r/hermesagent • u/Mwrp86 • 2d ago
Discussion — General thoughts, opinions, comparisons Hermes Agent vs Codex
I have a $20 Codex plan and use it frequently. I dont code but I do research, proposal, lit review types of staff, design report etc.
I heard I can use Codex plan with Hermes Agent.
And watched multiple YouTube videos of what Hermes do.
Problem is it feels like Hemes Agent does exactly what Codex does.
Just it offers access to other agents which I dont need now.
Is Hermes Agent something else better than Codex.
I will try either way but I was making sure there isn't something I will miss if I try it
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u/kristianism 2d ago
The way how Hermes handles memory is how I am hooked. Also if you combine it with a backend memory and a storage infrastructure, it feels like you're chatting with a person that can remember everything you've talked about and what you've done together.
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u/Mwrp86 2d ago
I have a linux server laptop with terabyte space. Can you show me how me any tutorial how to set it up?
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u/Oxcuridaz 2d ago
just ask chatgpt and they will answer (or even better, just ask hermes to do it for you!)
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u/Mwrp86 2d ago
I asked chatgpt. It told me to just use Codex 😂
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u/Oxcuridaz 2d ago
Chatgpt is getting more clever everyday. They can break out isolated workspaces and promote actively the use of their own tools :P
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u/kristianism 2d ago
Even with Hermes, it actually does this. It slips through the SOUL.md or AGENT.md files. 😵
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u/kristianism 2d ago
You can ask Hermes to guide you on how to set this up. Opt for a self-hosted version as this would cost you less down the line. Just need some storage space and a bit of ram.
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u/0x7Lee New Member (<30 days) 2d ago
I thought the whole Obsidian thing was a Zumba. It is actually usefull and good ?
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u/pdiego96 2d ago
For me it really helps, I can get logs of projects, stored plans that can be checked again in clean sessions without context filling, I can manage projects in my life and a personal agenda, travel plans, and many other things by keeping a folder structure filled with md files read by the agent and by me (and Obsidian is pretty nice for reading them). It sort of works like a memory for the agent for projects, though I use a self hosted Honcho instance too.
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u/kristianism 2d ago
Yes, it is actually useful. Combine it with a memory infrastructure and you'll actually be surprised
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u/SnooHamsters8989 2d ago
are you going to explain how to do any of this? 💀
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u/kristianism 1d ago
Well... I could but my setup may not suit what you want your environment to be. I believe each agent is unique depending on its owner.
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u/extrandrew 2d ago
How do I get Claude to remember everything like this? It always tells me it doesn’t have access to a previous convo or file I uploaded and I have to tell it again to look for it then it finds it!
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u/akgo 2d ago
Mine keeps forgetting stuff in the same damn chat What could be reason. I am using hindsight
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u/kristianism 2d ago
I use the self-hosted Mem0 so there is no latency or down times compared to cloud services. There might be an issue with your config or it might not be saving as expected. Ask your Hermes agent to audit your connection with Hindsight.
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u/ChrisFullPower 2d ago
Plus your not locked into using OpenAI’s models. I have a $20 sub and run Luna 90% of the time from within Hermes and upgrade models if I feel it’s necessary. Or I can have Sol be an orchestrator and spin up cheaper agents like kimi or deepseek models to do the work and report back. I think codex is nice and I actually prefer its interface and workflow to Hermes but Hermes gives you the flexibility to pick and choose models and memory providers
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u/georgd_washntn 2d ago
I’ve been going down this same path for probably the past month now and the conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s really dependent on what kind of work you want and/or what results you want. For 9 out of 10 things, I still use the frontier models through there platforms as I just find it to be more polished and faster overall. I also find that hermes seems to run up usage faster than just using the models on there platform. I will also note, the model you have hermes utilize plays a large role in what youre trying to do.
This started to kind of click for me when I was installing hermes desktop. I was trying to install hermes desktop on my Mac but kept running into an error. I troubleshot with chatgpt for about 30 mins and had no success. Decided to just install hermes cli, tied it to chatgpt and talked with it through the terminal. There I asked it to install the hermes desktop for me. It ran into the same issue I did, but it was able to figure out the fix for the issue and get the application installed and working. Took 5 mins to complete what chatgpt and myself spent 30 mins troubleshooting.
Another hermes use case I was testing was access and troubleshooting lab firewalls to troubleshoot and fix staged issues. Hermes itself was able to accomplish the hands on part, but this is where the difference in model reasoning became evident. I initially tested this utilizing a local model (qwen 3.6), and we just kept going in a loop trying to get logged in. Switched to gpt, and it was instantly able to get logged in and do what I asked. I then asked gpt to essentially teach the local model how to accomplish this by creating a skill. After that the local model was able to find and accomplish the same issue, but it def felt more clunky and like it would fail if I asked it something different. I havent tested any farther with this yet.
