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Hermes Agent

Install Hermes Agent

Get API Key

Optional for higher limits

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Introduction

Hermes Agent is an open-source, self-improving AI agent from Nous Research. It runs in the terminal or through messaging platforms such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, and Signal, with persistent memory, reusable skills, scheduled tasks, and subagent delegation. Tavily is built into Hermes Agent as a web backend, so there is no plugin or MCP server to install. It powers Hermes’s model-callable tools for:
  • web_search — search the web and return ranked results
  • web_extract — retrieve clean content from one or more URLs
Hermes supports Tavily with or without an API key. Keyless access is free and rate-limited, while an API key provides higher limits.

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How keyless access works

A fresh Hermes installation with no web credentials can use web_search and web_extract immediately. Hermes rotates keyless requests across the public free tiers from Tavily, Exa, Parallel, Firecrawl, and Keenable. If one provider is rate-limited, Hermes tries the next provider in the ring. To make Tavily the primary backend instead of using round-robin rotation, select Tavily in hermes tools or set web.backend to tavily. Keyless requests then start with Tavily and only move to the next provider if Tavily is throttled.
In the default keyless rotation or after rate-limit failover, another provider may serve an individual request. Pinning Tavily makes it the first provider for each request, not the only possible keyless provider.

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Set up Tavily with Hermes Agent

Onboarding Tavily Connector on Claude
On Linux, macOS, WSL2, or Termux, run:
On native Windows, run in PowerShell:
Follow the Hermes setup flow to configure your model provider.
Option 1: Use the zero-config keyless rotationNo Tavily setup is required. If Hermes has no web backend or web credentials configured, Tavily participates automatically in the five-provider keyless rotation.Option 2: Pin Tavily with keyless accessRun the interactive tool setup and select Tavily. Skip the API key prompt:
You can also configure the backend directly:
Option 3: Pin Tavily with an API keySave your key and select Tavily as the backend:
Get a free API key with 1,000 monthly credits from the Tavily Dashboard. Hermes stores secrets such as TAVILY_API_KEY in ~/.hermes/.env.
Check the configured web tools:
Then start Hermes:
Ask it to run a live search:
Configure and start the Hermes messaging gateway:
Once your platform is connected, web search and extraction work through the same Hermes tools used in the terminal.

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Tool parameters

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web_extract

For long pages, Hermes returns a bounded head-and-tail excerpt and stores the complete extracted text locally so the agent can read the omitted sections when needed.

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Example prompts

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Troubleshooting

If Hermes cannot search or extract content, check these in order:
  1. Run hermes doctor to see the readiness of web_search and web_extract.
  2. Run hermes tools and confirm Tavily is selected if you want to pin it.
  3. Check the active backend:
  4. If using keyed access, confirm TAVILY_API_KEY is set in the active profile’s ~/.hermes/.env. Avoid printing the key in terminal output.
  5. Keyless access is rate-limited. If all free providers are throttled, add a free Tavily API key for higher limits.

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