13:38Alex Finn · Tutorial
The new Hermes Agent update has me speechless
Eight features in Hermes Agent 0.17 that move it from chatbot to ambient operating system.
June 24thThe argument in one line.
The Hermes mobile app wins on-the-go agent work because each agent holds many parallel sessions, runs any model including local ones, and acts on your own computers with little permission friction.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You already run Hermes Agent on a desktop or home server and want to manage it from your phone without a separate agent setup.
- You use several AI agents and want a clear rule for which one to open for quick tasks, deep knowledge work, and coding.
- You run local models on your own hardware and want an agent app that can actually talk to them.
SKIP IF…
- You have never used an agent framework. The video assumes you know what profiles, sessions, and agent souls are.
- You want hands-on setup instructions. This is a feature tour and an opinion, not a tutorial.
The full version, fast.
The Hermes mobile app is a free phone client that connects to your Hermes desktop install and pulls in every agent you already have. Its edge is session management: each agent can run many separate sessions, so ideas captured on the go do not pile into one thread. It also swaps models in a tap, supports local models that other agent apps cannot, and shows every tool call. The presenter uses it for quick one-off tasks and for installing and configuring software across his own computers, while keeping other agents for deep knowledge work and coding. A wider release is coming soon.
Free for members
Chat with this breakdown — free.
Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.
Create a free account →Where the time goes.
00:00 – 00:33
01 · Intro
Promises a full tour and a verdict on whether Hermes should replace other agents.
00:33 – 04:57
02 · Walkthrough of the app
Agent list, multiple sessions, deep per-agent configuration, model switching, skills, kanban and memory map, and the chat view with every tool call.
04:57 – 10:48
03 · When to use this instead of other agents
Session management for ideas on the go, local models, and managing hardware across computers with minimal permission prompts, plus the any-model answer to usage complaints.
10:48 – 13:43
04 · When not to use Hermes
Other agents still win for deep knowledge work and coding. Hermes can also be the one app for everything, and the mobile app is free and coming wider soon.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Hermes agents hold multiple sessions per profile, so five separate ideas captured on the go become five clean threads instead of one confusing chat.
- The Hermes mobile app is only a remote control. It connects to your desktop install and shows the agents already there, so nothing separate runs on the phone.
- A cheap local model on your own hardware can handle simple tasks with no usage limits, while a stronger subscription model handles the complex ones.
- Switching an agent's model from your phone and chatting with it immediately makes it easy to test a new model the day it ships.
- Agents that ask permission on every step are the wrong tool for moving files and installing software across your computers. Fewer prompts means the job finishes while you are away.
- One prompt from a phone can install a full set of apps on a new laptop while you are out, and it is done by the time you get home.
- Complaints about agent usage limits largely disappear when you can pick any model, including a lower-cost or local one.
- Deep knowledge work and shipping real products still favor an agent with a cloud computer and handoffs between bots.
- For coding, an app with direct links into Claude Code sessions across all your computers has a distinct advantage.
Pick the agent by the job
WHAT TO LEARN
A mobile agent client earns its place by fitting how you actually work on the go, and different agents are best at different jobs.
- Capture each idea in its own session so tasks stay separate and the agent never mixes five unrelated requests into one confusing thread.
- Use a local model for simple, high-volume tasks and a stronger subscription model for complex ones, which removes usage anxiety for everyday work.
- Choose the agent that needs the fewest permission prompts when the job is installing, moving, or configuring things across your own computers while you are away.
- Keep a more capable agent for deep knowledge work, such as building and shipping a plugin, where a cloud computer and bot-to-bot handoffs matter.
- Use a coding-focused agent with direct access to your coding sessions for serious code work, since the model and tooling matter most there.
- Switching between several agents is optional. Pick one app for everything if the overhead bothers you, and accept the tradeoffs.
Terms worth knowing.
- Hermes Agent
- An AI agent framework that runs on your own computer, supports many models including local ones, and keeps agents as named profiles with their own settings and memory.
- Session
- One separate conversation thread with an agent. Hermes lets a single agent keep many sessions at once, each on a different task.
