The Hermes Desktop App Changes Everything (Full Setup) transcript

Hermes just shipped the feature that genuinely changes the entire game. >> [snorts] >> A few days ago, if you wanted to use Hermes properly, you had to be comfortable living in the terminal, editing configuration files, writing up tools, and basically treating your AI assistant like a developer project. That was fine for me. I like that stuff. But, it also meant Hermes was powerful in a way that was hard to explain to normal people.

Well, today, the Hermes team just announced Hermes Desktop. The reason this matters is that Hermes finally has a native interface for the thing it was already becoming, which is a real assistant that can use your files, remember how you work, run tools, manage tasks, and operate across your computer. So, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to install the new desktop app, what it actually is inside it, and then I'm going to show you how I would set this up if I wanted Hermes to run my day today.

All right, first up, here is the announcement. The new posted, "The next evolution of Hermes agent is here. Introducing Hermes Desktop. Everything you love about Hermes now native on your machine." That one sentence is important because it tells you how to think about this. This is not a separate beginner version of Hermes. The desktop app uses the same Hermes core that we all came to love and adore. So, if you already use Hermes in Telegram or in the terminal, this is not a new assistant that starts from zero.

It is another front end to the that same agent. That is the first big unlock because before this, Hermes had a weird problem. The product was insanely powerful, but the interface made it look smaller or feel smaller than it actually was. If someone asked, "What is Hermes?" you have to explain it through, you know, a terminal window and technical terms. Now, you can just tell them, "Hey, download the desktop app." and show them.

That changes the entire top funnel. Now, let me show you how to install it. Right on the Hermes website, you can go to Hermes desktop, which is where I am. I'll include this link in the description. And you'll find, for me, for example, I'm on Mac OS, so I can click right here and it'll download the application. There it is. I double-clicked on it and now I can just click install Hermes. Now, I don't have Hermes installed on this MacBook, which is great for us because we can just do that.

I can show you how simple it is to get started. But that being said, if you already have Hermes installed, you can literally open your terminal and type in Hermes desktop and it'll install that with your running Hermes instance. But in my case, I want to make this as beginner-friendly as possible and I want to show the setup from scratch. Here we are. This took less than 2 minutes to finish installing and it just gave me this launch Hermes, which is exactly what I'm going to do right now.

Boom. There we are. Literally less than a 3-minute long installation and we are literally in. That being said, you now have a couple of things that you need to do, which number one is connect a model provider to it. In my case, I'm connected to Open Router. I've given it my Open Router API key. Uh and I've chosen Claude Sonnet 4.6. For you, you can choose anything you want. You can connect through uh OAuth, Codex, so that you can use GPT 5.5, which is absolutely amazing with Hermes.

You can use Open Router, which will make you pay for per token spend, but the pro is you can use any model or almost any model that you want that exists in the world. So, I'm going to click apply. By the way, if you want to add any API keys or connections to Hermes, you can click on API keys, go to, for example, Open Router is what I'm using, and in my case, in your case, you'd be setting it up. In my case, I I'm replacing it right now.

And put in the new value. And hit save. It's literally this simple. The next step would be going to gateway and making sure that you're running, if you have a desktop, if you're running it locally, then choosing the local option. If you would like to set a remote instance, then choosing the remote gateway. I'm on a local gateway. And all I can do is basically save and reconnect. As you can see in the settings, there's a lot that you can edit and create.

You can go change up your model. You can go to chat, switch up your personalities. How do you want your Hermes to be? What in the world is Cat Girl? Or Shakespeare? I have no idea. So, you can set your time zone. You can also customize the appearance if you want it to look cyberpunk, uh for example. I like the way that this comes in, which is very, you know, minimal. I don't want the the UI to be too distracting. You can define your workspace.

And finally, the last missing piece that most people would want is messaging, which in most people's case is going to be Telegram, but you also have the option for Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, whatever it is that you use. And in the case that you use MS Graph webhooks, I don't know who uses that, but in case you do, you have the option. But that being said, I'm going to show you how to set up Telegram since it is the most common.

