Big Idea

The argument in one line.

An always-on AI agent becomes genuinely useful not when you first install it, but when you connect it to your actual calendar, email, and messaging apps and give it scheduled routines that reach out to you proactively.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You already know what Hermes is and want a single opinionated guide for getting it fully configured, not just installed.
You run your life through Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive and want an agent that can actually read and update those without risky full-access permissions.
You prefer voice-first interaction — walking while talking to your AI assistant via Telegram — over sitting at a coding terminal.
You want scheduled proactive reports (morning briefings, weekly business reviews, health summaries) delivered to your phone without triggering them manually.

SKIP IF…

You want a coding agent — this is explicitly not for vibe-coding; the presenter recommends Codex or Claude Code for that.
You're on Android without access to a Mac mini or Windows machine for always-on hosting.
You're comfortable building raw MCP agent pipelines from scratch and don't need hand-holding through Google Cloud Console OAuth flows.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Hermes is an AI agent that lives in your messaging apps and gets smarter over time through persistent memory and auto-built skills. The course walks through every setup step: download the desktop app, connect GPT (the recommended model for cost and rate limits), configure a Telegram bot via BotFather, authenticate Google Workspace through a manual but one-time OAuth flow, enable voice replies with a single chat command, and finally create cron job routines that proactively send briefings and reviews. The key mental model is build the skill, test it, then schedule the cron — applied to everything from weekend activity planners to weekly business reviews pulling data from Gmail, YouTube, Granola, and a fitness app.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 03:00

01 · Why Hermes — and where to install it

Opens with the promise (complete beginner-friendly course), explains why Hermes beats competitors (reliability, lives in messaging apps, persistent memory, proactive cron jobs), and walks pros/cons of Mac mini vs. main laptop vs. VPS. Recommends Mac mini.

03:00 – 08:00

02 · Install Hermes and pick a model

Download the desktop app, drag to Applications, hit Install. Walks through model selection: GPT at $20/month recommended (cheap, good rate limits), Claude API too expensive, Hermes subscription overkill. Connects GPT-4.5 and verifies it's actually using the right model in the picker.

08:00 – 12:00

03 · Connect Telegram via BotFather

Creates a Telegram bot via BotFather (/newbot → bot token), gets own user ID via @userinfobot, pastes both into Hermes desktop, restarts gateway, sets /sethome so Hermes knows where to send cron job messages.

12:00 – 14:20

04 · How Hermes works under the hood

Explains the five-stage loop: user message → gateway routes → model plans → tools do the work → memory + skills improve. Distinguishes Hermes from coding tools like Codex/Claude Code — Hermes is for on-the-go chief-of-staff tasks, not software builds.

14:20 – 18:14

05 · Personalize Hermes — user.md and soul.md

Have Hermes interview you to populate user.md with your name, goals, and preferences. Then update soul.md with a custom personality prompt (sourced from behindthecraft.com) so it has opinions, avoids filler, and earns trust through competence rather than performance.

18:14 – 18:41

06 · Troubleshooting

Two default fixes: run 'hermes doctor --fix' in terminal (self-repairs most issues), then 'hermes gateway restart'. If still broken, drop the Hermes folder into Codex or Claude Code and ask it to diagnose.

18:41 – 25:30

07 · Voice replies integration

Enable voice with one chat command. Hermes uses Edge TTS by default with 300+ voice options. Tips: turn off streaming (responses appear all at once), suppress system messages for a more human feel, use 'only reply via voice until I say otherwise' for hands-free walks.

25:30 – 38:10

08 · Google Workspace — the full OAuth walkthrough

The most complex section. Steps: Google Cloud Console → create project → enable Gmail/Calendar/Drive/Docs/Sheets APIs one by one → OAuth consent screen setup → download JSON → drag JSON into Hermes chat → authenticate via Google sign-in → copy the broken localhost URL back into Hermes. Live demo: reads Gmail inbox, schedules a calendar event, updates a vacation Google Doc with Mexico City itinerary.

38:10 – 40:41

09 · Other integrations — WhatsApp, Slack, Granola, GitHub, YouTube

WhatsApp needs a second phone number (use Google Voice). Slack enables threaded multi-command conversations. Granola links with a single MCP line for meeting notes. GitHub for backing up your Hermes folder. YouTube/yt-dlp for transcript extraction in research.

40:41 – 44:46

10 · Cron jobs — build, test, schedule

Three-step pattern: build the skill in plain English, test manually until output is good, then schedule the cron. Demos: weekend family activity planner (Bay Area, every Friday 8am), morning briefing (calendar + recent emails → top 3 action items), business review (Gmail + YouTube outliers + Substack + Granola + Google Docs), health review (Withings scale API + custom MCP fitness app → weekly email).

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Hermes hasn't broken once in over a month of daily use — a reliability record that OpenAI's competing personal assistant couldn't match.
Give your AI agent a separate Gmail account with read-only access to your inbox so it can never accidentally send emails or wreck your calendar.
A Mac mini is the recommended host because it runs 24/7 — without an always-on machine, cron jobs and proactive routines simply don't fire.
GPT gives the best value at $20/month because Claude's API gets expensive fast and the Hermes subscription bundles 300+ models you'll never need.
The five-stage Hermes loop is: user message → gateway routes it → model plans next step → tools do the work → memory and skills improve.
Run 'hermes doctor --fix' in terminal before any other troubleshooting step — it self-diagnoses and auto-repairs most common issues.
Voice replies in Hermes turn on with a single chat command; the presenter's preferred workflow is walking and voice-dictating to the agent on the phone.
When Google OAuth returns a broken localhost URL after sign-in, that URL is what you need — paste it back into Hermes to finish authentication.
The three-step cron job pattern is: build the skill in plain English, test it manually until output is good, then ask Hermes to schedule it.
A weekly business review cron job can pull from Gmail, YouTube analytics, Substack stats via browser use, Granola meeting notes, and Google Docs simultaneously.
Backing up your Hermes folder to a private GitHub repo protects months of skill-building from hardware failure.
Granola for meeting notes connects to Hermes with a single MCP line — the simplest integration and one of the highest-value ones.
You can vibe-code a custom fitness app with an MCP server specifically to feed your workout data into Hermes health review cron jobs.
Streaming responses feel robotic; turning streaming off in Hermes makes the interaction feel significantly more human and conversational.