- Profile
- A configured agent with its own name, model, and personality file, so one install can hold several distinct agents.
- DGX Spark
- A small desktop AI computer used here to run local models so an agent can work with no per-token usage limits.
- Tailscale
- A private network tool that connects your computers across locations, which lets an agent reach machines at home from anywhere.
Things they pointed at.
00:00productHermes Agent mobile app
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.
I got exclusive access to the Hermes Agent mobile app and I am really impressed. There are some cool things this can do that no other AI agent can do. I am very excited to take you through this.
In this video, I'm going to take you through the entire Hermes mobile app, show you what makes it special, and then let you know this should be replacing other AI agents for you. Should this be replacing Grokbot, other AI agents, things like that. I'll let you know where the Hermes mobile app fits into the entire picture.
Let's just go straight into it here. First, I'm going to give you just a quick walk through the app, show you the features, take you through it. Then I'll go through how I use it, what makes it great, where it's replacing different workflows in my AI agent stack, things like that.
But you come into the Hermes mobile app. First thing you see is all your different agents, right? You can come in here and see all your different bots.
I don't really use it like Grokbot. I use Grokbot like Grokbot, but I do have two separate profiles. files or bots that I use primarily.
The first one being my main Hermes agent, which is powered by GPT six one soul, which you get absolutely absurd amount of usage on, on their plan. And then deep seek, deep seek, as you could probably guess is my. agent powered by deep seek, but it's deep seek for one flash.
That's on my two DGX spark. So I get unlimited usage on this agent. So complex tasks.
I go Hermes simple tasks. I go with deep seek because I get all that unlimited local usage. If you're like me and you believe local is the future, you believe local is going to be massive and everyone will have their own local agents.
Hermes is really the only way to do this. You can't plug in local models into Grokbot or Claude or Dots or anything like that. Hermes is the only way to go for that.
So that's why I have my deep seek model here. Okay, so we have my two primary agents. You can see your agents.
All right, that's fine. But what else is different about this mobile app? Well, other things you can do here is you can manage your sessions really easily.
This is something Hermes has that Grokbot doesn't have, that Claude Duet doesn't have, that ChatGPT Dots doesn't have. With those, you... kind of have just one main thread per agent one main thread rock button you can spin up multiple agents but if you want to talk to one bot but you want to talk to it about different things you can't do that with Hermes you have your multiple sessions here so I can come in here I have my session where I'm working on my newsletter I have 130 other one sessions going I have another session here I'm installing an app on my iPhone so you can manage your sessions really really easily here in the Hermes mobile app what else do you get here if we click this button right here you can look at each individual agent and configure it on a really deep level, right?
So here's my agent at the top. All my other agents are to the right here. Let's go back to my original Hermes.
I can quickly and easily switch out the models here very easily. Here's my favorite models. If I want to go to all models, I can come in here and switch to any model I want.
XAI, Grok, Claude, Anthropic, all the models are listed right here. So that's great. Easy configuration of each agent.
You can come in, you can see all. your skills turn them on and off whichever ones you want to use that's really nice all your plugins MCPs projects it's working on you can even manage your Kanban board I don't use the Kanban quite as much anymore but if you're a Kanban user you can come in here and manage your Kanban board on the go on the mobile app which is sick you can even take a look at your memory board your memory map here and see how all your memories connect together which is really sick so really really deep in -depth configuration of your agents.
There's no other agent where you can go in and switch your models like this. So this is really nice. I like this one.
I like on the go new model job, fable 5 .2 jobs. Oh, I want to see what my agents are like with that. I switched the model, start talking to it immediately, which is really cool.
You can create new agents very easy. If you want to click the plus there, you create new agents, select whatever model you want, configure the soul, the name, everything you want. That's very easy.
And then you have all your different settings here, getting into the actual chats themselves with the. I really like this interface a lot. You can see every single tool call in here, every single thing it's doing, every single command it's running on your computer.
That's really nice. Oh, and by the way, this connects to your Hermes desktop application, right? So if you use Hermes desktop on one of your computers, you got all your agents on a computer.
