Start here
Agent setup
The two options
The whole pipeline runs on an agent, and there are two good options for it. Hermes agent at hermes-agent.Nousresearch.Com is open source and free and runs on your own computer or a server, and Grok bot at x.Ai/bot runs on its own computer in the cloud, so it keeps working when your laptop is closed. Either way you message it the same way you'd message a person, so pick whichever one you like because everything in this guide works the same on both.
Hermes agent
- Runs on
- your own computer or a server
- Model
- connect one, an anthropic or openai key
- Install
- one command
To set up Hermes, open a terminal and run
1curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
Or download the desktop app for your platform from the site, then sign in through Nous Portal when it asks. You talk to it from Telegram, WhatsApp, or Discord, and if you want it running all day without your computer on, you can put it on a server like railway.
Grok bot
- Runs on
- its own computer in the cloud
- Model
- picks the model for you
- Install
- nothing to install
To set up Grok bot, sign up at x.Ai/bot, create a bot, give it a name and tell it what its job is, then message it from the desktop app or your phone. It comes with its own browser and terminal and picks the model for you, so there's nothing to install.
Connecting a model
Hermes needs one more step, which is connecting a model, because the model is what does the thinking. The simplest route is pasting in an Anthropic or OpenAI API key when setup asks for it, and the Nous Portal plans also come with monthly model credits and access to hundreds of models.
Then just talk to it. There's no dashboard and no workflow builder, you describe the job in plain language the way you'd brief an employee, and the agent writes its own scripts, saves what works as a reusable skill, and can put itself on a schedule, which Grok bot calls a routine. The exact brief to paste in is at the end of this guide.