Hermes Agent v0.4.0 (v2026.3.22)

Hermes Agent v0.4.0 (v2026.3.22)

Release Date: March 22, 2026

Major GUI overhaul — DPI scaling, real-time streaming, LM Studio SDK integration, and simplified architecture.

Highlights

• Real-Time Streaming — Responses stream token-by-token with a live blinking cursor
• High-DPI Scaling — All windows, fonts, and widgets scale correctly on high-DPI displays
• LM Studio SDK Loading — Load models via SDK with GPU selection, context control, and cancel
• Simplified Architecture — .env is for API keys only. Model and provider managed through UI
• Provider Auto-Switching — Sidebar = cloud. LM Studio "Use for Chat" = local. No config files
• Faster Startup — Tool validation parallelized/skipped, agent creation in seconds not minutes

Download

Download portable-hermes-agent-v0.4.0.zip, extract, and run hermes_gui.bat.

Requires: Windows 10/11. Python is embedded — no installation needed.

v1.1.0 — Tool Fixes & Windows Portability

Portable Hermes Agent v1.1.0

Bug fix release — comprehensive smoke test + end-to-end testing uncovered and fixed 9 issues.

Fixes

• execute_code now works on Windows — replaced Unix domain sockets with TCP localhost, fixed embedded Python path injection, added Windows env vars for child processes
• Terminal resolves correct Python — python and pip now point to embedded Python, not system Python. pip install goes to the right place
• Emoji crash on Windows — _vprint emojis (56 occurrences) crashed colorama on cp1252 consoles, silently killing the agent mid-conversation
• Empty required: [] in 13 schemas — OpenAI strict mode and some providers reject empty required arrays
• Streaming SSE parser hardened — chunk variable could be unbound on corrupt/empty streams
• Always-on event logging — ~/.hermes/logs/hermes.log captures every tool call, API call, and session event in real time (10MB rotating, 3 backups)
• todo tool — no longer crashes with "TodoStore not initialized" outside live session
• memory tool — no longer fails with "Memory is not available" outside live session
• mixture_of_agents — validates input before API calls, prevents 24 wasted retries on empty prompts
• Terminal description — now says "Windows (Git Bash)" instead of "Linux"
• GUI bridge logs — moved from project root to ~/.hermes/logs/bridge.log

Testing

• smoke_test_all_tools.py — 54 test cases across all 100 registered tools
• End-to-end agent tests with real LLM calls (OpenAI strict mode + Gemini)
• Schema validation: all 100 tool schemas pass OpenAI-compatible validation
• Results: 51 PASS | 0 FAIL | 3 SKIP (offline extension servers)

Quick Start

1. Download and unzip portable-hermes-agent-v1.1.0.zip
2. Double-click START.bat
3. First run downloads Python + dependencies (~5-10 min)
4. Follow the guided setup to connect an AI model
5. Start chatting!

v1.0.0 — Portable Hermes Agent

Portable Hermes Agent v1.0.0

First release — portable AI agent desktop for Windows.

Quick Start

1. Download and unzip portable-hermes-agent-v1.0.0.zip
2. Double-click START.bat
3. First run downloads Python + dependencies (~5-10 min)
4. Follow the guided setup to connect an AI model
5. Start chatting!

What's Included

• 46+ tools across 11 toolsets
• Desktop GUI with dark theme, image attachment, and guided mode
• LM Studio integration — 10 tools for local AI model management
• 3 extension modules — TTS (10 voice models), Music generation, ComfyUI image generation
• Workflow engine — chain tools into automated pipelines
• Tool maker — create new tools at runtime (API wrappers or custom Python)
• Serper search — Google-quality web search
• Guided mode — works even without an AI model (built-in 1054-line user guide)
• Hermes update tool — pull NousResearch upstream updates with one command (works even months later)

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• Internet connection (for setup + cloud AI) or NVIDIA GPU 8GB+ (for local AI)
• No admin rights needed

Staying Updated

The built-in update_hermes tool pulls the latest changes from NousResearch/hermes-agent automatically — no matter how old your install is. It re-injects all custom tools after updating.

Documentation

See the Wiki for the complete user guide.

Based on NousResearch/hermes-agent (MIT License).