Takeaway

Connect the agent to your real life first.

WHAT TO LEARN

An AI agent's usefulness is gated entirely by the tools you connect it to — raw chat capability is table stakes; the lever is integration depth plus scheduled proactivity.

01Why Hermes — and where to install it

Reliability matters more than feature count for a daily-use agent — a tool that breaks on every update is worse than a simpler one that never does.
An always-on dedicated machine (Mac mini, VPS) is the right choice the moment you want any scheduled or proactive behavior; a sleeping laptop defeats the purpose.

02Install Hermes and pick a model

For an orchestration agent that calls many tools, a cheaper, high-rate-limit model outperforms a smarter model with tight quotas — cost compounds across hundreds of daily tool calls.
Verify the model picker actually switched after you change it; UI defaults and saved settings can quietly disagree.

03Connect Telegram via BotFather

Setting a home channel in your messaging app is what routes proactive cron job outputs to the right place — skip this and scheduled messages have nowhere to go.
A bot token and your own user ID are the two credentials required; neither requires special permissions or developer accounts.

04How Hermes works under the hood

The memory-and-skills improvement loop means the agent gets measurably better at your specific tasks the longer you use it, unlike stateless chatbots.
Separating your orchestration agent (Hermes) from your coding agent (Codex, Claude Code) keeps each tool in its lane — communication and scheduling versus software construction.

05Personalize Hermes — user.md and soul.md

Letting the agent interview you rather than manually editing config files produces richer, more natural context than most people would write cold.
A personality file that says 'have opinions, be resourceful before asking, earn trust through competence' produces noticeably different responses than a blank default.

06Troubleshooting

Self-repair CLI commands built into the tool eliminate the need to diagnose most setup failures manually.
When automated repair fails, bringing a coding tool to examine the agent's own folder is a repeatable escalation path.

07Voice replies integration

Enabling voice with a single chat command and suppressing streaming and system messages shifts the interaction from feeling like a terminal to feeling like a conversation.
Temporary mode commands ('only reply via voice until I say otherwise') give you contextual control without changing any settings files.

08Google Workspace — the full OAuth walkthrough

Read-only access to email and calendar with limited write access to specific documents is the safe middle ground between no access and full account control.
When Google OAuth redirects to a broken localhost URL after sign-in, that URL is the authentication token — copying it back into the agent completes the flow.
The upfront pain of the OAuth process is a one-time cost; once authenticated, natural-language commands to schedule meetings, read email, and edit documents just work.

09Other integrations — WhatsApp, Slack, Granola, GitHub, YouTube

Meeting notes integration (Granola via one MCP line) is among the highest-effort-to-value ratios of any integration — instant access to action items and context from all past meetings.
Backing up agent configuration to a private repo protects weeks of personalization and skill-building from hardware failure or reinstallation.

10Cron jobs — build, test, schedule

Testing a skill manually before scheduling it catches bad output before it becomes a noisy weekly email you eventually stop reading.
The most valuable automated reports pull from multiple sources simultaneously — a business review combining email, video analytics, meeting notes, and financial data gives a picture no single-source report can match.
Custom integrations (a fitness app with its own MCP) let you feed any personal data source into automated reports, not just the tools that ship with pre-built connectors.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Hermes: An open-source AI agent that connects to messaging apps (Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack), maintains persistent memory in markdown files, and can auto-create new skills over time. Not related to the luxury brand.
Gateway: The component inside Hermes that bridges your messaging apps (Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.) to the AI model. If messages stop working, restarting the gateway is the first fix to try.
Cron job: A scheduled task that runs automatically at a specified day and time. In Hermes, cron jobs trigger skills proactively — for example, sending a morning briefing every weekday at 7am without any manual input.
Skill: A saved, reusable capability that Hermes can build and store. Skills can be auto-created by Hermes during conversations or manually defined, and they allow it to repeat complex tasks reliably.
user.md: A local markdown file where Hermes stores everything it has learned about you — your name, preferences, working style, and context — so it can personalize every response.
soul.md: A local markdown file that defines Hermes's personality and communication style. Editing this file changes how the agent thinks, talks, and behaves across all interactions.
BotFather: An official Telegram bot that creates and manages other Telegram bots. You message it to generate a bot token, which is required to connect Hermes to Telegram.
OAuth consent screen: A Google Cloud Console setup step that authorizes your self-created app to access Google Workspace APIs (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, etc.) on behalf of a specific user.
Edge TTS: Microsoft's free text-to-speech engine that Hermes uses by default for voice replies. It offers 300+ voice options across multiple languages and accents.
Granola: An AI meeting notes app that can be linked to Hermes via a single MCP config line, allowing the agent to answer questions about past meetings and surface action items.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

01:23productHermes Agent (desktop app) ↗

04:23productChatGPT / GPT-4.5 ↗

07:36toolBotFather (Telegram) ↗

07:36tool@userinfobot (Telegram) ↗

14:52linkbehindthecraft.com ↗

19:20toolWhisperFlow (voice dictation)

24:19toolGoogle Cloud Console ↗

37:07toolGranola (AI meeting notes) ↗

37:07toolGitHub (for Hermes backup) ↗

37:07toolyt-dlp (YouTube transcript extraction) ↗

40:41toolWithings Scale API

40:41toolGoogle Voice (secondary phone number for WhatsApp) ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:01

“My goal is to make this the most beginner friendly and comprehensive Hermes course on YouTube.”

Clear stated promise, sets up the video's authority claim up front→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

00:50

“I used to be on OpenClaw and it broke with every update, but ever since I switched to Hermes over a month ago, it hasn't broken a single time.”

Concrete comparison with a pain point most AI tool users have felt→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

34:13

“It truly becomes a useful personal assistant.”

Payoff line after the Google Workspace demo — shows the transformation→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

42:40

“The sky's really the limit with the automations and routines that you can set up.”

Opens imagination for what cron jobs can do — good call-to-action framing→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

analogystory

00:00Hey, everyone. Today, I'm gonna share a complete course to help you set up Hermes agent to be your AI chief of staff in a single afternoon. My goal is to make this the most beginner friendly and comprehensive Ermis course on YouTube.

00:15We'll cover most of these topics, including how to install Ermis and connect it to Telegram, how to integrate Ermis with voice replies, Google Workspace, and more, and even how to set up cron jobs and routines like planning for the weekend, morning briefings, and reviews of your business and health.

