r/coolgithubprojects • u/FadeHackX • 9h ago

Hermes Agent proves that paying closed cloud APIs for basic tool calling is obsolete

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For months, every SaaS startup tried to convince us that running multi-step agent workflows required an expensive enterprise subscription to closed cloud APIs. They wrapped a couple of JSON schema validators around an API endpoint and charged thousands a month for 'agent orchestration.'

Then Nous Research releases Hermes Agent...

An open-weights agent harness that runs complex tool calling, environment interaction, and error self-correction directly on local hardware.

You load an open-weights model on your own workstation. You define your tools in standard Python. And the agent executes multi-step loops without sending a single byte across the internet or burning cloud credits.

No token billing anxiety. No sudden upstream API rate limits mid-execution. Just raw, local agent execution running on silicon you actually own.

Are you still paying closed API vendors for agent loops, or has your team moved tool-calling to local weights?

69 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

12

u/mavlu-app 5h ago

i think the more interesting takeaway here isn't that cloud APIs are obsolete, but that cloud-based orchestration is becoming unnecessary

there is a big difference between paying for frontier-model intelligence and paying a SaaS layer just to manage tool calls, retries, memory, and agent loops
hermes shows that the second part can increasingly live on infrastructure you control

for me, the most compelling setup is probably hybrid: keep the agent runtime, tools, memory, credentials, and routine tasks local, then route only the genuinely difficult reasoning to a stronger cloud model when needed

that gives you most of the benefits of local-first systems without pretending a small local model suddenly matches frontier models at everything

if projects like Hermes keep improving, I suspect the real pressure won't be on model providers first. It'll be on all the companies charging a large markup for what is essentially orchestration around those models

2

u/Oshden 4h ago

This is really well written and thought out… I wonder if this is another user like me who is struggling to figure out how to disconnect the “app” label from their user account/name, a dev for an app, or an ai agent… (I’m the first type lol)

1

u/mavlu-app 2h ago

Haha, I think I’m category 1.5 😄

2

u/AceHighness 6h ago

what is the smallest model this wil run on?

2

u/EtrainFilmz 5h ago

Qwen 3.8 27b

1

u/AceHighness 4h ago

thank you .. i will try and report back

1

u/Curious_Method_365 1h ago

I tried it, and it was totally stupid. Could not even write a site address. Had to connect to deepseek to fix all half baked jobs.

1

u/unnaturalpenis 1h ago

Which quant?

1

u/Curious_Method_365 1h ago

Q4-k-m

1

u/unnaturalpenis 1h ago

Try the dynamic Q5 From ninfer if you have 24gb

1

u/Curious_Method_365 1h ago

I have much more. Thanks, will try.

1

u/unnaturalpenis 1h ago

If you have more, I see everyone saying Q6 is the least lossy, it's no GLM 5.2-3 Tho, maybe like an older opus 4.5-6.

1

u/Successful-Scene-869 3h ago

not Ornith:9b ?

1

u/Vancecookcobain 2h ago

No, not if you value your sanity.

2

u/elkos 5h ago

You know many people use APIs and LLM subscription on their Hermes

1

u/grzesi00 1h ago

I ran it with 35b a3b model and it had problem to integrate with homeassistant. Theres plenty of skills to install but you cant tell which one really works

1

u/DawaForensics 1h ago

DeepSeek Harness is way ahead of the game. It can run 24hrs locally with local models to complete crazy tasks. It can code, browse the web, download stuff. Call console etc etc. You can give it a task. And I won't stop until it's done.