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Run Hermes Agent with Nous Portal

This guide walks you through running Hermes Agent on a Nous Portal subscription end to end — from signing up to verifying that every tool routes correctly. If you just want the overview of what the Portal is and what's in the subscription, see the Nous Portal integration page. This page is the task script.

Prerequisites​

  • Hermes Agent installed (Quickstart)
  • A web browser on the machine you're setting up (or SSH port forwarding — see OAuth over SSH)
  • About 5 minutes

You do not need: an OpenAI key, an Anthropic key, a Firecrawl account, a FAL account, a Browser Use account, or any other per-vendor credential. That's the whole point.

1. Get a subscription​

Open portal.nousresearch.com/manage-subscription, sign up, and pick a plan.

Already subscribed? Skip to step 2.

2. Run the one-shot setup​

hermes setup --portal

This single command does five things:

  1. Opens your browser to portal.nousresearch.com for OAuth login
  2. Stores the refresh token at ~/.hermes/auth.json
  3. Sets model.provider: nous in ~/.hermes/config.yaml
  4. Picks a default agentic model (anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6 or similar)
  5. Turns on the Tool Gateway for web search, image generation, TTS, and browser automation

When it finishes, you're back at your terminal ready to chat.

What if I'm SSH'd into a server?​

OAuth needs a browser, but the loopback callback runs on the machine where Hermes is running. Two options:

# Option A: SSH port forwarding (preferred)
ssh -N -L 8642:127.0.0.1:8642 user@remote-host    # in a local terminal
hermes setup --portal                              # on the remote, open the printed URL in your local browser

# Option B: manual paste (for Cloud Shell, Codespaces, EC2 Instance Connect)
hermes auth add nous --type oauth --manual-paste
# Then re-run `hermes setup --portal` to wire the provider + gateway

See OAuth over SSH / Remote Hosts for the full walkthrough including ProxyJump chains, mosh/tmux, and ControlMaster gotchas.

3. Verify it worked​

hermes portal status

You should see:

  Nous Portal
  ───────────
  Auth:    ✓ logged in
  Portal:  https://portal.nousresearch.com
  Model:   ✓ using Nous as inference provider

  Tool Gateway
  ────────────
  Web search & extract  via Nous Portal
  Image generation      via Nous Portal
  Text-to-speech        via Nous Portal
  Browser automation    via Nous Portal

If any line shows something other than "via Nous Portal" or the auth line says "not logged in", jump to Troubleshooting below.

4. Run your first conversation​

hermes chat

Try something that exercises both the model and the Tool Gateway:

Hey, search the web for "Hermes Agent release notes" and summarize the top 3 hits.

You should see Hermes call web_search (Firecrawl-backed, through the gateway) and respond with a summary. If the search runs and the response makes sense, you're done — the Portal is wired up end to end.

5. Pick the model you actually want​

The default after hermes setup --portal is a sensible general-purpose model, but the whole point of the subscription is access to the full catalog. Switch with /model mid-session:

/model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6     # best general-purpose agentic
/model openai/gpt-5.4                  # strong reasoning + tool calling
/model google/gemini-2.5-pro           # huge context window
/model deepseek/deepseek-v3.2          # cost-effective coder
/model anthropic/claude-opus-4.6       # heavyweight for hard problems

Or pop the picker to browse:

/model

Pick a different default permanently:

# in your terminal, outside any session
hermes config set model.default anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6

Don't pick Hermes-4 for agent work​

Hermes-4-70B and Hermes-4-405B are available on the Portal at deep discounts, but they're chat/reasoning models, not tool-call-tuned. They will struggle with multi-step agent loops. Use them via Nous Chat for conversation/research work, or through the subscription proxy from non-agent tools. For Hermes Agent itself, stick to the frontier agentic models above.

The Portal's own info page carries this warning too — it's the official Nous guidance, not just a Hermes-side opinion.

6. (Optional) Customize Tool Gateway routing​

The gateway is opt-in per tool, not all-or-nothing. If you already have a Browserbase account and want to keep using it while routing web search and image generation through Nous, that's supported:

hermes tools
# → Web search       → "Nous Subscription"     (recommended)
# → Image generation → "Nous Subscription"     (recommended)
# → Browser          → "Browserbase"           (your existing key)
# → TTS              → "Nous Subscription"     (recommended)

Verify your mix with:

hermes portal tools

You'll see per-tool routing — via Nous Portal for the ones routed through the subscription, and the partner name (browserbase, firecrawl, etc.) for the ones using your own keys.

