Hermes Agent: The New OpenClaw?
TL;DR
Hermes fixes the three pain points that pushed Imran off OpenClaw — he says Hermes has built-in memory, uses SQLite to search past successful actions and logs in real time, and has been stable enough that he hasn’t had to restart it in over a week.
Model visibility and better routing cut Imran’s token spend by more than 90% — by switching from OpenClaw to Hermes with OpenRouter, he says his cost dropped from about $130 every 5 days to roughly $10 every 5 days while still doing the same work.
The real trick isn’t just using an agent — it’s turning repeated LLM tasks into code or cron jobs — Imran’s advice is to have Hermes write deterministic scripts for recurring workflows so you stop paying tokens every time the same task runs.
Hermes is unusually usable out of the box — Imran highlights 40+ built-in tools plus preinstalled skills like Apple Notes, Reminders, Find My, and iMessage on Mac, so you don’t have to hunt through a skills marketplace just to get started.
Running Hermes on Android opens up a cheap always-on agent device — using Termux and the Termux API, Imran shows Hermes on a Solana Seeker phone with access to sensors, camera, SMS, Wi-Fi, brightness, and other device controls, which he frames as a lower-cost alternative to a Mac Mini.
The highest-leverage use case is making Hermes intimate with your life and work over time — after around 20 days of use, Imran had Hermes building an Obsidian dashboard, triaging Gmail, generating personal digests, and even suggesting what tasks to automate next.
The Breakdown
Why Hermes started showing up everywhere
Greg opens by framing Hermes Agent as the thing people keep calling the “OpenClaw killer,” then hands the mic to Imran to explain it as simply as possible. Imran’s promise is straightforward: by the end, you’ll know how to install Hermes, connect it to tools like GStack and Obsidian, create skills, and even run it on Android.
The three OpenClaw frustrations Hermes solves
Imran says OpenClaw broke down for him in three ways: no real memory, constant gateway restarts, and token burn with almost no visibility. Hermes won him over because it writes successful tasks to memory automatically, can search its SQLite logs for prior solutions or even forgotten API keys, and feels dramatically more stable — “I haven’t had to restart it in like over a week.”
What you get immediately after install
Once Hermes launches in terminal, Imran shows that it comes with 40+ built-in tools and a bunch of popular skills already there, including browser control, web search, cron jobs, image generation, Home Assistant, and Mac-native skills like Apple Notes and iMessage. His point is less “look how customizable this is” and more “you don’t have to spend the first two days assembling the car.”
Security, model choice, and why costs drop fast
On security, Imran gives a very Hermes answer: ask the agent to audit its own setup and tell you where keys are exposed or where your firewall is weak. He also notes you can run Hermes inside Docker or on Modal, though he personally runs it “bare metal” and keeps updating it. The money-saving section is more concrete: with Hermes model selection and OpenRouter, he can see exact pricing by model, use free options like Nvidia Neotron when available, still access Anthropic, and has cut spending from about $130 per five days to around $10.
The bigger insight: use agents to write code, not burn tokens forever
This is one of the stronger moments in the conversation: Imran says once you know a task is recurring, have Hermes write the code once so it becomes deterministic. That way, instead of paying an LLM to “figure it out” every time, you’re just running a script or cron job — classic don’t-repeat-yourself thinking, but now applied to AI agents.
Hermes on Android is the wild card
Imran lights up showing a Hermes instance named Cookie Monster running on a Solana Seeker Android 15 phone through Termux. With the Termux API, Hermes can access battery, Wi-Fi, camera, brightness, vibration, and more, which leads to his big idea: a cheap, portable, low-power, always-on agent box with a SIM card that can handle SMS, two-factor codes, and device-native automation without needing a sold-out Mac Mini.
From startup hacks to daily-life automation
When Greg asks for business ideas, Imran immediately goes to social posting directly from Android devices, arguing that posting from the device itself may avoid the “scheduler tools nerf your reach” problem. But he’s just as energized about mundane wins: his Gmail triage agent deletes junk, unsubscribes from useless lists, and sends a digest each morning, saving him 30 to 60 minutes a day.
The intimate agent: Obsidian, prompts, and the habit shift
The most memorable part is when Hermes knows so much about Imran’s life that they have to joke about blurring the screen. Imran says that intimacy only comes after consistent use — maybe 7 to 20 days of defaulting to the agent for work and life — and then Hermes can build things like an Obsidian dashboard, daily summaries, and cron jobs from your habits. His suggested prompts are practical and revealing: “What have I been procrastinating?”, “What is the most important thing to work on today?”, and “What is a tool that you can build me tonight that would make my life easier tomorrow?”
Skills, GStack, and the final warning not to get lost customizing
Toward the end, Imran recommends Obsidian, memory-related skills, finance and fitness workflows you build yourself, and especially GStack, which he describes as Gary Tan’s YC-style startup process turned into a skill for asking the right product questions and implementing changes in code. He compares Hermes to “90s tuner car culture,” but immediately adds the key caveat: customizing isn’t the skill — what matters is whether the agent frees you up to do better work, like helping him talk to 20% to 30% more founders in his day job at the fund Alif.