Your First Conversation: The 5-Minute Quickstart

The official Hermes Agent quickstart promises exactly what it says on the tin: from install to chatting in under 5 minutes. That is realistic because there is no account portal, no IDE setup, and no complex wiring required to have a conversation. Here is the fastest route from a clean machine to talking with your own agent.

Step 1 — Install (about a minute)

On Linux, macOS, WSL2, or Android's Termux, installation is a single command:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Run it and let the script do its work. That is the whole install — there is nothing else you must download or configure before your first message. (Nix users on a declarative setup can instead go through the Nix setup docs, but the one-liner is the fastest route for everyone else.)

Step 2 — Point Hermes at a Model Provider

To converse, Hermes needs a model provider, and the choices in the configuration docs boil down to the endpoints you already know: Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. If you have an API key, you can wire it in via configuration and the environment. If you want the least-friction experience, Nous Portal is the recommended way to run Hermes — a single subscription unlocks 300+ frontier models and the Tool Gateway, so you get everything under one key rather than managing several.

The configuration guides cover config.yaml, providers, models, and API keys in detail. For the quickstart, the goal is simply: pick a provider, drop in your credentials, and let Hermes resolve them at startup.

Step 3 — Launch the CLI

With a provider configured, start your terminal interface and you are in a working session. The CLI is the natural first surface: it is where commands, keybindings, and personalities live, and it is what the rest of the docs assume you are using. Launch it, and you are talking to Hermes.

Step 4 — Say Hello and Go

Your first message does not need to be impressive. Ask it something concrete — summarize a file, write a small script, or plan out a task — and notice what happens: Hermes acts, running tools and editing files, rather than just replying with text. Because the agent comes with a skills system and persistent memory, information you give it early can persist into later sessions.

What You Can Try Next

Once the conversation is working, the docs lay out a natural learning path for everything from there: the learning path guide maps documentation routes to your experience level and goals. You might add a cron job to schedule a recurring task, attach an MCP server, set up a messaging platform like Telegram so you can reach Hermes from your phone, or create your first skill.

Key Takeaways

• Installation takes roughly a minute: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash.
• Point Hermes at the provider you already use — Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
• Launch the CLI to start a working session right away.
• The whole flow from install to first chat is designed to fit in 5 minutes.