Open-source self-improving AI agent framework by Nous Research with persistent memory, 40+ tools, and 135K+ GitHub stars.
Open-source self-improving AI agent framework by Nous Research with persistent memory, 40+ tools, and 135K+ GitHub stars.
Hermes Agent is an open-source autonomous AI agent framework developed by Nous Research that has become the fastest-growing open-source AI agent project of 2026, accumulating over 135,000 GitHub stars in under three months since its February 2026 release. What makes Hermes Agent fundamentally different from other agent frameworks is its built-in learning loop: the agent creates skills from experience, improves them during use, nudges itself to persist knowledge, searches its own past conversations, and builds a deepening model of who the user is across sessions.
The framework is entirely self-hostable — it can run on a $5/month VPS — and ships with 40+ built-in tools covering file management, web browsing, code execution, and more. The memory system is Hermes Agent's most distinctive feature: rather than treating each conversation as isolated, the agent learns from its own mistakes and successes across sessions, building persistent knowledge that makes it genuinely more useful over time. This creates a fundamentally different user experience from stateless chatbots.
Hermes Agent supports seven execution backends — local, Docker, SSH, Singularity, Modal, Daytona, and Vercel Sandbox — giving users flexibility in how and where the agent runs its code. The agent connects to 20+ messaging platforms including Telegram, Discord, Slack, and WhatsApp, making it accessible wherever users already communicate. Tencent Cloud's Lighthouse became the first cloud platform to offer one-click deployment for Hermes Agent in April 2026, further lowering the barrier to entry.
The project benefits from Nous Research's strong position in open-source AI, and the framework is designed to be model-agnostic, working with any LLM backend. For developers and power users who want a personal AI agent that genuinely improves with use, runs on their own infrastructure, and connects to their existing communication channels, Hermes Agent provides a production-ready, community-backed solution with an active and rapidly growing ecosystem.
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