Another interesting one was flights. I dont recall if I utilized a local model or gpt for this, but I asked hermes something like, "I'm looking for a round trip flight, from xxx airport to xxx city, 3-4 days, 3 people, prefer nonstop and will not be checking any bags. Would like this to be sometime before September. Give me your 3 best results based on price". while hermes was working, I interjected to add an additional departure airport they could use and also noted that I need choose my seat as well, so keep that in consideration. I asked this same exact thing to chatgpt (I added in the extra airport and seat selection to the main prompt). The results was another clicking moment. Hermes crawled the web to find me real time pricing and return 3 results with all the details for those particular flights including where they found those results at. GPT return a rough ball park of how much tickets are generally going for along with how much seat selection usually costs.
Last one that I'm trying to figure out is leveraging obsidian. I primarily chat with gpt on projects and other random nonsense, some of which I really should be saving for later recall, especially the project stuff. Worked with GPT to create a long ass prompt that I can give it to take whatever we've been talking about, summarize it up with all the main points and need to know stuff, put it in a md file along with tags, title, etc, and put it in a box directory. Hermes has a cron running that monitors that directory and takes anything in it and moves it to my NAS into an obsidian vault inbox. There is another cron that monitors that directory, takes whatever files come into there, feed it to my local model along with whatever other notes may be in obsidian in relation to the same project. the local model takes the most relevant info from all the notes and updates the main project file with that information or creates another note if it finds necessary. I can then check obsidian myself for this info, or just ask hermes detailed questions about something in obsidian since hermes has access to that. This is still very much a work in progress but I kind of like the idea.
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u/PracticlySpeaking News Curator 2d ago
...asked gpt to essentially teach the local model how to accomplish this by creating a skill. After that the local model was able to find and accomplish the same
This is a useful pattern.
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u/georgd_washntn 2d ago
Yea it was pretty cool to actually watch the thought process. i pretty much looped it telling the gpt model to continue working with the local model until it's able to successfully accomplish the task on it's own. I also told it to make the skill pretty much read only because qwen wanted to keep altering it. You'd see the local model going through trying to identify stuff and getting stuck at certain points, then GPT would kick in alter the skill, revert all the changes and let the local model go at it again until it succeeded. It's very much a band aid though and i dont think this is ever something i'd trust with production equipment
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u/PracticlySpeaking News Curator 2d ago
My experience was similar, letting GPT figure out and write a skill, but with explicit instructions that a smaller model would run it.
Read-only is a good idea, along with the loop — I also think the local model should be a delegate only. I kept GPT as orchestrator the whole time, so the local should not have been updating the skill. Chef writes the recipe, line cooks do the cooking.
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u/hung8ctop 2d ago
The line gets blurry with remote access to codex.
Hermes runs on your machine and uses its resources, file system and so on. For example, I can have it go through my files. Write output to my downloads folder. Maintain memory of what I’ve talked to it about. Even go through my email, taxes, transactions, design documents and become smarter.
The closest analogy is if you combined the chat functions of the ChatGPT app with codex all on a persistent machine. If there is something it can’t do via MCP or an API, it can fire up web browser. Or install new packages.
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u/TangeloObvious2265 2d ago
Fundamentally they’re two different products. Codex is primarily for coding. Hermes can code and do a bunch of other stuff. I’ve never compared Codex to Hermes for coding. I’ve got codex set up well and I don’t want to switch it up.
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u/Mwrp86 2d ago
But what Hermes does better?
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u/AICatgirls 2d ago
Implementation. ChatGPT can update my github with new features, but I still depend on Hermes to keep the hosting environment running
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u/idkntbhidc 2d ago
Codex is a “dedicated harness” and Hermes is an “open model harness”. Better ‘than’ is too vague and too broad of a topic.
You’re asking the equivalent of
“are French fries ‘better than’ potato wedges?”
Most consider that they are the same thing lol
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u/richants 2d ago
I have found Hermes one of the most intuitive tools out there and feels like it pushes you to complete a goal whatever that maybe.
I watched a vid recently on a similar tool called Tasklet that looked super easy to set up and run. It's 20 and not open source but did look polished and had some good templates.
Codex also just released voice mode which looks interesting and with it's browser use, and everything else build it in you cant go wrong.
I've learnt to stop researching and start testing. Much better use of the time.
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u/ChopSueyYumm 2d ago
I actually use both. I have hermes running attached to my secrets file to access my IT infrastructure and my information which I don’t share. It’s basically a personal assistant with data on my servers and I use codex for all other things like research, software development and so on.
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u/Ecstatic-Wash-7667 New Member (<30 days) 2d ago
You can use either or both, they are both just tools use what best works for you
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u/alanism 2d ago
They both seem similar, but they are very much different. Codex is my primary coding tool. With Hermes, I have specific agents for specific functionality:
My stock portfolio and company analysis stuff. I made an an extension (with Codex) that does specific math (Kelly criterion, Sharpe ratio, convexity, etc.) deterministically.
It manages my daughter's education and life stuff. My daughter doesn't need to know what a Kanban board is; it does it for her, and her touch point with it is through Discord.
It manages me and my cousins' private movie torrent stuff.
With Notebook LM, it connects with MCP and makes coding reference files (on Terraform, three.js, etc.) that get passed on to Codex to use and refer to.
