100 hours of Hermes Agent lessons in 19 minutes

0:00Hermes Agent is the most powerful software ever made. When used correctly, you literally have your own full-time AI employee. Here's the thing though, when used incorrectly, it's basically just a normal chatbot. In this video, I will go over every lesson I've learned from using Hermes Agent for hundreds of hours the last 4 months. If you stick with me until the end, I promise you you will be 100 times more productive. Now, let's lock in and get into it. I have a ton of lessons to go through in this video, but let's start with one of the number one asked questions I get, which is which

0:35model should I be using for Hermes? Well, I have an official recommendation for you here. If you want the absolute best-in-class performance, there is no model better than Opus. It is the absolute best agentic model ever made. And now I know what you're going to say, "Wait, Alex, isn't that API pricing?" Yes, yes, it is. I have spent $1,400 the last month on Opus credits for my Hermes Agent alone. Yes, I'm spending a tremendous amount. Yes, on average, I am spending about $40 a day. Yes, I was in Cabo this one day where I didn't spend anything at all, but I am spending a tremendous amount on Opus for Hermes

1:14Agent, but for good reason. It is the only model on planet Earth where when I plug it into Hermes Agent, I know for a stone-cold fact when I give my prompt to it, it's going to finish the task no matter what. The way I like to think about it is this, when you give Opus a task to do in Hermes Agent, even if it loses a leg halfway through a marathon race, it is going to crawl its way to the end of the finish line. With every other model, it stubs its toe halfway through the race and then it rolls over and gives up. Opus, when used in Hermes,

1:47no matter what, it finds a way to complete your task. And for me, that is worth a tremendous amount of money. I am willing to spend double what I'm spending now in order to use Opus and Hermes cuz it runs my business so much. But I get it, not everyone can spend thousands dollars a month on Opus. So, you have other options. If you're already paying for a ChatGPT subscription, which most people are, you can plug that in. ChatGPT 5.5 and later has been very good with Hermes. It's not Opus level. It still trips up. It's still not as warm. It's still not as fun to talk to. It's still not as great at

2:22tasks. But it's usable. Everything before 5.5 was not usable. It was quite frankly horrible. Now, if you want to save even more money, GLM 5.2 is also a great model. You can plug it in. It's a fraction the price of both of these, and it'll still get the job done. It's a little bit more robotic than ChatGPT and Opus, probably cuz it's distilled from these other two, but it's still very good, and it is very, very cheap. So, if you're in ultra money-saving mode, I'd recommend GLM 5.2. So, it's really up to you. You got a menu. Do you go with the best in class, the filet mignon Opus,

2:56where you can be sure every task will be done? Do you go with ChatGPT? Do you already have a subscription ChatGPT? That's fine, plug it in. You won't have to spend more money. Or if you want to go in ultra saving mode, GLM. Listen, if you're running a serious online business and you're making revenue, I say spend the money, go with Opus. Your job will get done. The tasks you give it will get done, and that kind of peace of mind is super important. So, my official recommendation's Opus. If you already

3:23have an account, just go with ChatGPT. Cost savings, go GLM 5.2. Second lesson I learned, and this is a massive one that literally 100% of people watching this video should do, you need to have at least two Hermes agents running at all times. Only having one is not enough. Let me walk through this for you. So, Hermes, I named my first Hermes

3:43agent Hermes. I just like that name. Hermes is my main agent. It's running off Opus just as we just talked about, but I also have a second agent, GPT-Me's. Why do I have a second one, GPTme's? Obviously, it's running off ChatGPT. The reason why you need at least a second and sometimes third and fourth Hermes agent is they all watch

4:04over each other. Hermes isn't perfect. It breaks at different times. I find Open Claw breaks a little bit more. Hermes breaks less, but it still does break. And when it breaks, you need failovers. You need ways to fix it. So, just yesterday, my account, my ChatGPT account connected to GPTme's, went down for some reason. The token expired or something went wrong. If it was my only Hermes agent, I wouldn't know what the hell to do. I wouldn't know how the hell to fix it. I'd probably panic. I'd probably be like, "Oh, my best friend's gone. I don't know where he went." But when you have multiple Hermes agents,