For that, you're going to want to message BotFather. It's @BotFather on Telegram. Once you go there, you can type in {slash} newbot to create a bot. You'll need to name your bot. Hermie the demo, I'm going to call mine. And then pick out a username. It needs to end with bot, the word bot. So, I'm going to give mine the username Hermie the demo {underscore} bot. And it'll give you a token that you'll have to copy paste, go back to your application, which is right here for us, and paste that bot token.

Then, the missing piece is your allowed Telegram user ID, which is your personal Telegram user ID. Which in order to get that, you can message uh userinfobot @userinfobot on Telegram, and it'll give you your user ID. You can just click on user or where is it? Oh, no, actually, you can just type in anything, like hi, and it will reply back to you, as you can see, with your user ID, which you can copy right here. Oops.

These are my messages to myself. How dare you look at that? And then, paste that here. Once you click save changes, it should apply. It says right here, "Restart needed, but credentials are set." So, that's what we're going to do. It actually says it right here, "Restart the gateway from the status bar to apply this change." So, we're going to click on gateway right here, open it up, and restart messaging right here.

Gateway restart is running, and then we should be set. And just like that, when we do that, you can see, now our Telegram is connected. And if we go to Telegram, to our bot, once you start a conversation with it, say hi, it'll tell you you need to type {slash} set home, which I just did, to make this chat your home channel. And just like that, it is now live on Telegram. How are you today? Let's see. It should be typing.

There you go. It's typing. And it should be responding any second. Doing great, thanks for asking, ready to tackle whatever you throw at me. Now, you also have access to Hermes on your phone. So, you can be texting at home, on the go, anywhere you are in the world, which is one of the best use cases for having an AI agent. That being said, I mean, a quick walk-through of the app. You can go to skills and tools to view all of your installed skills, or all of the new skills that you installed.

You can enable or disable them right from this view. You can also go to tool sets and enable or disable uh the different tools that your Hermes can use. For example, do you want it to be able to use skills? Absolutely, we're going to turn that on. Do you want it to have persistent memory? Absolutely, turn that on. Cron jobs, there's a lot. I want you to go through this and think of what are the skills and tools that you think your AI agent will need.

Will it need to generate images? If so, turn it on. Will it need to analyze videos? If so, turn it on. So on and so forth. Finally, the last thing I want to look at is artifact, which is all of the files and documents that your Hermes creates and interacts with, which are all listed here. You can go to images, files, links, whatever it is that it has access to or created will be included right here. Oh, look at that.

You can also pin a session. If there's one session that you keep using, you can pin it up. Shift-click a shot to pin. Oh, there you go. I can just right-click a session and I can pin it right there. Lastly, something cool you can do is manage your profiles right on the app, which is your ability to create different personas, configuration files, skills, and soul.md, which is the essence, the personality of your agent.

You can manage profiles right here and create different profiles. For example, my main agent, you can put it on a certain model, a certain AI provider, LLM. >> [snorts] >> You can give it a different specialized persona, personality. Then, I can create a new one. Say, test 1 2. Say that is what I want to call it for some reason. Then, you can give that one a separate personality. This is in the case you want to use multiple sub agents that do separate things.

One main agent, for example, one content agent, one operations business operations agent, one, I don't know, YouTube editor agent. I have no idea what kind of agent you want to be creating. That is up to you. The sky is the limit. But, there you go. This is how to do it. And you can go into the settings for the different agents. Yada, yada, yada, so on and so forth. And that's it. It's literally this simple. Before today, Hermes was easiest to explain to technical people.

Now, however, the pitch is much simpler. You can download the desktop app, connect your tools, and give it a real workflow. Then, let the same agent follow you across your desktop, your terminal, Telegram, and different project folders. And that is the real unlock. It's not that it became a prettier chat app. It's that it now has a native control room for an agent that already had the power underneath. If you want the exact setup I would use, I will put the Hermes desktop link and the install commands in the description.

If you want me to do a follow-up, I can also show the full build from zero. What is the first skill that you can run, the first cron job, or the first Telegram workflow. But, the short version is this. Hermes was already powerful. Hermes desktop makes it OP. That is overpowered for our non-technical friends. And that is when a tool starts crossing from developer toy into something normal people can actually run. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to subscribe because I have a ton more content coming your way.

Oh, and the algorithm gods just told me that you are very likely to enjoy this video as well. So, I'll see you there.