Hermes Agent Bot Mode is a free feature in the Hermes desktop app that turns your AI agent into a team of named bots, where each bot has one job, its own memory, its own model and its own schedule.
Nous Research built it, it is MIT licensed, and the official docs say it now ships inside the desktop app and is on by default.
This post explains what it is and how to set it up first, and then it shows how a business owner, an agency and a creator would actually use it.
I installed Bot Mode the day it launched in August 2026, and the real install is documented in my Hermes Bot Mode guide.
The newer features in this post come from the official Bot Mode docs, which I read again on 12 October 2026.
I'm not going to promise you income from a bot roster, because a tool doesn't earn money until you give it a job worth doing.
What Hermes Agent Bot Mode Is, In Plain English
Hermes Agent is a free, open-source AI agent made by Nous Research.
It remembers things, uses real tools, runs jobs on a schedule and talks to you in chat.
Hermes lets you keep several separate setups, which it calls profiles.
Bot Mode takes those profiles and shows them as a list of named bots down the left side of the desktop app.
Each bot has a face, a title and a chat.
You click the bot whose job it is, and you're talking to that specialist.
The official docs describe it this way, which is that a bot is a profile and Bot Mode is a view on top of it.
Who Made It And What It Costs A Business
Nous Research made Bot Mode.
It launched in August 2026 as a public beta plugin in the Hermes-Bot-Mode repository on GitHub, under an MIT licence.
That repository is now archived, and its README says Bot Mode ships built into Hermes Desktop.
The software has no fee, no seat price and no subscription.
Your cost is the model behind each bot.
That is where a business saves money, because you choose the model for each bot.
| Kind of job | Sensible model choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A daily inbox or news summary | A cheap or free model works well. | The job runs every day and the task is simple. |
| Sensitive notes or client files | A local model on your own machine is the safe choice. | Nothing leaves your computer. |
| Strategy, long writing or complex research | A frontier model earns its price here. | Quality matters more than cost on these jobs. |
I use that split myself, with a small local model on my inbox bot and stronger models on research and writing.
The Problem It Solves For A Business
Most people use an AI agent as one long chat.
Everything goes into that chat, so the agent's context gets muddled and you repeat yourself.
The next step people try is many separate chats, which becomes a pile of identical sessions.
I had my inbox summary in one, content research in another and competitor tracking in a third.
I was the person copying answers from one window into the next.
Bot Mode fixes that by giving each job a named owner with its own memory.
How To Get Hermes Agent Bot Mode Running
You don't need a developer for this.
- Install Hermes Agent with the official script, which is
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash. - Run
hermes setupand connect a model. - Run
hermes updateso you have a current build. - Open the Hermes desktop app, which you can launch with
hermes desktop. - Click the Bots tab next to Sessions.
- Press New Agent and type a Name, a Title and a Description.
The docs say the bot then introduces itself as the first message in its own chat.
Creating one took me about twenty seconds in my guide.
Any profiles you already have appear as bots automatically, so you rebuild nothing.
Older tutorials tell you to clone a plugin from GitHub first, and the archived README says that step is no longer needed on current desktop builds.
🔥 Not sure which bots your business needs first? That is what we map out inside the AI Profit Boardroom, along with my Agent Operating System, daily step-by-step tutorials and four coaching calls a week with 3,400+ members. → Get access here
How A Business Owner Would Use Bot Mode
A business owner should start with the jobs that repeat.
The Inbox Bot
Create a bot called inbox and give it one routine.
A routine is a recurring task attached to a bot, and it runs on Hermes's built-in scheduler.
In my guide I gave my inbox bot a routine called "Evening wrap-up" and set it to 6pm.
The result lands in that bot's own chat, so the summary is waiting when you click the bot.
The Research Bot
Create a bot called researcher and tell it to report findings with links and never guess.
That instruction lives in the bot's SOUL.md file, which is its personality and its standing orders.