This just connects to your computer and takes all the agents that are on your computer and puts them in the mobile app. This isn't a separate Hermes experience with separate agents running on your phone. It's just your phone connecting to your computer and all your Hermes agents on here.
So you can easily manage your agents, have them do things on your computer, have them go across your tail scale network, whatever you need. And the chats just are really nice and clean. So you can see all the tool calls, all the commands, everything it's doing.
It's very, very nice. You get a nice rundown of everything it's doing for how long it worked, what it did in that work session. So why is this special?
Why would you want to use this over a Grokbot app? What situations would... Would you use this over Chad GPT or Claude?
Well, there's a few main reasons. Reason number one is just the way I use agents on the go. This app.
fits that the best. And what I mean by that is this, when I'm on the go and I come up with ideas to work on, right? Whether it's coming up with a new newsletter idea or, hey, can you install this add -on for World of Warcraft for me?
Or can you configure this? Can you do this on my computer? Can you go on my gaming computer and change this?
I'm not really going deep on the go, but I am coming up with a lot of different separate ideas. That format for the way I work on the go perfectly matches Hermes because of its session management, right? In Hermes, you have a bot, but each bot has multiple sessions.
So you can talk to one profile and have it do multiple things at once. You can't really do that type of multitasking with the Grok bot, for instance. In Grok bot, you have multiple bots, but each bot is only one session.
If I come up with five ideas I want to give to my chief of staff, I have to give them all in the same chat, which can confuse the bot. But with Hermes, it has multiple sessions. as I'm on the go, I think, oh, here's a good idea for a tweet.
Here's a good idea for a YouTube video. Here's a good idea for a feature for the app I'm building. I just come in, go to my agent, do new session, give it that idea.
Then I have another idea, new session, give it that idea. Another idea, give a new session, do that idea. You can't really do that with other agents.
You can do that with Muse. Muse has side chats, which is nice, but Muse doesn't have separate profiles like you do with a Hermes agent. So it's kind of the best of both worlds.
Number two, we talked about it a little bit. Local models on the go. I have my agent connected to my local models on my DGX Spark.
Again, if you're like me, you strongly believe local is the future. Local will be a big part of our future. No other AI agent on planet Earth supports local agents.
Hermes does. So if you have computers at home. You need a Hermes agent because there's no other way to run agents on your local computer.
So that is really good too. The third reason I really like the Hermes mobile app and why I still use Hermes for a lot of tasks is Hermes is the best agent for managing local hardware. So a second ago, we talked about local models, but now when it comes to managing local hardware, I still think Hermes is the best.
An example would be a couple of days ago, I got the new MacBook Pro. I wanted to install all my AI apps. on that MacBook Pro.
I went to my Hermes agent and I said, please go on my new MacBook Pro and install all the AI agent apps I have on this studio onto that MacBook Pro. I did that on the go on my mobile app. I hit enter.
I came home an hour later and on my MacBook Pro was. Grokbot was Chad GPT was Claude was everything. All the mobile apps, all the desktop apps were there on my new MacBook Pro.
It is the best at jumping between your different hardware, your different computers and installing whatever you need on them for you, for configuring things, for moving things around, for moving files around. I was on the go. I was talking to, I know this, I'm like the biggest nerd planner for mentioning World of Warcraft for the second time.
I was talking to a friend. He's like, oh, you got to get this fishing add -on for a while. You get this fishing add -on for a while.
forever i go to my hermes mobile app i go in i say go on to my rtx 5090 computer and install wow forever add -on for fishing. And I hit enter and it goes on my computer.
It searches through the add -ons, the mods, installs it on there, opens the game, tests it itself. It does all that for me. I find that out of all the AI agents out there, Hermes is the most willing to actually go between computers, install things, delete things, move things around with the least amount of permissioning required.
It just does things. You can be very confident when you give it a command.
The next thing you'll hear is, okay, I did it. You can be very confident when you give it a command. The next thing it'll say to you is, okay, done, right?
It's very willing to go in between your computers and do risky things and install different things. That's why I still use the Hermes mobile app a lot for that as well. Obviously a big advantage to Hermes overall, and especially the Hermes mobile app is you can use any model you want.
