Where do most of your AI workflows die?
Every AI agent we’ve used forgets us the moment we close the tab.
Each session has the same drill: paste context, explain preferences again, and restate what you're working on.
It's fine for one-off tasks, but the second you want something recurring, we’re paying to rebuild the same setup over and over.
Hermes is the first agent I've used where this doesn't happen, and it just takes 10 minutes to set up with Hostinger.
But first, some catch-up on AI this week:
What Hermes is (and why everyone's switching)
Hermes is an open source AI agent from Nous Research that launched is already past 140k stars on GitHub.
The reason everyone's talking about it comes down to one thing: memory.
After every task Hermes finishes, it writes its own notes on what it just did, how it figured things out, and what worked.
These get saved as skill files on your server. So the next time you ask for something similar, it just reads its notes and runs instead of starting from scratch.
A dev I follow ran Hermes for 10 days on code reviews.
By day 5 it had picked up his preferences without being told, things like which files to check first, how to format the output, and what patterns to flag.
He hadn't trained it on any of that. It just learned from the way he was using it.
Catch is, this only really works if you put Hermes on a server instead of your laptop.
Why you need a server
If you run Hermes on your laptop, it's only as reliable as your laptop.
Close the lid, or if WiFi drops, the agent dies.
Now, put it on a VPS and all of that goes away.
The agent stays on 24/7, memory survives restarts, and it's reachable from Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, Discord, or Signal.
Bonus: all your API keys, chat history, and business context stays on your own server with none of it sitting on someone else's cloud.
Getting started
Hostinger built a one-click Docker template for Hermes specifically, which means no terminal setup, Docker knowledge, and config files to edit.
Genuinely just click and deploy.
The Hermes Agent template is pre-selected, so just hit Deploy and you're moving.
If you already have a Hostinger account, the alternate path is HPanel → Docker Manager → search "Hermes Agent".
The plan
Few reasons why you should click “Deploy” above:
The Docker template is pre-configured and production ready out of the box, so there's zero setup work on your end.
There are no per-agent fees either, which means you can spin up as many agents as your VPS can handle (more on why this matters below).
It's got enough compute for multi-agent workflows, browser automation, and parallel tasks without anything throttling on you.
And on first install, Hostinger auto-generates a high-complexity gateway key, so your agent is secured from day one with nothing for you to configure.
I like it so much I got y’all a deal.
So go and add to cart, and use code STAYINGAHEAD for 20% off any 12-month plan on checkout.
There's a 30-day money-back guarantee, so no risk in trying it.
Installing and deploying
After checkout you'll land on a configuration screen where you set your environment variables: LLM API key, model preference, and messaging channel credentials.
Easiest API setup is OpenRouter since it gives you access to 200+ models in one place and lets you switch between them depending on the task.
I connected Claude since it’s my daily driver.
Fill it in and hit Deploy.
Wait about 60 seconds for the status to flip to "running", then open your Hermes dashboard.
The agent is live.
Prefer video?
If you prefer a step-by-step walkthrough and want to follow along, I have just the right thing for you:
Connecting Telegram
Open Telegram, search BotFather, type /newbot, and give your bot a name. BotFather will send you a token.
Paste that token into your Hermes settings. This quickstart guide is super helpful if you feel lost.
Hermes will then ask for your Telegram user ID, so search User Info Bot in Telegram, copy the ID it shows you, and paste that in too.
Your agent is now in your Telegram like any other contact.
Three things I made it do
Once it was live, I wanted to see what it could pull off so there are 3 tasks I threw at it.
1. The morning brief
The prompt I send to Hermes:
"Go to Hacker News, grab the top 15 posts. Pull the title, score, author, comment count, and URL for each. Save it all as a PDF. Before you finish, write down what you learned."
Hermes opens a browser on the server, scrapes Hacker News, builds the PDF, and drops it back in my Telegram.
It also ran its own aggregate analysis on the data and decided that summary was useful.
The last line of my prompt: "write down what you learned.” is what tells Hermes to log the whole workflow as a skill, so the next time I want to scrape any site, it reads its notes and skips half the work.
2. The YouTube thumbnail grid
This one was the test for whether Hermes could handle visual content end to end.
The prompt:
"Go to my YouTube channel. Grab the 12 most recent video thumbnails. Combine them into a 4x3 PNG grid. Send it back to me."
Hermes opened YouTube, pulled my channel, downloaded each thumbnail one by one, opened an image library on the server, built the grid, saved the file, and sent it to my Telegram.
OpenClaw can technically do this too. But OpenClaw needs me to write the script, debug it half the time, and retry the prompt when it breaks. Hermes just figured it out.
3. Teaching it my voice (and watching it learn)
This was the demo that made me go quiet.
The prompt:
"My content style is simple, punchy, curiosity-driven, and beginner-friendly. Avoid jargon. Write like a YouTube educator. Now analyze my YouTube channel and write me a test script in this voice."
It wrote one, the structure is neat and its got the outline sorted.
Then two notifications popped up.
The first one said "Memory updated. User profile updated.” so there's now a profile inside my Hermes called "Vaibhav" with my style preferences, tone, and brand guidelines baked in.
Next time I open Hermes, I don't have to explain who I am.
The second one said "New skill created: YouTube channel analysis."
It learned how to write the script. The skill file got saved on the server, so the next time I ask, it'll be sharper.
Output: (full output here)
Bottom Line
Every other AI tool gets expensive when you use it daily because every session is a fresh re-setup, and you're paying tokens just to rebuild context before any actual work happens.
One dev I came across moved to Hermes and cut his token bill by 90%, simply because the agent was already primed on his workflows.
And the data stays yours.
Your API keys, chat history, and business context all live on your own server, not someone else's cloud.
If you want your own self-improving AI assistant with zero setup, persistent memory, and full data control, the link's below.
Code STAYINGAHEAD takes 20% off any 12-month plan.
Until next time,
Vaibhav 🤝🏻