Then you can type @researcher pull the latest facts on this topic from any other bot's chat.
The first bot hands the job over, the researcher does the digging and the answer comes back in the same conversation.
The Competitor Bot
My own example is Oracle, which watches my competitors.
Another of my bots, Astros, pulls keyword ideas out of search data.
Before Bot Mode I carried findings from one to the other by hand.
Now one bot can message the other directly, and the message arrives with the sender's name on it.
How An Agency Would Use Bot Mode
An agency has the same jobs repeated across clients, and that is where cloning helps.
The Duplicate option makes a full copy of a bot, including its config, skills, SOUL.md, memory and look.
You train one research bot until it behaves, and then you duplicate it for the next client.
The copy starts with everything the original learned, and you point it at a different project.
The docs describe sections, which are folders you create yourself, so you can file bots under each client's name.
Each bot is a separate profile with its own memory and credentials, so one client's notes don't leak into another client's bot.
The docs also describe group chats for two to six bots, where a small team of bots works one problem in a shared room.
A bot in that room can tag you with @user when it needs a human decision, and the room shows a "needs you" badge.
I haven't covered group chats in my own guide yet, because they arrived after launch day.
How A Creator Would Use Bot Mode
A creator's week has a rhythm, and routines fit that rhythm.
- A content ideas bot can pull fresh ideas every Monday morning.
- A niche watcher bot can check for new developments every day at noon.
- A writer bot can keep your style in its memory, so you stop explaining your tone.
- A researcher bot can feed the writer bot facts through an @mention.
Those four examples are the same ones I used in my video and my guide.
The writer and the researcher keep separate memories, so your style notes never get mixed up with raw research.
Every Bot Mode Feature A Business Should Know
| Feature | What it does | Why a business cares |
|---|---|---|
| Bots pane | It lists every bot with an avatar, a preview and a timestamp. | You see the whole team at a glance. |
| Active now | It shows which bots are working right now. | You know who is busy without opening chats. |
| Bot Chat | It gives each bot one permanent conversation. | The history of that job stays in one place. |
| New Agent | It creates a bot from a name, a title and a description. | Anyone on the team can add a bot. |
| Model pin | It sets a different model for each bot. | You control cost job by job. |
| SOUL.md | It holds the bot's persona and rules. | The bot behaves the same way every day. |
| Skills and tools | It lets you tick the capabilities each bot gets. | A bot only has the access its job needs. |
| Routines | It schedules recurring jobs per bot. | Work is done before you sit down. |
| @mentions | It hands a task from one bot to another. | You stop copying between windows. |
| Group chats | It puts two to six bots in one room. | A small team can work one problem together. |
| Duplicate | It clones a trained bot with its memory. | You reuse what a good bot learned. |
| Sections | It files bots into folders you name. | Clients and projects stay organised. |
| Avatars and pets | It gives each bot a face and an optional pixel pet. | A moving face shows a bot is working. |
| Voices | It lets each bot speak with its own voice settings. | Two bots can sound different when read aloud. |
| Bots across machines | It shows bots from every machine you connect. | A laptop bot and a server bot can share a roster. |
Every row in that table is described in the official docs.
On launch day the permanent conversation was called the Agent Inbox, and you'll see that name in my August guide.
🔥 Want the roster, the job descriptions and the routines I use? Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the Agent Operating System with the Bots tab wired in, plus tutorials on which model to pin to each bot. → Join the AI Profit Boardroom
How I Wired Bot Mode Into My Agent OS
I run one dashboard for all my agents, and I call it my Agent Operating System.
I added a Bots tab in its Hermes section that shows the same roster, the same inboxes and the same routines.
It reads the Hermes profiles that already exist, so there is one source of truth.
My guide shows 46 bots in that roster, and each one is a real profile on my machine.
Oracle, Astros and Apollo used to be three profiles I switched between by hand.
They now sit side by side with their own chats and schedules.
Limits A Business Should Know First
- Bot Mode is part of the desktop app, so somebody needs the Hermes desktop app open to see the Bots tab.