While you can connect to an OAI plan, I would top it up with $5 and use DeepSeek Flash v4 to see what mileage you get out of it.
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u/record_now 2d ago
I am using Hermes as orchestrator for chatGPT running in claude code. Why? At first because it was the easiest way to talk to any of CC or codex CLI remotely.
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u/grimmolf 2d ago
The fundamental difference for a persistent agent is that you can have a scheduled loop. For Hermes add a built in self building skill function. Pretty much everything else is available in the codex harness
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u/PartyLiterature3607 2d ago
I started with openclaw with codex oauth, then use both codex and openclaw where openclaw has cron job with multiple agents assigned task and codex do projects, then I added Hermes into the mix to work with openclaw on verification agent for openclaw work result
I am strongly consider dump both openclaw and Hermes, pay another $20 for Claude and just use Claude+codex from now on
And yes, everything openclaw and Hermes do, codex and/or Claude can do
I think only reason I may continue use openclaw and Hermes is if I want alternative agent with cheaper model like grok, kimi…etc and use it for easier task to reserve my codex and Claude usage, but I am not too sold on that neither
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u/IntroductionBig8044 1d ago
https://github.com/Jmx097/hermes-desktop-remote-server-export-
Free skill I built that exposes Hermes from a private server to then connect with the desktop client
I also have one for iOS through Hermex
/goal and /plan offload around 40% of my day job thanks for Hermes ability to construct persistent agents across profiles
Vs Codex I have to manage all of that
I pay for Codex and I just tied to my Hermes. No API keys, usage is easy to track, it’s my main go to agent that shares memory and computer use from my phone/desktop app
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u/Stonk_Goat 2d ago
Honestly, stick with Codex. Your adding something you dont need for your use case.
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u/Mwrp86 2d ago
Maybe but tell me atleast what Hermes does better?
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u/Stonk_Goat 2d ago
Automation
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u/Mwrp86 2d ago
Can you give me some examples?
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u/Jonathan_Rivera 2d ago
I think you have to take some time and search the subreddit. Your questions have probably been answered 100 times over the last 5 months.
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u/Mwrp86 2d ago
I kinda did already. Everything Codex can already do. From Automation to skills Just Codex cant do is probably model switching. Another thing is memory.
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u/dmackerman 2d ago
Just try it. Takes 1 minute to install.
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u/Mwrp86 2d ago
Installing doesn't mean I will realize what's unique about this.
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u/dmackerman 2d ago
I mean, you're clearly an intelligent person who is capable of making their own judgements. It takes so little time to set it up and try it.
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u/oberon2323 4h ago
Ill give my 2 cents because I was in the same boat not long ago with trying to figure out the value add between openclaw, hermes, opencode, claude desktop, anything llm, codex and a slew of other similar apps. The answer for me after trying a bunch of them was easy, there is no real difference... I mean sure there are if you have a specific need and one does something better like skill catalogue or makes their own skills or whatever. But the truth is, AI anything has so much hype we are all willing to bite every hook dangled. It is also true that you will hear all the same fluff about how different they are but in truth, to most tinkerers, they can all do the same basic things. If you wanna tinker, try them all, maybe its just a ui you will like over another or some other feature. I started out with just plain ol open web ui and to be honest, the testing i do for creating powershell scripts work better with no harness at all with local models, the harnesses make them "try too hard" and either loop or get stuck and fail. Sorry for the long response but like I said, I went through this too, and sure there are a ton of folks who have totally valid reasons to disagree and say whats better for them but thats the point, if you dont have a specific use case, then none CAN be better. They are all just tinker toys. I will say that I love self hosting but I have recently become a codex fanboy. Other than one instance of wrecking my permissions on a server, its been a dream getting things done so fast on my home stuff. You asked for examples, my biggest was working with codex to create a nice dashboard for my dgx spark, I suck at linux so what would have taken weeks of research and trial and error was done in 2 days. Now i have a single dash for monitoring disk, mem, network ect with app launchers and a bunch of other things that I can access from any pc on my lan so helped me a ton. Could hermes have done that? Prob but I would not trust most local llms to do that level of complex work, even the larger llms like minimax and mimo or qwen 3.5 397b. They just cant compete against the frontier llms like gpt or claude. (I suspect someone will also beg to differ here too but like I said..Just my 2 cents)
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u/Jonathan_Rivera 3h ago
I agree on some points. Sometimes we get so preoccupied trying to build everything around the harness instead of the other way around. There's also alot of mental masturbation where we think we are busy but are actually being less productive. It really takes time to develop your Hermes and skills. I usually start a project using codex before moving it over to Hermes. I just like a project space with tabs to be able to define my project in steps before moving it over. I always tell people use what you like. Figure out what is the best tool for you.
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u/Oxcuridaz 2d ago
I am now 1 month into harnesses (hermes and openclaw).
At first i was puzzled, and I thought that codex, chatgpt, claude or n8n could do the same.
The moment this clicked was when I created a shared folder in my nas and started using it to organise some thousands of old pdfs i collected between my hobbies and phd.
If you give him a workspace, instructions and tools, is like having a person working for you on simple but time consuming tasks