Choose Hermes if
- You want to reach your agent from any chat app, or run it in a sandbox or the cloud.
- You want open source and a large ecosystem.
- One capable agent with sub-agents is enough for your work.
Compare
The One vs Hermes Agent
Choose Hermes if you want one open-source agent that follows you across 21+ chat apps, the terminal and the cloud, with sandboxes and a large plugin ecosystem. Choose The One if you want work handed to teams of agents with their own boards, deliveries you judge, and a record of every action.
| The One | Hermes Agent | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A desktop app where a main assistant hands work to working groups, each matter on its own board | One agent with one memory across a terminal UI, Hermes Desktop, a browser version, chat apps and Hermes Cloud |
| Source | Closed source; the docs are public | Open source (MIT), about 263k GitHub stars |
| Platforms | macOS 15+ on Apple Silicon, Windows, and a headless Linux server | Terminal on Linux, macOS, Windows, WSL2, Docker and Android (prerelease); Desktop on Apple Silicon and Windows |
| Several agents | Working groups from templates: handoffs, parallel agents, a TaskBoard with a worker and a reviewer, sub-groups, all able to ask you questions | Mainly one agent; up to 10 sub-agents that cannot ask you anything and are not resumed after a restart; a Kanban board for set-up profiles |
| Models | The official service, ChatGPT sign-in, OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini keys, any compatible endpoint including local models | Nous Portal, OpenRouter, the major vendors, a ChatGPT sign-in, local models, any compatible endpoint |
| Price | No charge with your own keys or ChatGPT account; membership $20 / $60 / $200 a month with model usage included | The agent is free; Nous Portal Plus $20, Super $100, Ultra $200 a month |
| Record and undo | Every tool call recorded; undo a call, a run, a matter or everything since a time, on by default | /rollback checkpoints, off by default and files only; /undo rewinds only the conversation; no full action log described |
| Where it runs | Your computer, or your Linux server | Your computer, Docker, SSH, hosted sandboxes, or a Hermes Cloud agent |
| From your phone | Agent Room channel, text | 21+ chat platforms (Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, email and more) |
| Extending | Plugins, MCP, Skills, Spaces | MCP, a catalog of 1,050+ plugins, skills it writes itself |
Choose The One if
- You want whole teams on a piece of work: roles, handoffs, a reviewer, and a board you can follow.
- You want a team whose members can ask you questions and keep going after a restart.
- You want deliveries that come back with evidence for you to accept or send back.
Questions
- Does The One run in the cloud?
- No. Agents run on your computer or your own Linux server.
- Can I reach The One from Telegram or Slack?
- Not directly; the phone channel is Agent Room. Other programs on the same computer can call The One through MCP, A2A or its command-line tool.
Facts checked on 2026-11-13 from Hermes Agent's docs and GitHub, and from The One's docs. Something changed? Tell us at support@the-zeroth.com