- A message between bots is picked up when the receiving bot next runs, so it is not an instant interrupt.
- A bot with no routine does nothing until it is messaged, and one of my viewers noticed bots going idle for exactly that reason.
- The docs say single-use OAuth logins are not copied to a new bot, so a new bot can need its own sign-in.
- The desktop app keeps three local bot backends warm by default, so a large team needs that setting raised.
- Every bot still costs model usage when it runs, so a noisy routine on an expensive model adds up.
- Bot Mode organises agents, and it doesn't make a weak prompt or a vague job description any better.
That last limit is the one most people miss.
A roster of ten bots with ten vague jobs produces ten vague answers.
Hermes Agent Bot Mode vs Grok Bot For A Business
I compared the two in August 2026 in my video and in my Hermes Bot vs Grok Bot post.
| Question a business asks | Hermes Agent Bot Mode | Grok Bot |
|---|---|---|
| What does the software cost? | It is free and MIT licensed. | It is a paid platform. |
| Which models can I use? | You can use any model, and each bot can differ. | It uses xAI models only. |
| Where does it run? | It runs on your own computer. | It runs in xAI's cloud. |
| Where does bot memory live? | It lives in folders you own. | It lives on their servers. |
| How polished was it at launch? | It was rough on day one. | It was smoother on that day. |
Grok Bot proved that people want named agents with jobs.
Bot Mode gave that same pattern to anyone for free.
A tester in the community even had Hermes rebuild their full Grok Bot team inside Bot Mode.
My comparison is two months old, so read Grok Bot's current page before you choose.
My Verdict For Business Owners
Bot Mode suits an owner who already has two or three repeating jobs and wants each one handled by a named specialist.
It suits an agency that wants one trained bot cloned across clients with separate memories.
It doesn't suit someone who wants a finished product with no setup, because you still write the job descriptions.
I'd start with one bot, one job and one routine, and I'd add the second bot only when the first one is reliable.
FAQ: Hermes Agent Bot Mode
What is Hermes Agent Bot Mode in simple terms?
It is a roster of named AI bots inside the Hermes desktop app.
Each bot has one job, its own chat, memory, model and schedule.
What does it cost a business?
The software is free.
You pay for the model usage behind each bot, and a local model has no bill.
Which bot should I create first?
Create a bot for one recurring job you already do by hand.
Attach a routine so the result is waiting in its chat each day.
Can I keep client work separate?
Each bot is its own profile with its own memory and credentials.
Sections let you group bots by client.
Can I switch Bot Mode off later?
The docs say you can turn it off in the desktop app's plugin settings.
Your profiles, sessions and scheduled jobs are left untouched.
Related Posts On This Site
- My Hermes Agent bot post explains Hermes as a bot on messaging apps such as Telegram and Slack.
- My Hermes Agent background post explains scheduled and background work in more depth.
- My best Hermes Agent use cases ranking lists the jobs I'd give an agent first.
- My best Hermes Agent model ranking helps you choose a brain for each bot.
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 The full Bot Mode setup walkthrough for operators
- 🌐 Every Bot Mode feature explained and scored
- 🌐 The five-minute Bot Mode quick-start on agentos.guide
- 🌐 Which model to pin to each bot, with real scores
📺 Video notes + links to the tools 👉
🎥 Learn how I make these videos 👉
🆓 Get a FREE AI Course + Community + 1,000 AI Agents 👉
About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an SEO entrepreneur, author and founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
- I've built a 7-figure SEO and link-building agency, Goldie Agency, with 70+ people in Bangkok.
- I've grown a YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
- I wrote the book "Link Building Mastery", which covers nine link building strategies.
- My Udemy courses have taught 29,000+ students.
→ Get my best AI training inside the AI Profit Boardroom
Give one bot one job and one routine this week, and you'll see quickly whether your business is ready for a full team in Hermes Agent Bot Mode.