7. (Optional) Enable voice mode​

Because the Tool Gateway includes OpenAI TTS, voice mode works without a separate OpenAI key:

hermes setup voice
# → pick "Nous Subscription" for TTS
# → pick a speech-to-text backend (local faster-whisper is free, no setup)

Then in any messaging-platform session (Telegram, Discord, Signal, etc.), send a voice message and Hermes will transcribe it, respond, and reply with synthesized voice — all on your Portal subscription.

8. (Optional) Cron + always-on workflows​

The Portal subscription works for cron jobs and batch processing the same way it works for interactive chat — the OAuth refresh token is reused automatically. No additional setup; just schedule cron jobs and they'll bill against your subscription.

hermes cron add "Daily AI news summary" "every day at 9am" \
  "Search the web for top AI news and summarize the 5 most important stories"

The cron job runs unattended, calls the model + web search + summarization all through your Portal subscription.

Profiles and multi-user setups​

If you use Hermes profiles (e.g. a separate config per project), the Portal refresh token is automatically shared across all profiles via a shared token store. Sign in once on any profile, and the rest pick it up automatically.

For team setups where multiple humans share a machine, each human has their own Portal account → each home directory holds its own ~/.hermes/auth.json → no token sharing across users. This is the right boundary.

Troubleshooting​

hermes portal status shows "not logged in" after hermes setup --portal​

The OAuth flow didn't complete. Re-run it:

hermes auth add nous --type oauth

If your browser doesn't open or the callback fails, you're likely on a remote/headless host — see OAuth over SSH for the port-forwarding and manual-paste workarounds.

"Model: currently openrouter" (or some other provider) instead of "using Nous as inference provider"​

Your local config drifted. The OAuth worked but model.provider is still pointing at a different provider. Fix:

hermes config set model.provider nous

Or interactively:

hermes model
# pick Nous Portal

Re-verify with hermes portal status.

Tool Gateway tools showing partner names instead of "via Nous Portal"​

Per-tool config is overriding the gateway. Run:

hermes tools
# pick "Nous Subscription" for any tool you want gateway-routed

Some users intentionally mix — e.g. routing web through Nous but using their own Browserbase key for browser. If that's intentional, leave it alone. If not, this command fixes it.

"Re-authentication required" mid-session​

Your Portal refresh token was invalidated (password change, manual revoke, session expiry). The token is now quarantined locally so Hermes doesn't replay it endlessly. Just log in again:

hermes auth add nous

The quarantine clears automatically on successful re-login.

Model I want isn't in the /model picker​

The Portal catalog mirrors OpenRouter's model list (300+). If a model is missing, try typing the OpenRouter-style slug directly:

/model anthropic/claude-opus-4.6
/model openai/o1-2025-12-17

If a model is genuinely unavailable, open an issue — most gaps are routing config we can update.

Billing not appearing on my Portal account​

hermes portal status will tell you whether you're actually routing through the Portal or some other provider. Common causes:

  • model.provider set to openrouter/anthropic/etc. instead of nous
  • An OAuth refresh failure that fell back to a different configured provider
  • Multiple Hermes profiles where you're using the wrong one (check hermes profile current)

Want to revoke and start clean​

hermes auth remove nous       # wipes the local refresh token
# Then re-run setup or remove the subscription from the Portal web UI

What this gets you, in plain numbers​

Without PortalWith Portal
1× OpenRouter / Anthropic / OpenAI key in .env1× OAuth refresh token, no .env keys
1× Firecrawl key for webWeb routed through gateway
1× FAL key for image genImage gen routed through gateway
1× Browser Use / Browserbase key for browserBrowser routed through gateway
1× OpenAI key for TTS / voice modeTTS routed through gateway
5 separate dashboards, top-ups, invoices1 subscription, 1 invoice
Cross-machine: replicate all 5 keysCross-machine: re-OAuth once

That's the deal. If you're using more than two of those backends anyway, the subscription pays for itself.

See also​