4:38they can all monitor, watch over each other, and fix each other automatically. So, as you can see here, when GPTme's went down, I took a screenshot, gave it to Hermes, my main agent, and said, "My other agent, GPTme's, is down. Giving me errors. Can you fix it?" And literally, as you can see here, didn't have a message again, came back to me, said it's done, and it worked. GPTme's was

4:58back up. You need to have that failover. And so, if you have any extra accounts, using Opus and you have a ChatGPT account, if you're using ChatGPT and you have a Gemini account or Google account, you need to plug them in so that you have those extra Hermes bots available. If you want to take this a step further, I'd even recommend using like an Open Claw as your backup account, too, cuz then you can have them not only watch over each other to make sure they're up, but then you can also take advantage of any features that one or the other comes

5:29out with that the other is not using. Now, how do you set up a second or third Hermes agent the best way? Well, you basically have two options. The easiest way is just go to one of your agents and say, "Set me up a new Hermes profile. Make it powered by ChatGPT." So, profile here, Hermes profile, Profile is the terminology in Hermes. Basically, for

5:51other agents, they're called profiles. So, if you set up a second Hermes profile, you're basically setting up a second Hermes agent. So, you just go and say, "Hey, set me up a new Hermes profile." Then, you let them know what model you want to use. If you want to get even more custom, you can say, "Name it Harry." Or whatever you want. You put it in there, you hit enter, it'll build it for you. There's one other way, and

6:11that is through the Hermes dashboard. So, if you go into the Hermes dashboard, and then you go over to profiles, you can go in and click create in the top right, and then you can go through this nice user flow to choose a model, give it a name, everything you want. You can put it in there, and that'll build the

6:29profile for you as well, and launch it. Now, you have a second and third Hermes agent good to go that will watch over each other. That was my second lesson learned. Before we get into the third lesson, after 100 hours with Hermes agent, one thing became clear. The more agents you build, the better you get at building them. You start seeing different patterns. My friends over at HubSpot, who have sponsored this video, put together a free AI agent building course just for my audience. You can access with the link down below. It's 18 free videos on how to build your own AI agents. They break AI agents down to

7:07every component you need to know, from memory to tools, to plugging in the models. You can see memories and tools here. How to test and publish your different agents. This allows you to go a lot more hands-on on building AI agents. They also talk about a lot of other really important, interesting concepts when it comes to the nitty-gritty of AI agents, like automations versus agents, fixed step versus dynamic reasoning, which would have saved me a ton of headaches early on building these AI agents out, and how to plug your AI agents to the different tools, like N8N, Notion, Make, Chatbase, and a whole lot of other platforms. So,

7:46you'll be able to plug your AI agent to every single tool you use on your computer. It's a free, complete course, 18 different videos. The link is down below. Make sure to check it out, and thank you to HubSpot for supporting the channel. Lesson number three I've learned over the last several months and

8:02hundreds of hours using Hermes Agent. The next tip I want to go over is a massive mistake I see a lot of people make, which is this. They buy their own computer for their Hermes Agent. They give it their own Gmail account. They give it their own iMessage account. They give it accounts for every single little thing it does. They completely separate it from everything they do. This is a massive mistake. You do not need to buy your own Mac mini for every agent you have. You do not need to give your agent its own Gmail account, its own Apple account. You are adding needless friction to your entire experience. And

8:39I get why people do, right? They have security concerns. Oh, Alex, if I give my Hermes Agent access to my Gmail, can't it leak all of my emails? Oh, Alex, if I give it access to my iMessage account, won't it text my ex-girlfriend? No, that's not how any of this works. Hermes Agent only does exactly what you tell it to do. If you tell it to write you a tweet, it isn't going to go into your iPhotos and leak all your nudes. If you tell it to get the latest AI news, it isn't going to go then and email your

9:10mom. That's not how any of this works. It is an AI. It's not sentient. You give it a prompt, it does the prompt you give it. That's it. So, as long as you have personal accountability and think deeply about what you're telling your agent to do, it's not going to do anything you don't want it to do. My question to you is this, how many people do you know have had a security incident with Hermes? Truly, tell me. How many people do you personally know have had their Hermes Agent go and then email everyone on their contact list. The answer is probably none. You probably don't know a

