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- Hacker News
- I have Hermes on my list of things to try but I've been massively underwhelmed by both NanoClaw and OpenClaw.
Both of them broke on me and were maddening to try and debug. I'd get them working then 1-2 days later send a message and get no reply. I went round and round with OpenClaw (seriously, "openclaw doctor" is a sick joke) before finally nuking the VM.
I want the simplest of things: Claude Code + My Obsidian Vault. That's it. I didn't even add other MCPs or Skills, I tried using Nano/OpenClaw and they both just fell over after a couple days.
I'm probably best served by just vibecoding my own tool since these things try to be too many things to too many people and end up failing.
by joshstrange - I cant wait to see what the new OpenCode plugin system looks like. I'm hoping that it allows us to get somewhat in-depth with the Effect.ts underpinnings. There's so much potential here. There also needs to be some real ability to shape/drive/control the loop, where-as right now, plugins tend to be more augmentative, rather than able to contribute to steering. Those are two huge barriers, and I realize OpenCode is thought of as a coding tool, but conceptually these loop systems seem not really so far apart.
The purpose of these systems is not to be a system, it's to be a platform/substrate for agency expansion. Whoever can best expose their capabilities (without having to many tattering detractors) is ultimately going to be the winner.
- I don't get it, why not put codex/claude code/opencode in a docker container and be done with it?by isoprophlex
- It's not really the same thing. They're different tools. Open claw is targeted more towards non-technical people.by onel
- This is what https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/scion doesby verdverm
- openclaw = claude code + memory + cron job
persistent memory plus cron job lets you do stuff that you can't do with just codex/claude code/opencode
by revnode - What are you automating with OpenClaw in June, 2026?
I used OpenClaw -> Hermes -> my own thing now.
I've got things like code review, email inbox/spam filtering, website monitoring for bad links/typos, HN/Bluesky notifications, favorite director/actors/author alerts, etc.
I mostly interact with them using Slack and Email.
by jacobgold - I don't understand people running OpenClaw. I just full shot a prompt to create a better clone. Its extremely custom to my work and flow. I use it as a personal agent, emails, slacks + as a hardcore coding agent. If it sees a problem in email it will create a ticket, assign it to an agent monitor progress, get a PR ready for me - then it harasses me until I review the PR. If I ignore the PR it will call my wife. It can also reason on what emails need critical attention etc.by ransom1538
- This is specifically for migrating to Hermes from OpenClaw. The title should suggest that.by Rooster61
- can someone tell me the actual market size for technophiles who I think are only people who use this stuff? I get lost in fact that people can't really understand that end of day this is just llm calls with like sqlite facade. I see the value is the convenience only of not having to set stuff up, but everyone else claims it does all this extra stuff that is not trivial to reproduce yourself.by bfeynman
- > can someone tell me the actual market size for technophiles who I think are only people who use this stuff?
Approximately zero. Grifters, FOMO driven technophiles, and wannabe "founders" jumped on the bandwagon because it was "the next big thing" (where did I hear that before?). Now that the creator got cushy job at OpenAI, and the hype is over, it's just another tech bro toy to burn tokens with and scratch your OCD.
by wiseowise - Does Hermes still come bundled with a Polymarket skill enabled by default?
https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/reference/skills-...
by rob - I still don't understand the point of these. I use AI basically 12 hours a day, and still haven't found a use case for it that isn't solved easily with existing tools, bash scripts, cron jobs, etc. Especially with Codex App now, why do I need OpenClaw? I don't need to be able to call my AI agent on the phone... That's a gimmick.by nullbio
- I set up a Hermes agent for our company and connected it to BigQuery, Stripe, Amplitude, etc so that our nontechnical teammates can ask and answer their own data questions via Slack. It works great!
I similarly haven’t found it useful to run a bunch of these agents in developing the product, but it’s a nice interface for people who don’t live in their terminal all day.
by brettcvz - It's probably good to at least be aware of the plagiarism debacle around Hermes.by cassianoleal
- Given that LLMs are capable of generating code from open source projects verbatim (and entire books like Harry Potter verbatim) and no one gives a damn it seems like copyright is essentially a dead letter, legally speaking at least And the courts (in the US and elsewhere) haven't decided to intervene at all. Still a scummy thing to do morally though, I agree.by JCTheDenthog
- Linking to the claim [1] might be stronger.
[1] https://evomap.ai/blog/hermes-agent-evolver-similarity-analy...
- 1. This is bad, if true.
2. In the future, there won't be copyright. Or open source. Or anything "owned". It can all just be copied trivially, and there's literally no stopping it.
3. I don't know how to feel about any of that. This is so new and complicated. The whole world is changing dramatically and being completely reshaped.
by echelon - Wow, I didn't know that. I was getting impressed by Hermes but yeah, I didn't know about it so thanks for telling me.
The behaviour by NousResearch is a bit bad (if I am understanding it correctly, I can be wrong, I usually am) but given its an open source project. I don't think that accredition makes a project bad and I simply don't understand the rationale behind a lot of it and streissand effect is starting to kick in the more they might be trying to hide it.
Why not just accredit EvoMap's Evolver or come up with an official statement or have a proper discussion between the two teams
> The behaviour by NousResearch is so bad given its an open source project. I don't think that accredition makes a project bad and I simply don't understand the rationale behind a lot of it and streissand effect is starting to kick in the more they might be trying to hide it.