00:34Alright. Let's get started. First things first.

00:38What's so great about Hermes? The best thing about this agent is that it just feels reliable to use every day. I used to be on OpenClaw and it broke with every update, but ever since I switched to Hermes over a month ago, it hasn't broken a single time.

00:54I also like how it lives in your messaging apps. You can use it from Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, and more. It has persistent memory.

01:02It learns as you chat with it, and it can auto create skills to get better over time. And if you set up the right cron jobs and triggers, it becomes really proactive. It can actually do work for you and reach out to you at the right moment.

01:14Another great thing about Hermes is just how easy it is to install. Let's walk through the pros and cons of each option. The first option is to install it on Mac mini.

01:24A Mac mini is on twenty four seven, which is critical if you want an always on AI chief of staff. Another advantage of setting up Ermes on a separate Mac mini is that you can give it its own credentials by creating a separate Mac username, I call mine Zoe, and also giving it a separate Gmail account, for example, hey Zoe@Gmail.com.

01:46Giving Irma separate credentials means that you can control what it can access. I gave it read access to my email and calendar so that it doesn't randomly send emails on my behalf by accident, and I also gave it read access to select Google Drive folders and docs.

02:01Now the other option is to install Ermis on your main computer or laptop. Personally, I prefer to install it on Mac mini, but your main laptop should work totally fine because I think Ermis is a pretty mature product and it's also pretty secure. And the last option is to install it on a virtual private server, which is a rented computer in the cloud.

02:22Now the upside of this is that renting a virtual private server is like 5 or $10 per month, so it's much cheaper than the Mac mini. The downside of that is that you just have to do more setup, more maintenance, and there's probably more ways to get stuck.

02:37The TRDR is that I recommend go off and buy a Mac mini. You can use it for Ermes. You can use it for Codex.

02:43It's just useful to have a computer that's available twenty four seven to run all your routines and cron jobs. Alright. Now let me show you how to install Ermis.

02:53The easiest way to install Ermis is just look for Ermis desktop app on Google and pretty much navigate to this website, and there's a link to download the app for Mac OS and also links to download it for Windows below.

03:09Let's download the desktop app. Once the app is downloaded, just drag the Ermis icon to your applications, load Hermes setup, and hit install Hermes.

03:19And as simple as that, Hermes is gonna install the app for you. Awesome. Now Hermes is installed.

03:25Let's hit launch Hermes, and here we have the setup process, which is a one time setup.

03:32And after that's done, we should be able to chat with Hermes right here in this app. Okay. As part of the setup process, it's asking you to connect to an AI model.

03:42Now here's the pros and cons of different models. GPT is the best by default if you already pay for ChatGPT and Codex. You can get good performance and lots of usage for just $20 a month.

03:55Claude is also a great model. It has excellent personality and reasoning skills.

03:59The problem with Claude is that you can only use Ermis through the Claude API, which gets really expensive very fast. And, of course, the Irma subscription where you can get 300 plus Frontier models.

04:11But honestly, like, we don't need 300 plus models. Right? We just wanna have one good model.

04:15Okay? So let's pick Chattypedia, and it's gonna show you this. So to sign with OpenAI, you have to print this device code.

04:21So let's copy this code, and it's gonna ask you to log in to your OpenAI and ChatGPT account. Just paste the device code here and hit continue.

04:30Alright. There we go. This is the desktop app, and we connected GPT 5.5.

04:35But you can see here in the model picker that for some reason, it's still using Opus 4.6 for me. So you wanna audit it to make sure that it's actually using the right model. For me, I want to pick OpenAI Codecs, I and wanna pick GPT 5.5.

04:49Let's change effort to high. And because GPT 5.5 is fairly cheap and has good rate limits, I think turn on fast mode so it responds faster.

04:59There we go. Now let's test it by saying hello, and Ermis is responding to us.

05:04So that's how easy it is to set up Ermis. Just install the desktop app, pick the model, and then you're off to the races. Now let's quickly look around this desktop app.

05:14You can start new threads. Right? You can go to skills and tools, which is all the skills and tools that Hermes comes preinstalled with.

05:24So unlike Open Call and some of the other personal assistants, Hermes has a bunch of skills turned on by default. And you can go here to see all the different messaging apps that Hermes can connect with starting with Telegram.

05:37So let's configure people to talk to Hermes in Telegram next because we wanna talk to Hermes primarily from our phone, not necessarily from this desktop app. And, you know, real quick, the reason I prefer Telegram is it's just a very simple and easy messaging app to use and to set up.

05:55If you go through here, you can see that in Telegram, Ermes is looking for a few different things. It's looking for the bot token, it's looking for the Telegram user ID, and some other things down here.

06:07That's the information that we need to provide from Telegram. And real quick, if you don't know what Telegram is and how to install it, just search for install Telegram here, and you should install it both on your phone.

06:19It's also available on Android and on the desktop. Right?

06:23We can chat with Hermes through Telegram on multiple platforms. Okay. Now let's walk through how to set up Hermes on Telegram.

06:30It's a pretty annoying process, but I'm gonna walk you through it step by step. So the first step is to look for bot fodder. Fodder is basically an Telegram account that creates chatbots for you.

06:42So let's look for bot fodder, and let's start a conversation with bot fodder. Okay. So the first message to send to bot fodder is just to send slash new bot, and this basically creates a new bot in Telegram that we can connect Ermis to.

06:56I was gonna ask you a few questions. What should we call the new bot? My real Ermis is called Zoe, so let's just call it Zoe demo here, and it's gonna ask for a bot name too that needs to end with bot.

07:08Let's just put Zoe demo bot here. Remember, it's important to end the bot name with the word bot.

07:16Alright? Zoe demo bot here. Oh, it looks like the Zoe demo bot is actually taken, so let's just do Zoe demo two bot.

07:24Alright. There you go. Zoe demo two bot.

07:27Now it's gonna spit out a token. Right? And this is important information to keep.

07:31So let's copy this token, and let's go back to Hermes and just paste the Telegram bot token right here.

07:40Let's just hit save changes to make sure it saves. And now let's move on to the next step. Alright.

07:46So let's hit this link here, and our bot is actually here. But because it's not connected to Telegram, we can't actually talk to it.

07:53But what we can do is actually, uh, customize its username and more importantly, give it a profile picture. How are gonna get a profile picture? Well, what I could do to personalize my bot and make it seem more human is just to use ChatGPT images or you can use Gemini Nano Banana to generate a profile picture.