9:43single person who's ever had a security incident. That's because a lot of the security concerns are largely overblown, and I know what's going to happen now. I'm going to get a thousand comments that say, "Alex, you jerk, you're telling people do this dangerous" Shut up. I don't care. If you have some personal accountability, you act like an adult, you're not going to need to add 20 different accounts for everything your Hermes agent does. You're just slowing down everything you do, adding tremendous amounts of friction. Put it on your main computer, put it on your main accounts, and then be a responsible adult. The next lesson I learned is what

10:14platforms to be using your Hermes agent on. I use three main platforms for Hermes agent. When I am at my computer, I use Hermes desktop. Hermes desktop is excellent. It's the best user experience for an AI agent on planet Earth. You can quickly switch between all your profiles. So, if you're doing multi-agent profiles like I told you to towards the beginning of this video, you can switch to them very easily. You can see all your cron jobs very easily in here. You can pin your different sessions instead of having to having one massive session. You can have separate sessions, pin them, pop them out, talk to multiple Hermes agents at once. It's

10:49excellent. When I'm on the go and I'm doing deep work, I use Telegram. So, I'm still using the Telegram app on my phone, but only for deep work, only if I'm doing multi-threading things on my phone. I hope they come out with a mobile app soon. I know OpenClaw just came out with one. But, if I'm on the go and I'm doing deep work, I'm using Telegram app on my phone. But, other than that, this is a new addition. When I am on the go and I have quick prompts

11:13I need to do, I'm using iMessage. iMessage is actually fantastic with Hermes agent. This is a brand new addition as well to Hermes in their latest update. They had out of the box iMessage. I highly recommend setting iMessage up. I added a contact called Hermes to my phone. I pinned it to the top of my iMessages, and now I can message my Hermes agent through iMessage the fastest easiest app that I'm on at all times to get things done quickly. So quick tasks iMessage on the go deep tasks telegram and when I'm at my computer Hermes desktop. That's how you need to be using Hermes agent. The next

11:49tip is related to what we just talked about and that is the deep work on the go. There is some amazing new features inside of telegram when you're doing deep work on mobile on the go on your phone and that is formatting inside the messages. You now can have so many nice pieces of formatting in your messages. As you can see here you have tables, you have bold, you have paragraphs, you have different things you can do. You have really nice in-depth formatting now inside of telegram. I'd highly recommend taking advantage of this. Set up cron jobs, ask questions where you ask for generated tables. So I have it do stock

12:27research on the top AI related stocks every day. I tell her to put it into a table. I tell her to give it a bunch of ratings and information there and now every morning I wake up to this really nice table with information on AI stocks I should be investing in. Take advantage of this new formatting in Hermes. Set up different cron jobs where it gives you tables of stock information or tables with your top performing content or

12:51tables with your most important emails. It makes it a really nice way to use and organize everything going on inside Hermes. The next lesson learned is around performance. One of the big complaints I get is hey my agent slowing down and it's getting stupid. It's always busy. People have a lot of performance issues with their Hermes agent. What I find the number one culprit to be is cron jobs. A lot of your cron jobs run in the background and much like laws and rules, it's very easy to make new ones. It's very hard to take them away. And so what I find is if you need to improve the performance of your

13:26agent, one of the best things you can do is just eliminate and clean up old cron jobs. If you're in the desktop app and you click the cron button right there, you actually see a really nice list of all your cron jobs. And what I like to do is every so often, I go in and I just find which ones I don't really need anymore and I click pause on them. So, you can come in any that you're not really using, pause it, and what happens is is when these crons run, it slows down your agent. So, if you have tons of cron jobs going and I bet you forgot

13:57about a lot of the ones you scheduled, make sure to just go in every once in a while, once a week, pause any ones you're not really using. You'll instantly get a performance boost on your agent, also save usage and money. A lot of these take up a lot more tokens than you think. So, always clean up your crons and the easiest way to do that is through the desktop app experience. The next massive tip I have for you, and this is an important one for anyone who has multiple devices. So, if you have a computer and a phone, or if you have Mac minis, or if you have DGX Sparks, any if

