A Kwizerana Field Guide
Installing Hermes, the Kwizerana Way
A plain-language setup guide for Hermes, the open personal AI agent — plus the step most setups skip: proof of what it actually did.
A plain-language setup guide for Hermes, the open personal AI agent — plus the step most setups skip: proof of what it actually did.
Hermes is a capable, memory-persistent agent. Connect it to your calendar, inbox, and tools, and it starts acting on your behalf. That's the appeal — and the catch.
Once something has that much reach into your day, "trust me" isn't good enough. Below is how we set Hermes up: install, connect, bring it to your phone, and shape it into something useful. Then, in the last step, we show how we'd close the gap with Membrane, our open attestation layer — so every action leaves a record you control, not one buried in someone else's database.
Two ways in, both under a minute. If you'd rather not touch a terminal, get the desktop app at hermes-agent.nousresearch.com — pick your OS, download, open.
Comfortable in a terminal instead? One line, works across Mac, Linux, and Windows:
Either way, you land in the chat interface — your control center for everything after this.
On its own, Hermes can't see your calendar or your inbox. Composio is the bridge — it plugs over a thousand apps into Hermes. Paste this into the chat box and it installs itself:
Then tell Hermes what to connect: calendar, email, task manager, Slack, GitHub — whatever you'd hand a real assistant. Hermes will walk you through authorizing each one.
This is also the step worth slowing down on. You're deciding what Hermes can see. Connect what you'll actually use, not everything at once — you can always add more later.
While you're in settings, turn on persistent memory (so it recalls past conversations instead of starting cold each time) and skill generation (so completed tasks become reusable steps for next time).
The desktop app is fine at your desk, but the real unlock is reaching Hermes from anywhere. Pick a messaging platform you already live in — Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Signal, or Discord — and link it.
By default, Hermes locks to an allowlist, so it's only ever you (or whoever you explicitly add) who can message it or trigger a task. Once connected, you can fire off a background task from your phone and it'll report back in that same chat when it's done.
Mid-task and changed your mind? Send "/stop" — no need to wait it out.
A few starting prompts that pull real weight:
For anything recurring, Hermes has a built-in scheduler — "Every morning at 9, scan my inbox and send me a summary" runs itself from then on.
Hermes ships capable but generic. Set a tone with /personality direct for work, or something looser for personal tasks. Swap the underlying model anytime by naming it, or just ask Hermes to switch. Pin a "home" chat with /sethome so there's always one place everything reports back to.
Here's the part most setups stop short of. Hermes can now read your calendar, draft your email, and touch your task list. Once it's done, that action is invisible again — unless you go looking, and unless you trust what you find.
Membrane, Kwizerana's open attestation layer, is our answer to that gap. Every tool call Hermes makes can be hashed, timestamped, and logged the moment it happens — a receipt you hold, not a claim you take on faith. Here's roughly what that looks like in practice:
A demonstration of what an attested action log looks like — each entry a proof, not a promise.
And here's the same thing from the other side — what you, or anyone you send the link to, would actually open:
A mockup of the hosted proof wall — the page a shared link like this one opens to.
This is our Your-Data-Log ritual applied to an agent instead of an account. Same idea, same reason: nothing is hidden, because nothing needs to be.