Hermes

Overview

Hermes is a companion AI platform mentioned alongside OpenClaw, positioned as part of a personal AI stack from Garry Tan's gbrain ecosystem. Based on newsletter references, Hermes appears to support conversational and agent-driven experiences that can run over interfaces like WebRTC or a Twilio phone number, and it has been used for workflows such as generating personalized travel guides from long-term personal data.

For AI Product Managers, Hermes matters as an example of a practical, consumer-facing AI tool built around personal context, multimodal access, and agent telemetry. Its mentions connect it to open-source agent traces, rapid self-hosted deployment, and personalized content generation—useful signals for PMs thinking about memory-rich assistants, real-world distribution channels, and proprietary data advantages.

Key Developments

• 2026-04-07: Hermes was referenced in a push to open-source agent traces via Traces.com, alongside OpenCode and Claude, to help build a crowdsourced dataset for open-source agent models.
• 2026-04-13: Garry Tan showed how to install Hermes or OpenClaw from the gbrain repo and run it on WebRTC or through a Twilio number in under 30 minutes, framing it as accessible personal AI infrastructure.
• 2026-05-02: Garry Tan used the OpenClaw/Hermes platform to import 17 years of Foursquare check-in data (5,000+ entries) and auto-generate personalized travel guides, beginning with favorite spots in San Francisco.

Relevance to AI PMs

• Designing with proprietary user data: Hermes demonstrates how long-lived personal datasets, such as location history, can be turned into differentiated user value. PMs can apply this by identifying underused first-party data sources that can power highly personalized outputs.
• Testing distribution beyond chat UIs: The WebRTC and Twilio references suggest Hermes can be deployed through voice and real-time channels. PMs can use this as a model for validating AI experiences across phone, browser, and conversational surfaces rather than limiting pilots to standard web chat.
• Instrumenting agent behavior: The Traces.com mention shows Hermes in the context of agent trace sharing and evaluation. PMs should treat trace capture, review, and benchmarking as core product capabilities when building agentic systems.

Related

• OpenClaw: Frequently paired with Hermes; likely a sibling or companion product in the same personal AI workflow.
• gbrain-repo: The repository Garry Tan referenced for installing Hermes and OpenClaw.
• Garry Tan: The main public figure associated with Hermes in these mentions, demonstrating installation and use cases.
• Traces.com: Connected through open-sourcing agent traces from Hermes sessions to support open agent model development.
• OpenCode and Claude: Other tools/models mentioned alongside Hermes in the trace-sharing context.
• WebRTC: A runtime or interface layer used to get Hermes running in real-time communication settings.
• Twilio: A telephony integration path for deploying Hermes over phone-based experiences.
• tracescom: Related to Traces.com, the platform referenced for publishing agent traces.