14:28you have anything more than just one device, you need to install Tailscale. It is completely free. I am not sponsored by Tailscale whatsoever. I just absolutely love this application. Basically, what it does is it creates a private network for all your devices, which allows your Hermes agent to then be able to move across all your devices. This is great if you're running local AI models. This is great if you do vibe coding. This is great if you have a job and you do work and you like to move documents around between all your computers. You can easily go in and just say, "Hey Hermes, go over to this other

15:03device and do something." So, if I want to say, "Let me know which local models I have running on the DGX Spark." I can hit enter on that and now my Hermes agent will go from the Mac Studio it's on right now, go over to my DGX Spark, which is also on Tailscale, and be able to tell me what's running on there. So, as you can see, it's SSH-ing over to my other device. It's checking on the models running. And if I wanted to go then go and like run a new local model, download something new on there, run it for me, it can go and do that for me. It

15:37saves me so much time cuz I don't need to plug all my devices into monitors. I just have my Mac Studio plugged into the monitor. My other computers, my five other computers I have, they're not connected to monitors. I just have my Hermes agent go over to those computers and run them for me. This is where your Hermes agent really turns into like your own AI employee cuz it's basically just on your other computers for you doing whatever work you need to do. If I'm ever on the go and I have a presentation on my other computer and it's not on my laptop, I say, "Hey Hermes, go on my

16:07other computer, click and drag it over here and send it to me." It'll bring the documents in between computers. You need to have Tailscale. It basically allows your Hermes to run your entire fleet of devices. Has some other benefits, too. If you're vibe coding and you have your app running on localhost on like your main computer, you can have it if everyone's on the same Tailscale network, you can access your localhost from your phone. So, you can test your apps out on the go if you want. So many benefits of Tailscale. It's completely free. There's I think there is a paid version, but I don't even know what's on

16:40it. I've just been using paid I've just been using free forever. So, make sure to check that out. My eighth lesson learned is around reverse prompting. Hermes agent is so powerful that we can't even really comprehend everything it can do. But this prompt I'm going to give you down below that reverse prompts Hermes agent helps you figure out how it can help your life the most. Every morning I do a morning interview with my Hermes agent where I basically tell it to ask me a bunch of questions. What my priorities are for that day, what tasks I'm working on, what stresses me out at the moment, what's on my plate. It then

17:14takes all those things and then figures out what it can take off my plate for me, what tasks it can do for me, what it can automate, what it needs my permission to do, and starts doing those things for me. Every day I learn more and more about what Hermes agent can do for me, and and what it can take off my plate. You need to be doing this morning interview every single morning. It takes about 5 minutes, but it saves you tons of time after because it helps your Hermes agent figure out what it can do for you. I promise you're not getting the most out of Hermes agent. I promise

17:47you're going to be automating so much more of your life. You just need to be able to figure out what those things are, and reverse prompting is the way you figure it out. And this prompt that has your agent interview you is the best way to reverse prompt. So, take this prompt, run it every single morning. I promise you'll find two to three new jobs for your Hermes agent to do that will be super helpful for you. And the ninth tip I got for you, this is an important one. After you do your morning brief, and it gives you a bunch of tasks it can do, put those tasks in your

18:19Kanban board for the agent to take over and actually do for you. This is the best way to stay organized on your tasks. All you need to do to see this Hermes Kanban board is go in, type Hermes-dashboard into your terminal, whether using Ghosty or just your built-in terminal on your computer, type Hermes-dashboard. It will pop open this website. You click on Kanban board on the bottom left, and you have this nice Kanban board where you can add in tasks, move them over, assign them to your agent. And so, all the tasks your agent comes up with from your morning interview, you can put it in

18:53here, and it'll start taking care of it for you. This is an amazing way to stay organized with the tasks your agent has, with the tasks you have. You put them in here, you're good to go. You can organize your day really, really nicely. Those are my nine lessons learned. If you learned anything at all, leave a like down below, subscribe, and turn on notifications. All I do is make amazing videos about AI. Let me know down below, what do you want to see next from me? Do

19:16you want to see more Claude code videos? Maybe a Fable 5 video or more tips on Hermes agent? Let me know down below. Hope this was helpful. See you in the next video.