Hermes Desktop vs Agent OS: Best AI Agent?

**Julian Goldie** (0:00)
Today, we have a brand new update from Hermes Agent. They've released Hermes Desktop. Now, how does that compare to having an agent operating system? Which one should you pick? Should you go with a Hermes Desktop app, or is it better to have a full agent operating system for your team of agents? Let's get into it. I'm gonna compare them side by side today and see how they perform. This is my agent operating system. You might have built your own mission control for AI agents before and you're like, okay, Hermes have just released this new desktop app. Do I need to switch? Do I need to keep an agent operating system? Which one is the best for managing agents? Let me get straight into it and show you the exact difference here and what it means. Now, just to explain this very clearly, a Hermes Desktop app, the new one that just came out, is like the official desktop app from Hermes, where you can plug in your AI agent and start using it. So you can see, for example, we can use this right here. We've got our artifacts and what we've created. And this is an app that works on our desktop. And then, of course, you've got an agent operating system. Now, if you're not sure what an agent operating system is, essentially, this is having a full command center of AI agents working together. So, for example, you've got Claude, you've got OpenClaude, you've got Hermes, you've got Gemini. And in the same way that you'd have a desktop app, you've also got all of your multiple agents. So it's not just limited to Hermes. So which one is the best? The first thing that I would say is, if you run multiple agents, Hermes desktop application isn't going to be that useful because it's another tab, it's another window. And it doesn't really solve the problem of switching between windows and tabs and different AI agents. So for example, inside here, we can only operate Hermes directly. Whereas for example, if we go inside an agent operating system, we can manage all our agents in one place. We've got Claude, we've got OpenClaude, we've got Hermes all next to each other, all running together as a team. That's what we want. This is one of the reasons that tools, for example, like Kaper Clip have become so popular because it's a team of agents. I think that really is a future. I think last year was the year of AI agents. This year is heavily focused on Hermes and OpenClaude. But really, if you look at the full power and how to unlock the full power of these AI agents, you want them working together as a team, and that's what an agent operating system looks like. Now, the other thing that I would say here is if you actually look at the desktop app, it's very difficult to customize.
You can change some of your settings. You can change the theme. You can change the models. That's all great. You can change the appearance here, which is perfect. But one of the biggest issues is that when you're using this, you can't really make any big changes. What I mean, for example, is if we go back into the agent operating system, this looks and feels exactly how I want it to look and feel, because I control how it looks.
That's really a huge difference. It's going to help you a lot. It's going to make managing your AI agents more fun, because when you open up, it's fun to use. Whereas if you look at the UI of Hermes Desktop, it feels a little bit retro. I think that fits with their brand. Hermes agent has that kind of retro vibe. But at the same time, for me, if I'm using something for a few hours a day, I want it to look and feel exactly how I want it. That's why I'd recommend using an agent operating system instead. The other thing I would say here is if there's something new that comes out in a different tool, obviously you can't just plug it into Hermes Desktop. You can't just control it and change it and mold it the way that you want. You can't customise it that way. Whereas for example, let's say ANT CLI just dropped this morning, which it did from Claude. That was literally released five hours ago and we can already plug it in to an agent operating system. So I've already set it up right here. We can manage all our agents. We've got the files and everything like that. We can switch between different tools and it's already connected. And so what I'm saying here is number one, you can move faster. Number two, you can customise it more. And number three, something new comes out. So let's just plug that in. The same, for example, with Hermes Agent. If you look at the way that you manage media inside Hermes Desktop, let's say, for example, whether that's images or videos or that sort of thing, you could potentially see it inside the images section here. You see how there's no videos tab. And also you can't really preview stuff inside the section here. So it's not that useful. Whereas, for example, if we go inside the studio, we can switch between images and video and voice. So I would say if you want something super basic and you're not really, just one almost little app siloed away for your Hermes agent, then maybe you'd use a desktop. I think if you want something that's really powerful, really useful, helps you automate a lot of stuff and also helps you manage and organize and orchestrate agents in a much more efficient and fun way, then you would use something like an agent-operate system.