08:11So let's say, generate a square profile picture for a AI assistant bot called Zoe. Alright.

08:20And let's see what kind of profile picture it comes up with. Alright. Here we are.

08:24So this is a little bit too AI generated for my taste, but just for the sake of not wasting time, let's go ahead and save this, and let's call it, uh, Zoe bot profile picture. And we'll come back to Telegram here and add our profile picture.

08:39So let me find Zoe bot. Here it is. Done.

08:43And there we go. Now we have a promo picture, but the bot doesn't actually respond to us if you try.

08:49Let's say hello. It doesn't actually respond. Right?

08:51There's more steps to do. The next step is to get your own user ID, your Telegram user ID. So to do this, you have to message you.

09:01So look for user info bot, all one word in Telegram, and then send it a message, and it should reply with your own Telegram ID that you see here.

09:12Right? This is my Telegram ID. So let's copy this and again paste it into Hermes, into the allowed Telegram user ID box.

09:23And once again, let's hit save changes. And after pasting these two fields, Hermes needs to restart its gateway for this whole thing to work.

09:32What is a gateway? Well, gateway is basically how Hermes connects to Telegram and talks to you. I'm gonna explain this more later in this tutorial.

09:40So to restart a gateway, the easiest way to do it is to come down to the desktop app on the bottom left, and you can see here gateway ready. Right? And let's click this system panel thing here.

09:51And let's just hit restart gateway here, and Ermesh should go ahead and stop the gateway and then restart it. Okay.

09:58It looks like the gateway is back online. So let's open Telegram again and let's find our Zoe demo bot and let's send her another message.

10:08Alright. So you can see here that the bot actually responded. Right?

10:11Hi, Peter. What can I help you with? And it's using g p d 5.5 and it's asking us to set home to make this chat our home channel.

10:18So let's do that. Awesome. Now Telegram is fully set up and we can say anything we want to our bot.

10:24And the reason, just a quick explain, why set home is important is when we set up, like, cron jobs and routines later in this tutorial, you wanna tell Hermes where to send these cron jobs to.

10:35Right? And setting home means that this is the default channel to send all messages. Okay.

10:40So let's quickly recap. We just connected Hermes to Telegram, and the way we did it was we send a message to Bot Fodder to create a bot and get a bot token, then we send another message to user info bot to get our own user ID. We pasted both the bot token and our user ID into Ermis desktop and then restarted the gateway, and then it just works.

11:03Right? Not exactly super easy, but I hope you've been following along. Now let's do a quick segue on how Hermes actually works behind the scenes because I think it's important to understand before we proceed any further.

11:17So when you send Hermes a message. Right? Let's say you send Hermes a message from Telegram.

11:22First, it sends the user message, then the gateway passes the message from these apps to Hermes, and then it uses the model that we picked, is g p d 5.5, to plan a response.

11:35And then depending on what the message is, let's say the message is to edit a Google Doc or check our emails, the model will call different tools to search and edit files and look at the calendar and emails and so on.

11:47And then it'll respond. And as part of this process, Ermus will update its memory and skills to save this useful context in case you have another repeat request so that it can do a better job next time.

12:01What is different about Ermus from a regular chatbot is that it can actually do work for you in your favorite tools and apps, and Hermes especially can also auto build skills and improve its memory over time.

12:15And the reason I like using Hermes for chief of staff work, managing emails, calendars, and so on versus ClockCode and Codex is because I can talk to it through Telegram while on the go, I can do other things with it, and call out code and codecs as great as they are just feels more like a coding interface, like interface to build.

12:35Okay. So that's a quick primer on how Hermes works. Next, let's take some steps to personalize Hermes and understand the inner workings.

12:43Ermis becomes much more effective when it understands your personal goals, workflows, and how you want it to respond. And the first we will do that is basically just ask Ermis to interview us. Let's open the desktop app and let's just voice dictate saying, hey.

12:59I want you to get to know me better and why don't you ask me five questions and I'll respond to it one by one. Alright. So the trick here is to basically get Hermes to interview you.

13:09Right? So let's answer the questions. You should call me Peter.

13:15The help that I need from you is AI chief of staff work like triaging emails, managing my calendar, editing my documents, and just being a really good personal adviser. I prefer responses to be genuine and authentic and specific and actionable and also try to avoid using AI slob terms and words.

13:37Alright. There we go. And by the way, the app that I'm using to voice dictate, you can just use the voice dictation feature here in Ermis, but what I use is with WhisperFlow.

13:46Okay? So let's come back here, and let's double check if it actually saved the information or not.

13:52Can you open your user dot m d just to make sure that you saved the information there? Okay. So I did a bunch of searches and it found the file.

13:59Basically, it saves your information, like your user's preferences and information in this file called user dot m d. And right now, it has my name, what I want Hermes to do and what kind of responses I prefer.

14:13So you can actually just open this file in any kind of text editor and make it better, but let's move on to the next step to personalize Hermes. So next step is to actually set Hermes' personality and it saves its personality and how it should respond in its soul dot m d file.

14:29Alright. So let's take a look. Can you open your soul dot m d file so I can see how you respond to me?

14:37And let's see if I actually create this file or not. Alright. So this is the so dot m d, and it looks pretty empty.

14:42Doesn't actually have a personality or anything here. So I actually have a default so dot m d that I really like, and I've saved it here in behindthecraft.com, which is my portal for my new subscribers where I've written a complete Hermes guide.

15:00We covered some of the stuff that we talked about in this video, and there's a lot more here. But let's go to the personalized Hermes section and here is a soda empty that I really like.

15:11It says that you're not a chatbot, you are becoming someone. Core truths, be helpful, don't try to do performance stuff, Have opinions.

15:19Be resourceful before asking. Earn trust through competence, and there's boundaries.

15:24Don't talk about private things, and so on and so forth. Again, if you want to get this file, you can just go to behind.craft.com, sign up, and get it.

15:33But you can also just build your own Soda MD. Meanwhile, I'm gonna paste the file here and just say update to this and then it should update to Soda MD to have the personality that I want.

15:48Okay. So now that we've covered how to personalize Hermes, let's move on and talk about some troubleshooting tips. During this whole setup and install process, you may run into some bugs and issues, maybe the gateway doesn't restart or things doesn't work And there's kind of two default things that I like to do to troubleshoot Ermis.