> Why not just accredit EvoMap's Evolver or come up with an official statement or have a proper discussion between the two teams
- And this weirdness:
"Hermes Agent (and others) default Installs are silently routing web traffic to Parallel"
https://www.reddit.com/r/hermesagent/comments/1u5ukz6/hermes...
by qingcharles - there is no debacle, ". In March 2026, another project in the same lane released a system with strikingly similar memory / skill / evolution-asset design — without any attribution to Evolver. " there is nothing new about memory (aka sessions saved), skills (aka prompt in a file), etc folks have been doing this for 2+ years.by segmondy
- I still don't really get the case for OpenClaw/NanoClaw/Hermes Agent/etc. I guess it's a mix of huge stacks of notes/second brain stuff but with a way to query it, and a place where all personal "AI apps" can live ; instead of making AI apps "individually" and deploying them somewhere?
I do have a website on which I've been adding more and more stuff for personal use and for sharing with people, but when I want to develop it I do it with any agent I'm using right now (Codex, Claude Code, Pi, etc) and when I want to ask questions about it, it's usually on the public internet so any chat interface can query it. That leaves two things: asking questions about more private stuff, and possibly a "claw" that lives on your computer/on a small server is less of a pain to connect to private stuff than building a MCP and authenticate yourself through it ; and apps that themselves use models, which can be developed by the "code agent" and then I can plug whatever model I want on it.
by Zababa - My struggle is despite giving it a good honest go I couldn’t find the use case for OpenClaw. Maybe I and my life is just too simple, and I’ve admittedly not invested a huge effort into spending countless hours watching breathless YouTubers vying for my attention to figure it out. I have built a few bits and bobs, I feel like I’m ideal in that I’m pretty deep into agentic workflows for work, my house is totally home assistant, I’ve got current tool following models pinned to local 4090’s, I’ve been fine tuning my smaller models, i even have a custom chatterbox based tts/sst pipeline with voice nodes everywhere.
I’d love some OpenClaw master to opine on meaningful use cases beyond clawbook, checking the weather, and telling you about crypto news, as it genuinely feels like something I should find utility for but am just too old or something.
by fnordpiglet - I've used Hermes Agent in a container, and it worked ok. Little rought around the edges, but that's to be expected.
But what I didn't understand... what benefit does it actually bring? On a default loadout, even after disabling tons of skills in the setup wizard, there were lots of useless garbage skills enabled, over 10k of context used just to list them all.
I vibe-coded my own harness that uses ACP so it supports any coding CLI that exposes ACP (copilot cli, opencode, basically every popular one with official or non-official wrappers). And I was able to achieve basically exactly what I wanted from any Claw-like agent, in like a few hours.
I know there's way, way more to these self-sufficient agents (compaction, memory system, etc) but in my mind, it feels like the closer you can be to a barebones "coding agent core" plus "gateways that point to it" the better.
- I've done similar, even to the point of a discord gateway integration that is very similar to the one Hermes ships with.
I still use Hermes because it's not a problem I care about solving right now and am spending my time and tokens on more important problems. I don't plan to always use it, and if anything it gives me ideas for what the ideal shape of what I want would be.
Also to add, having a unified space to chat with an agent that has a local system it can work with is quite liberating because I use it to drive my agent orchestration system. So I'm no longer bound to my computer or any one providers harness and whatever mobile solution they provide if any. It's been quite freeing and I don't use Hermes that differently than I would chatgpt, except it know exactly how I like to do my work and that means I have to remind it less.
by chapel - I did the same thing. I use the Pi coding agent and they support extensions. I asked GPT 5.5 to create a Pi extension that has the magic of Hermes and for me that was the long term memory and the cron/scheduling. And that way, I can use Pi as is and turn on these using a slash command.
- My simple take: Hermes is for the less technical and is more polished. OpenClaw is deeper with more capabilities.
OpenClaw has come so far since its' original launch/craze. I recommend taking a second look if you haven't touched it in a while. If for no other reason than it's just a really fun playground with a LOT of areas to experiment in. Setup a myriad of agents with various models, skills, cron jobs, etc. The control surfaces have come a long way as well.
Hermes is good fun, running that as well but feels like they focused on polish vs features in order to capitalize on the primitive state that OpenClaw was in for its first months.
People that got attracted to the hype of openclaw but couldn't endure the fast pace of breaking changes while they figured out the problem space were well served by going to Hermes.
by Multiplayer - openclaw is for larpingby cowpig
- OpenClaw feels messy and unpolished. It's powerful but unreliable.
Hermes is focused, tight and does exactly what it set out to do. I already moved to Hermes.
by ChadMoran - I really want to like these "agentic assistant" tools, because I feel like the problem they claim to solve is real: give me an interface across desktop and mobile to a persistent backend where I can set up agents (using natural language) to do... whatever I want. Deep market research? Building + hosting a browser game? Checking my email? etc.
But after trying both Hermes and OpenClaw, it feels like they both... miss the point? Last time I tried OpenClaw it wanted to download something like 11 GB of local models to do... something (embeddings for memory indexing or chat labeling/classification maybe?) which my sorry old 16gb M1 is certainly not capable of running.
Hermes seems to suffer from the same problem: why do I need to download (and then immediately disable to avoid confusing my poor "agents"... a concept which I also feel like way too many tools fundamentally misunderstand) skills for managing Spotify playlists or pokemon or minecraft in order to run the thing? (I acknowledge that they cleaned some of this up in a recent release, so maybe this isn't as bad as it was when I last tried it)
WRT "agents"... can someone explain to me why there's so much effort put into naming agents and giving them personalities? An "agent" is simply a separate context window with different prompting (itself written by the spawning/parent "agent") that's specific to a partial slice of the task you're trying to solve. If you have to write their prompt ahead of time that defeats the whole purpose of a programmable, autonomous subagent, doesn't it?
by jas8425