Every video I do on basically every AI agent, out there, Grokbot, Claude, ChadGBT. It's like, if you really want to get to me, if you really want to piss me off, do this.
Go into my comment section and say, yeah, but you never mentioned the usage. The usage sucks. The usage sucks.
The usage sucks. Every AI video I've ever done, every agent I talk about, nonstop about the usage. Well, the good news is on here, you can use whatever model you want.
If you're a big usage complainer, and everything's about how bad the usage is. Well, the good news is in Hermes, you can choose any model you want.
If you want to use Claude Haiku, so you could basically have unlimited usage, you can go in here and use that. That's another reason to use Hermes is just use whatever model you want. If you're crying and complaining that...
Fable's not giving you enough usage. Okay, well then come in here, go in here, choose GPT Luna if you want, and get all the usage you want. So for all the usage criers and complainers who have to let me know in the comment section of every video I put out that the usage isn't good enough for you, Hermes fixes that because you can just use whatever model you want.
So that's when I use Hermes in the Hermes mobile app. When am I not using Hermes in the Hermes mobile app? When am I still sticking with the other agents out there?
Well, number one for like deep knowledge work, right? For deep knowledge work, I'm still using Grokbot as my main driver. For instance, if I'm building things out, I'm doing really intense things.
Like for instance, if I want to build a plugin for Omachi and then I want it to like be shipped to the store and I want to do some configuration in it, I'm still using Grokbot. There's just a lot of different nice features in Grokbot. The biggest one being its cloud computer.
It can build things in its cloud computer. on its own computer before you test it on your own. Its ability to hand off tasks between the different bots, talk to different bots, get different context between the different bots.
That's really nice in Grokbot. So any sort of deep knowledge work, I'm still going Grokbot, but for quick one -off things for managing my computers, for things that might need more permissions that I just don't want to sit there going allow, allow, allow, allow, allow over and over and over again, Hermes is the best for that.
If I'm going deep on coding, I'm probably going with Claude. Claude Duet is just excellent for coding because it uses the Claude models and the Claude models are by far the best for coding, but also has direct connections with Claude code. So you can come in here, click on your computer and see all your different sessions going across Claude code on all your computers, which is really nice.
So for coding, Claude Duet has a distinct advantage. Now I will say this, this is another complaint I get a lot of videos. Oh, but switching between 20 different AI agents, that's really tough.
That's really difficult. Well, here's some good news for you. You don't need to switch between all the other agents.
If you just want to use Hermes for everything, you can use Hermes for everything. If you want to use Grockbot, Duet. Chat GPT dots for everything.
You can use those for everything. I just enjoy using them all. I enjoy hyper -optimizing and figure out what's best for each and switching between them.
I enjoy that. I know a lot of you enjoy it as well, and you don't mind switching around with them like I do. That's fine.
But for the people that can't handle switching between different agents, good news for you. If you want to use Hermes mobile app for everything, you can use Hermes mobile app for everything. If you want to use Grokbot, you can use Grokbot.
I am a big fan of the Hermes mobile app. though it will be dropping in wider release very soon. Anyone will be able to use it.
It's completely free. It just connects to your computer and pulls in all your bots and you are good to go. I highly, highly, highly recommend if you use Hermes to download it, you have literally nothing to use and it makes it so much nicer.
I prefer this over texting and iMessage just because I can manage all these sessions and do more complex things here. I really like it. The Hermes team is cooking.
Can't wait to see what they got coming. up next if you enjoyed this you learn anything leave a like down below subscribe turn on notifications also vibe coding academy link for that down below i have a full hermes boot camp you can join that get instant access to the hermes boot camp link for that is down below as well i am so grateful you'd watch my videos i'll see you in the next one
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Alex Finn has early access to the Hermes Agent mobile app and says it does things no other AI agent app can. The video is a feature tour that ends with a plain answer on where it fits next to the other agents in his stack.
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
13:25product
“Vibe coding academy link for that down below, I have a full Hermes bootcamp you can join.”
Soft end-of-video pitch for his paid bootcamp, delivered right after a strong recommendation.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