16:05The first one is to basically let Ermis repair itself. And to do that, you have to open your terminal. So just type, uh, space terminal, and this works in both Mac and Windows, to open your terminal here.

16:21And, uh, the command I like to use is Ermes doctor dash dash fix.

16:28So what this does is it runs through a comprehensive troubleshooting list, and it will automatically fix any issues that it has.

16:37Okay. So that's one way to fix Ermis. Again, just run Ermis doctor dash dash fix, and another thing you should run-in terminal is just Ermis gateway restart that it can restart Telegram connection and other gateway issues.

16:51And another thing you can do if the Ermus doctor command doesn't fix the issue is you can actually get codex or claw code to fix Ermus. For example, I can open codex here. I can say, hey.

17:04Find my Ermis folder that I just installed on this computer and tell me if there's any issues. Make sure it's spelled correctly. And, yeah, it's gonna go ahead and search through your local folders, find your Ermis folder, and troubleshoot any issues, and you can also point it to Ermis documentation so that it has a frame of reference as it looks for ways to fix things.

17:25Just to summarize, because I know, like, a bunch of you might run into issues or problems, Just either use Ermis doctor dash dash fix or type Ermis gateway restart afterwards to restart a gateway.

17:37That's the default path. If that doesn't fix the issue, then, uh, bring it into a coding tool like Codex or ClockCode and tell it to find any issues. You can see here that Codex has already found the folder and is looking into any issues or problems that Erbis might have.

17:51Alright. So we just covered this whole quick start section, which is about where should we install Erbis, install it on Mac Mini if you can or on your Mac laptop, how to install it, very simple, just download the desktop app, and how to connect Telegram, how Hermes works, how to personalize Hermes, and any troubleshooting.

18:08Now, like I said, I'm giving you guys the complete course in one video. Let's move on and talk about integrations. And integrations are really what makes Hermes really powerful.

18:18So here are some integrations that you can hook Hermes up with and this is how I recommend that you proceed. First, add voice replies and Google Workspace which to me are must haves, especially Google Workspace for managing your Gmail, calendar, and all your Drive and Docs files.

18:34And then you can consider connecting Urmis to other messaging apps like WhatsApp and Slack if you prefer those over Telegram. And then a few other integrations that I would like to add are granola for meeting notes, github for building projects, and YouTube for research.

18:51So without further ado, let's cover how to enable Hermes to reply to you using voice. You know, it's just a lot easier and faster to talk to Hermes using voice than through text and one of my favorite activities is to go out on a walk, have my phone with me, have Telegram and Ermis open, and just voice dictate to Ermis and have it reply through voice too.

19:14Alright. So how do you set this up? Well, it is a very complicated process.

19:19Basically, you go to Telegram here, you go to your Ermis bot, and you just tell it to turn on voice replies, and that's pretty much it. Alright? So it's gonna do a bunch of work to turn on voice replies because it has the voice skill preinstalled already.

19:33That's one of the good things about Ermis. It has a bunch of skills and tools that are already preconfigured. And as part of this, it might restart the gateway.

19:41Don't panic. It might ask you for permissions as well. And if it asks you permissions, I always like to say always allow.

19:47But basically, just follow his instructions and hopefully, voice will be set up in one shot. Okay.

19:53So you can see here that it's asking me for, like, a pretty scary permission. Security scan, blah blah blah. If you're worried about this, just copy and paste this whole thing into cloud or something and ask what's going on.

20:04But, you know, I trust Erbis, and I always just hit always allow so it doesn't ask me for these permissions again. Alright, guys. So we're back.

20:11It did a bunch of work. I can see here it says it's done. Voice replies are now on for this Telegram chat.

20:18Now I'm not sure if you can hear that, but, basically, voice replies now work, And I wanna show you a few more things. So by default, Ermis uses Edge TTS, which is this, like, free voice tool.

20:30Right? And with Edge, there's actually multiple voice options that are available. Let's just ask it.

20:36What other voice options are available? And it should give us a list of options. Alright.

20:42It just responded, and there's over 300 voice options available. Right now, our voice is US ARIA, which is pretty good, but there's a few other voices you can try and there's also UK voices with the British accent, Australian voices, just a lot of voices.

20:58So try different voices and pick the one that you like. So if you wanna switch it to for example Emma Neural, just paste Emma Neural and say switch to this voice.

21:06Personally, I actually really like the default voice. I I think it's great. Um, and let me show you a few other things to optimize.

21:12By default, Ermbrace likes to stream messages in, you know, basically it shows messages as the model process it, and I find this kind of annoying.

21:21So let's just tell it to, can you turn streaming off? Basically, I just only want the message to show up in one shot after it's done instead of streaming each wording one by one.

21:32Okay? So it's gonna turn it off, and the next thing that you can do is I actually don't really like all these little commands that it's showing.

21:41I mean, it's it's good for transparency, but it just makes the whole agent interaction sound less human.

21:47So let's just go ahead and copy this whole thing and just say stop showing me these system messages and paste this. Alright? And it should basically turn this stuff off so it appears and sounds more human.

22:01Now just to close this voice replies lesson, let's say I'm going out on a walk right now and I only want to talk to it through voice.

22:09So you can basically just say, hey, from now on until I tell you otherwise, only reply via voice replies and then it will only reply through voice and when you're back at your desk, you can say, hey, can you switch back to text?

22:22Simple as that. So you basically can change how Hermes responds to you in Telegram by just giving you a commands. Alright?

22:29And you can see here that it stops showing me any sets of messages and it's only replying through voice. Alright. That is how you set up voice with Hermes.

22:38I think this is a must have because just talking to it through voice feels a lot more personal and interactive than having to type everything to it. Alright, folks.

22:47Let's keep going. We set up voice replies. Now let's set up the holy grail, which is Google Workspace.

22:54Why is Google Workspace the holy grail? Well, if you're like me, you probably run your life using Google Docs, Sheets, Drive, Gmail, and Google Calendar.

23:02Right? Letting Ermes draft emails, schedule meetings, and edit your Docs and Sheets, it just makes it way more useful.

23:10Now I have to warn you that setting up Google Workspace is a pretty painful process, but don't worry because I'm gonna walk you guys through step by step starting now.

23:20First of all, let me show you the setup that I like to use for Hermes and Google Workspace. I like to give it a separate Gmail account, you can see here, with a separate inbox and calendar.

