Hermes Agentvs Grok Bot

Hermes Agent sends every request to the provider and model you configure: hundreds of models on one Nous Portal login, OpenRouter, local servers such as Ollama or vLLM, any OpenAI-compatible API, or Grok models with an xAI API key or a SuperGrok sign-in. /model switches mid-session, and conversation history, memory and skills carry over regardless of which provider you use. The status line shows the model in use. Backup providers run only if you add them with hermes fallback.

Grok Bot manages model selection. Cursor's help center says it has no per-user or per-request model selection and no model picker, and that users cannot choose, request or block a specific model. Each request goes to a first-party xAI model or a third-party model, the serving mix can change over time, and Grok Bot does not show which model handled a request. A team's Cursor model allowlist does not govern it.

On October 7, 2026, Elon Musk posted that Grok Bot will use the best back end model for any given task, with simple questions routed to small, fast models and complex ones to large models.

Hermes Agent is free under the MIT license. With an API key you pay that provider per token, and local models are free to run. Nous Portal plans include Hermes Agent usage within limits that reset daily, weekly and monthly; API keys always use pay-as-you-go credits. If you use up included usage, Hermes Agent says what ran out and offers a free model, waiting for the reset, or credits. It never switches models on its own.

On The X Subscription, Grok Bot comes with Premium, Super and Ultra; Plus does not include it. Each paid seat gets a weekly pool for eligible first-party usage, shared across Grok and Cursor surfaces, and usage beyond it is paid from prepaid top-ups. Inviting a friend can earn a usage reset.

The @bot account on X has posted resets for all Grok Bot users, including on August 26, September 5, October 2 and November 9, 2026. On November 1, Elon Musk posted that the cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue, and on November 8 that fixes for token efficiency and smarter behavior were underway. Between October 22 and November 9, Cursor's plans page changed several mentions of Weekly usage to Weekly usage limit and added referral resets.

Hermes Agent works with a browser, a terminal and files on the machine you choose: your computer, a server or a VPS. Its shell commands can run locally, in Docker, over SSH, or in Modal, Daytona or Vercel Sandbox. Hermes Cloud runs your own Hermes Agent on a dedicated cloud instance in the nearest available region. Every paid Nous Portal plan includes one Hermes Cloud agent; larger or extra agents bill daily from credits.

The code is on GitHub under the MIT license, free to read, change and run. Grok Bot runs only on Cursor-hosted cloud computers in the United States, and xAI's docs say on-premises deployment is not supported. It is closed source: the consumer terms that cover it forbid trying to derive its source code, and xAI's GitHub lists no Grok Bot repository.

One Hermes Agent gateway connects to more than 20 messaging platforms, including Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Microsoft Teams and iMessage through BlueBubbles, and scheduled jobs deliver results back to the chat they came from. The official X Chat plugin from Nous Research connects it to one X account's end-to-end encrypted DMs, so you can message it in your X self-chat or through a separate account.

Grok Bot works in its own desktop and mobile apps. A published Team Bot can have its own Slack app. You can also tag @bot in a post on X or message your Bots in X Chat, which is rolling out gradually; tagging is not yet available for X accounts based in the EU, UK, Australia, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway.

Hermes Agent stores conversations, memory and skills in its home directory (~/.hermes on macOS and Linux) on the machine that runs it. Model requests go only to the providers you configure. It collects no telemetry by default; usage-metrics sharing is opt-in.

Its vault encrypts saved logins, cards and addresses on your machine, scoped to one profile, and fills passwords without the model seeing them. Every card fill asks you first. By default, commands that match dangerous patterns need your approval, and the gateway turns away anyone who is not allowlisted or paired.

Grok Bot requires cloud data storage. Its terms say it may keep customer data, files, browser sessions, credentials, memory and routines in a persistent cloud environment. Its Vault items are available to every Bot on your account, and Cursor's help center says no setting requires your approval each time a saved card is used.

hermes migrate grok-bot prints a message to paste into a Bot's chat. The Bot writes an export file without changing anything, and the import turns scheduled routines into cron jobs with the same schedule, created paused, copies skills, moves what the Bot remembers into MEMORY.md and USER.md, and adds apps with a remote MCP URL. Exports carrying credential-looking keys are refused.

After that, Hermes Agent saves non-trivial workflows as skills, with optional review before changes land, and searches every past session stored in a local SQLite database. In Grok Bot, each named Bot keeps its memory, files and browser sessions, and can save a task you walk it through as a skill.