HERMES
AGENT / v0.9.2

A command-line agent that claims it can "run entire software engineering tasks on its own".
Actually good, or just more hype? I ran it for 72 hours straight. Here's the answer.

rust-core mcp-native 72h-benchmark honest-review

section · 01/04

cat chapter_01.md

// Setup

From brew install hermes to the first prompt: 4 min 22 s in total.

benchmark · cold-start

Out-of-the-box numbers

cold start → first-successful-task, average of three runs

install time

42s

Single binary, no docker, no python env.

first token

1.8s

Hooked up to claude-opus-4-6, no warm-up.

first PR merged

4m22s

A low-difficulty, fix-a-typo-level task.

// verdict +

Cold start really is fast

Compared with OpenClaw's docker + pip flow, it's more than an order of magnitude faster.

// verdict -

MCP server setup isn't friendly

Env vars must be added to ~/.hermes/env by hand, and the docs barely mention it.

trace · hermes run

hermes run "refactor auth module to use pkce"

↓ Real trace (excerpt)

# hermes v0.9.2 · session 42a1
[plan]    "Analyse src/auth/*.ts → find oauth flow → extract to pkce"
[read]    src/auth/oauth.ts       // 214 lines
[read]    src/auth/token.ts       // 88 lines
[think]   "Found implicit flow; switch to code+pkce, needs a new state param"
[edit]    src/auth/oauth.ts       +43 -17
[edit]    src/auth/token.ts       +12 -4
[test]    pnpm vitest auth        PASS 18/18
[commit]  "feat(auth): migrate to oauth2 code+pkce"
[push]    origin feat/pkce-auth   ok

# total time 3m 14s · 14k tokens · $0.21

benchmark · hermes vs openclaw

72-hour comparison

The same 48 GitHub issues, run through both agents

tldr

echo $VERDICT

7.8/ 10

Worth installing, not yet worth fully relying on.

+ strong points

• Rust core starts fast
• Very readable traces
• Review-friendly diffs and decent commit messages

- weak points

• Occasionally skips steps in the plan phase
• OOMs on repos over 50k LoC
• MCP setup needs env added by hand

install

Want to try it yourself?

Three commands, and in under 5 minutes you'll see it do its first job.

# 1. install
$ brew install hermes-agent/tap/hermes

# 2. auth (have your anthropic api key ready)
$ hermes auth login

# 3. first task
$ cd ~/your-repo && hermes run "add a CHANGELOG.md from git log"

brew-ready opus-4.6 needs-api-key

EOF

exit 0

// thanks

Full traces, the PR list for all 48 tasks and the benchmark scripts are at github.com/lewis/hermes-review