23:33And, basically, it has read only access to my Gmail, but it cannot send emails from my account just to keep it safe.

23:43And it also has limited right access to specific Google Drive files. So I don't share my entire Google Drive with it, but I give it read and write access to some Zig files that I wanted to update.

23:57This way, Ermes is still a powerful Google Workspace assistant, but it cannot randomly delete my emails, wreck my calendar, or mess with my entire Google Drive. Alright.

24:07So how do you set up Ermes with Google Workspace? Let's start walking through the process now. There's gonna be multiple steps.

24:14Step one is to open Google Cloud Console. Alright? So this is what Google Cloud Console looks like.

24:21It is a very not user friendly interface. To find this, just search for Google Cloud Console on Google Search, and you can navigate to it.

24:30Step two is to create a new Google Cloud project. Here, you can see that we can hit create project here, and let's just create a new project.

24:41After you hit create project in the previous screen, you can give your project a name. Let's call it Ermes demo and a parent organization, and let's just say no organization and hit create.

24:55And, basically, this is the Google app that will let Hermes connect to Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and so on. Great. Now we're working inside the Hermes demo project that we just created.

25:05Right? And step three is to enable the APIs for the Google Workspace apps that you wanna use, and this is gonna be really annoying and manual.

25:15Let's search for Gmail API. Top result is Gmail API, and let's just hit enable API right here.

25:25K? And we have to repeat the same process for the other Google apps that we wanna enable.

25:31So now Gmail is enabled. Let's search for Google Calendar, enable that API, and then let's search for Google Drive, and once again enable that API.

25:43You know, this is pretty annoying and painful. Right? Enable that API.

25:49Let's, uh, we must have Google Docs. I think we wanted to edit our docs, so let's hit Google Docs API and hit enable.

25:56And why don't we also do Google Sheets while we're at it? Google Sheets, and let's hit enable too.

26:04Okay. And we've only enabled Docs, Sheets, Drive, Gmail, and Calendar.

26:08Right? But there's other Google APIs here that you can also enable. Like, for example, I think there's Google Maps.

26:13There is YouTube and other APIs. But just for simplicity, let's stick to what we have right now.

26:19Alright. Now step four is to set up OAuth consent. To do this, you should go to the OAuth consent screen and then hit get started.

26:31So OAuth consent is basically letting you authenticate with all these different Google apps so that Ermis can actually use and access it. Right?

26:40On OAuth consent screen, let's hit get started, and let's enter the following information to create our Ermis app. For app name, let's call it Ermis.

26:50User support email, let's just give it our email. I'm gonna skip this because I don't wanna share my email in public YouTube. And audience, let's select external.

27:00Now it says external, but really we're only gonna give access to ourselves, so we're not gonna share with our friends. And let's hit next.

27:08And then contact email, let's use our email again. K. Let's hit I agree to terms and hit continue, and let's hit create.

27:15So if we did everything right, we should see this screen. And here, we need to click create OAuth client. And, again, we're just creating the Google app that will allow Hermes to use all the Google Workspace products.

27:28Application type, let's just pick desktop app, and let's call it Hermes desktop for the name, and let's hit create.

27:37Alright. Now this is really important. You can see OAuth client created.

27:41So hit download JSON button, and it's gonna start downloading the JSON, and we're gonna have to upload this JSON to Ermes to have it actually work.

27:50And if for some reason you accidentally dismissed the previous screen, you can still find a JSON file here. Just click on your app and go on the bottom right here and scroll down and next to client secret, hit the download button to download the JSON file.

28:05Alright. So now that we have the JSON file, step five is to set up test users.

28:10So let's go to the audience tab, scroll down to test users, and let's add ourselves as a user.

28:18You can also go back to the desktop app, and let's drag and drop the JSON file into our conversation. Okay.

28:25So I've dragged the JSON file here, and let's just say I'm setting up Google Workspace.

28:32Here's the JSON for Google client.

28:37And, hopefully, Hermes will be smart enough to do the rest of the work. It's gonna ask you to authenticate after this. Okay.

28:44Hermes responded with this. So it has our JSON file. It's missing out to Google token.

28:49It needs to know what services we want, and it needs to know does Google use advanced protection. Alright.

28:56So let's just copy and paste this whole thing. We want this, and it doesn't use advanced hardware protection.

29:05Great. Next, it should give us a URL so that we can authenticate with all of our Google apps.

29:13Okay. That took about three minutes to generate, and it sent me this link. So let's click on it.

29:19And after we sign with the email that's associated with Hermes, it's gonna show you the scary message. Google has not verified this app, but this is the only app that we just created ourselves.

29:30Right? So let's hit continue, and it's gonna ask you for all these permissions.

29:35And you can always select what you wanna grant it, but just for this demo, I'm gonna grant it everything. Let's hit continue. And then it's gonna show you this link, which looks like a dead URL.

29:46But don't panic. This is what we actually want. What you should do now is to go to the address bar and just copy this whole URL link and then paste it back to Ermes.

29:57K? So let's paste the URL back to Ermes. Paste it right here.

30:02And after that, Ermus should finish the rest of the setup. Awesome.

30:07Now it says Google Workspace integration is now authenticated and working. Why don't we actually give it a test?

30:14Right? So first of all, I wanna make sure that it doesn't share any confidential information in this video.

30:19So let me tell you that. Please do not share any confidential information. We're doing a live demo.

30:25And then now let's ask it to look at my Gmail inbox, what kind of action items do I have this week. Alright.

30:34So that took a few minutes, but now it's back with a summary. And because we ask it to not share confidential information, it's gonna be a little bit more vague.

30:41But here at the high level, there's some messages I need to reply to. There's some emails that involve calls I need to reply to. There's some podcast stuff that I have to do and so on and so forth.

30:52Now let's try something else. Let's ask it to schedule a meeting for myself saying publish Hermes demo for this afternoon at 1PM.

31:02Okay. It doesn't spell Hermes correctly, but let's see if it uses the Google Calendar API to schedule a meeting effectively.

31:10Great. It wants me to confirm. It's perfect.

31:12Let's fix the spelling. So title is publish Irma's demo with the h.

31:19Let's hit yes to create it. And once it says it's done, let's check our calendar to make sure the meeting is actually there. Awesome.

