Hermes Agent is a free, open source AI assistant you run yourself. It keeps a memory across every session, runs tasks while you sleep, and can message you on Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, and more. This guide gets you from nothing to a working agent that texts you, one command at a time.

Before we start, here is a cheat sheet of every Hermes slash command. Save it somewhere handy, you will come back to it.

Hermes Agent slash command cheat sheet
Download the cheat sheet

Step 1: Install Hermes

Open your terminal and paste this in. It downloads Hermes and sets everything up for you. No extra software needed.

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

Step 2: Reload Your Shell and Start Hermes

The installer added Hermes to your system, but your terminal needs to catch up. Paste this first command to reload:

source ~/.bashrc

Then paste this one too. One of the two matches your terminal, running both is safe.

source ~/.zshrc

Now start Hermes and make sure you can see the interface working:

hermes

You should see the Hermes interface open up in your terminal. If it does, you are in. Type /quit to come back to your normal terminal when you want to.

Next, set up the gateway. This is the part that lets Hermes reach you on apps like Telegram later.

hermes gateway setup

Step 3: Connect the Nous Portal

Hermes needs a brain to think with. The easiest option is the Nous Portal. Run this and follow the prompts to connect it:

hermes setup --portal

Step 4: Open the App and Pick a Model

Open the desktop app. This gives you a friendly window instead of the terminal:

hermes desktop

This next part is optional. If you want to choose a specific model instead of the default, run this in your terminal anytime and pick from the list:

hermes config set model

Back in the app, look at the left side of the screen and click Messaging.

From the messaging options, choose Telegram.

Step 5: Create Your Telegram Bot

Telegram lets you make your own bot in about a minute, and it is free. Open Telegram and search for @BotFather. It is Telegram's official bot for making bots.

Send BotFather a message to make a new bot. It will ask you for a name, then hand you back an API key. That key is a long string of letters and numbers. Keep it private, it is the password to your bot.

Copy that API key, go back to the Hermes desktop app, and paste it into the Telegram field. Save it.

Once the key is saved, restart the gateway so Hermes picks up your new Telegram connection:

hermes gateway restart

That is it. Your agent can now message you on Telegram, remember your conversations, and work in the background. Open Telegram, say hello to your bot, and watch it reply.

Step 6: Protect Your Telegram Account

Your agent now lives inside Telegram, so it is worth locking down that account. This takes two minutes and keeps everything you and your agent talk about private.

Open Telegram and go to Settings, then Privacy and Security. Turn on Two-Step Verification and set a password. This means nobody can log into your Telegram from a new device without it, even if they have your phone number.

While you are there, scroll down and turn off active sessions you do not recognize, and consider setting a passcode lock on the app itself. Now your bot, your conversations, and your agent's memory all sit behind a real lock.

Where to Go From Here

You now have your own AI assistant running on your machine. Try asking it to handle a small repeating task, or let it run something overnight and report back in the morning. The cheat sheet above shows everything it can do.

If you want to keep building with AI like this, every lesson on our free campus is a small win you can finish today.