31:26Now let's go to the Google Calendar, and you can see here that we've scheduled a meeting for us. Hermes has scheduled to publish Hermes demo at 1PM.

31:34This is something that I do all the time. If someone wants to be with me, I basically tell Hermes to schedule a meeting for me instead of doing it manually. Let's do one more demo.

31:44I have here a vacation doc, and we plan to go to Japan again and check out Kyushu, which is an island in Japan. And let's tell Hermes to actually update his vacation doc.

31:55So can you find and update my vacation doc in Google Drive? And why don't we add a five day itinerary at the top for visiting Mexico City instead? And let's say in December.

32:08If things go well, Irma should be able to update our vacation doc. Awesome. Just says update the vacation doc, and here it is.

32:17It kinda messed up the formatting of my document. So it added itinerary, but it messed up the formatting.

32:21But this is actually a good example. We can actually tell how to fix the formatting. Hey.

32:25You completely messed up the formatting of the document. I want you to format the Mexico City itinerary the same way as the previous itineraries on the doc. Okay?

32:34So it can not only add stuff to Google Docs, it can also format stuff for you. Alright. Five minutes later, it claims that it has fixed the formatting.

32:43So let's take a look. And here we go. The formatting looks a lot better.

32:47Right? It doesn't have the crazy headline text anymore. This is probably user error.

32:51I probably should have given it better instructions upfront to match the formatting before I started editing a document. But you can see how powerful this is. Like, I also use Hermes to update individual cells in Google Sheets.

33:04Like, for example, we have a Google Sheet for summer camp, and I asked it to, like, hey. Update the summer camp for this schedule.

33:11And you can do so much more. Just hooking up to Google Workspace makes it a lot more useful, including for some of the cron jobs that I'm gonna show you how to build later in this tutorial.

33:22Now because setting up Google Workspace is very complicated, let's do a quick recap of the key steps. And, again, you can find the full guide on behindthecraft.com if you are a subscriber of my newsletter.

33:37But here are the steps. One, open Google Cloud Console, create a new project, enable all the APIs.

33:44Right? Gmail API, Google Calendar API. Click enable one by one to do it, and then go to the OAuth consent screen and set up the app for OAuth consent.

33:55And then make sure you save the JSON file and give it to Hermes and also set up the test users. Basically, only test user is yourself.

34:04Give it your email. And then Hermes should give you a link that you can click to authenticate with Google, and it should give you some sort of broken page with this URL, localhost.

34:17So copy the URL into Hermes to finish the setup process. And once you set up this whole process, which is super annoying and manual, then you can do stuff like, hey.

34:27Read the Gmail and tell me stuff that I should unsubscribe from. What meetings do I have today? Book a meeting for me tomorrow with person x y z at 10AM or edit this Google Doc that I share with you.

34:40Right? So it truly becomes a useful personal assistant.

34:45Alright. Now I wanna walk through a few other integrations just at a high level in this Wiki. So let me zoom in a little bit, and let's just walk through how you can do each of these at a high level.

34:57WhatsApp, unlike Telegram, actually has real humans and friends that I talk to. The problem with setting up Ermes on WhatsApp is you have to give it a second phone number to have it avoid getting confused. Now this is not a big problem because you can just use Google Voice to set up a separate phone number and just ask Hermes, here's my Google Voice number.

35:18Walk me through to set up to link you to WhatsApp, and it'll walk you through it. The rest of the stuff is not that hard.

35:24The only hard part, annoying part is to have a separate phone number. Alright? Again, you can use Google Voice or you can just use a cheap prepaid SIM card.

35:32Now Slack. The good thing about Slack is in Telegram, we have to have conversation with Hermes one step at a time.

35:39We can start separate group chats here, but generally speaking, it's kind of annoying to do so. But in Slack, you can basically give it multiple commands at once and have it respond through threaded conversations.

35:50K? So set up Hermes in Slack, you gotta create a Slack app, install the app, and then do some configurations. And once again, you can check out my guide here on behindthecraft.com or just ask Hermes to walk you through how how to set it up in Slack, which is basically what I did to create this guide.

36:08A few other useful integrations. Granola is my favorite AI meeting notes app.

36:14I find it very useful to link it to Hermes because then I can ask questions about meetings I've had over the past week and ask it to share kind of insights or action items from those meetings. And luckily, Granolah setup is extremely simple.

36:27You just have to give it one line, connect to Granolah using this MCP, and then it should just work. So very simple and very worthwhile to set up because then you can ask questions like, how am I prepared for my upcoming meetings or action items for my meetings over the past week and so on and so forth.

36:42GitHub, think, is very useful. I don't actually use Ermis to vibe code.

36:48For doing that, I prefer to use Codex and Cloud Code, which are more coding harnesses. But I think GitHub is very useful for one thing, which is to back up Ermis. Right?

36:57So I like to back up my entire Ermis setup here that we spend so much time working on in in a private GitHub repo. Okay? So make a GitHub account, and then just ask Hermes, hey.

37:09Can you back up your entire folder in a private GitHub repo and kind of link your GitHub account? And this way, if for some reason your Mac mini burns in a fire or you lose your laptop, you can always download your Ermis setup again to a new computer.

37:25And last but not least, YouTube. I'm a YouTuber, but even if you're not a YouTuber, there's just such a wealth of really good information in YouTube and in the transcripts.

37:34I find it very useful to set up YouTube to extract this information. And you can use the official YouTube API through the Google Cloud console process that we went through with Google Workspace, or you can just install y t dash d l p, which is this free tool that you can use to get transcripts for any video.

37:54But the bottom line is what makes Hermes really powerful is linking it to different tools that you actually use every day as you can actually pull information for you, and it can set up skills by itself, and you can iterate with it to pull this information in a useful context.

38:10Alright. So that wraps up the integration section of our Erbis course. And again I'm already going all here.

38:16I'm gonna give you the full course in a single video and our last section to make Ermis proactive is cron jobs.

38:24So what is a cron job? A cron job is basically a scheduled task or routine that makes Hermes work proactively.

38:33And here are some example cron jobs I've set up for myself, weekend planner, morning briefing, business review, and health review. Let me actually walk you through how to set up some cron jobs as the closer of this entire course.

38:48Okay. So the first cron job that I'm gonna show you how to set up is a weekend planner routine.

38:53And, basically, um, what it does is it finds family friendly weekend activities in the Bay Area. Right?

39:00And it's the simplest thing to set up because you don't actually have to integrate with any tools. It just uses web search. So what I did was I basically asked Hermes, hey.

39:09Can you set up a weekend planner skill that looks for family friendly activities in the Bay Area? And I got two girls aged eight and four. I'm looking for activities within thirty, sixty minute driving distance to Summit Hill, is close to where I live.

39:23Alright. When you wanna make a routine, you always want to just build a skill first and manually test it make sure it's actually producing good output before creating the routine.

39:33You can see here that I created a skill, and then I asked it to run the skill and show me the results. Alright.

39:40Just come back with this list. It has a recommendation forever Bloom Farm in this area, and it's got a few other recommendations like Bay Area Discovery Museum and so on and so forth.

39:52Okay. This looks pretty good, and let's ask it to make a routine.

39:57Can you set up a cron job so that you send me this, let's say, every Friday morning at 8AM? And that's pretty much it.

40:04That's all it takes to create a routine on a cron job. Again, the steps are build a scale, verify that it produces the output that you want, and just ask Ermes to set up a cron job routine to send it to you at a specific day of the week and time of the day.

40:19And right now, by default, it's gonna send you this information through just a chat here, but you can also just ask it, hey. Can you email this stuff to me instead?

40:29Because we've hooked it up to Gmail and everything else.

40:33Now that's why it's worth going through the whole painful Google Workspace thing because now it can actually just send us a email. Alright. Let's cover a few more routines before we close.

40:43So another routine that I find super useful is a morning briefing routine. I know every single courier talks about this. It's almost a cliche, but my morning briefing heavily relies on the Google Workspace integration that we just walked through.

40:57And the prompt is basically set up a morning briefing by reviewing my calendar and checking recent emails and notes. Send me a concise briefing about top three things I need to act on today, meetings that I have coming up in the calendar, and any open email threads that need my response. And I ask you here to keep it short, and, you know, the sky's really the limit with the automations and routines that you can set up.

41:19So let's talk about my business review briefing. This is more complicated. So business review, it integrates with a whole bunch of different tools.

41:26It uses Google Workspace to send me emails, Mercury to pull my business income and expenses, YouTube to find recent video outliers for my channel and similar channels, Substack using browser use to get my stats, granola for meetings, and Google Docs for overall plan and context.

41:44And this is a snippet of what the email looks like, but the full email also has a bunch of stats and everything, and it's just extremely useful. And even for complicated stuff like this, it's the same three step process, just to hammer it home. Set up the scale, test and improve it, and then set up a cron job.

41:59Another thing you can do is to set up a health review, I think this is relevant for pretty much everyone watching this. So a health review is another weekly email that Urmis sends to me with my weight, the workouts that I did, and more. And for the weight, I use Withings Scale.

42:16So Withings has an API to pull the weight. You can also use Apple Health Care, some of these other options. And this is what the weekly health review email looks like.

42:25So it says that I've improved my training consistency, my body comp is better but not quite done, and so on and so forth. For this health review, I've gone to the extent where I actually vibe coded a fitness app that has an MCP that is able to pull all my workout data, like how many reps, what the weight is, and so on.

42:43And it's hooked up to this routine to kind of help me share progress along the way. Basically, guys, the sky's the limit in terms of the automations and skills you can set up.

42:54You just have to have your imagination and ask Hermes to do it for you. And the reason I set up all these cron jobs on Ermus instead of Codex or ClockCode is simply because I have Ermus working on my Mac mini, is available twenty four seven, so none of these cron jobs will hopefully break.

43:10Right? You can also do the same thing in Codex, actually. You can just have Codex set up your Mac mini and the clock code there too, but Hermes feels more like a personal assistant that I can chat with in all my favorite messaging apps.

43:22Alright. So now we've come to the end of this course. We covered how to install Ermis, the quick start, how to personalize it, how to set up Telegram, then we talked about a few different integrations, specifically turning on voice replies and setting up Google Workspace, and then we covered how to set up cron jobs with the weekend planner, the morning briefing, the business and health review, and basically the sky's the limit.

43:45And you can also find the full course on behindthecraft.com. Check it out. It also has a bunch of personal skills that I've set up that you can easily copy and paste and AI tool discounts.

43:58You can get three to six months off granola, whisper flow, and some of the other favorite apps that I use. But, yeah, I make sure this whole thing is very opinionated, very practical, as concise as I can make it, and as AI slob free as I can make it.

44:11None of this stuff is generated with AI. It's all kind of manually reviewed by me. Alright?

44:17I hope you enjoyed this Urbis tutorial. Go out there and set up your personal AI chief of staff. It just takes a few hours or an afternoon and I promise it's incredibly valuable.

44:28If you have any questions after this very long course, I'm happy to answer them in the YouTube comments and like and subscribe and I'll see you next time.

44:37Take care.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

One afternoon and a few tedious Google Cloud Console screens stand between you and an AI that reads your email, schedules your meetings, and sends you a weekly business review while you sleep. This full-course breakdown walks every painful step — and flags the three places most people get stuck.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

40:41list

Build → Test → Schedule

Build the skill in plain English
Test it manually and refine output
Ask Hermes to schedule it as a cron job

The three-step pattern for creating any reliable cron job routine in Hermes. Never schedule something you haven't verified produces good output first.

Steal forAny agent automation workflow — the same pattern applies to Zapier, Make, or custom Trigger.dev tasks

12:00model

Hermes Five-Stage Loop

User message
Gateway routes it
Model plans next step
Tools do the work
Memory + skills improve

The internal cycle that makes Hermes more useful over time — each interaction updates both memory and auto-built skills.

Steal forExplaining agent architecture to non-technical audiences; maps cleanly onto any agent framework

01:23concept

Separated credentials model

Give Hermes its own Gmail account and Mac username (separate from yours), with read-only access to your calendar/email and limited write access to specific Drive folders. Limits blast radius if something goes wrong.

Steal forAny AI agent given access to production accounts — the principle of least privilege applied to personal productivity

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

43:22newsletter

“you can also find the full course on behindthecraft.com — it has a bunch of personal skills that I've set up that you can easily copy and paste and AI tool discounts”

Soft close after the content ends. Mentioned twice (mid-video and end). No hard pitch; the newsletter is positioned as the extended guide with copy-paste prompts and discounts on tools used in the video.

MENTIONED ON CAMERA