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Hermes Agent setup · UK

Hermes Agent setup for UK businesses

Your own AI teammate, set up and looked after.

We set up Hermes Agent on a small computer that runs in your office, connect it to Slack, Teams, WhatsApp or Telegram, and give it useful jobs from day one. It's the same setup we use to run our own agent, Glitch, every day.

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What you get

What's in the setup.

Installing Hermes is the easy part. What makes an agent useful is the computer it runs on, the chat apps it lives in, what it knows about your business and the jobs it does without being asked. We set up all of it.

01

Its own computer, on your network

We set up a small, quiet Linux mini PC with 32 GB of memory, test it and post it to you. It plugs into your network, so the agent, its memory and its files live in your office rather than on a shared platform. We look after it remotely over a secure connection.

02

Hermes Agent, configured properly

Installed, connected to your Codex subscription and running as a service that restarts itself if anything falls over. Updates are tested before they go on.

03

The chat apps your team already uses

Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram or Discord. Your team talks to the agent where they already work, and it reports back there too.

04

A memory of your business

We spend a session with you on your business, customers, services and the way you write, and put it into the agent's memory. It starts out knowing the basics and keeps learning as you use it.

05

Three starter routines

Jobs it does on a schedule without being asked: researching new leads each morning, a twice-weekly sweep of who you owe a reply, and a weekly check-in on what's moving. We tune them on your real data.

06

Rules about what it can do alone

You decide what needs your approval. By default it drafts emails and messages for you to approve, and it doesn't send anything on its own. We finish with a handover session so your team knows how to work with it.

Use cases

What our agent Glitch does for us.

  • 01

    Researches every new sign-up before we start work

    Each morning Glitch looks up every new sign-up to our product Chat Thing, skips the joke names and repeat sign-ups, and writes a personal email draft for the rest, with the sources it used. We approve or skip each one with an emoji in Slack.

  • 02

    Qualifies leads from our free tools

    When someone uses one of our free tools, Glitch works out who they are, rates the fit and finds a public way to contact them. It checks our inbox and CRM first, which once stopped us cold-emailing a lead who already had a sales call booked.

  • 03

    Tells us who we owe a reply

    On Monday mornings and Friday lunchtimes it reads our shared inboxes and sorts every open conversation into replies we owe, people worth chasing and threads to leave alone, each with an owner. It also says what it couldn't check.

  • 04

    Remembers how we work

    It knows our services, prices, past conversations and how we write, so a quick question in Slack gets an answer that fits. It saves standing preferences too, like keeping questions short while we're writing.

  • 05

    Drafts launch material in an afternoon

    When we launched a new Chat Thing feature, Glitch drafted the blog post, the launch email with subject lines to test and the social posts in one afternoon, ready for us to review.

  • +

    Got something different?

    Tell us about your use case. We'll come back with a straight answer about whether it's something we can help build.

It gets things wrong too. We wrote up the mistakes and what we changed in five lessons from using Glitch. Want an agent that does more than this? See AI agent development.

Pricing

What it costs.

A one-off setup fee that includes the computer, then a monthly care plan that keeps the agent running. Your ChatGPT plan with Codex is paid directly to OpenAI.

Setup

£2,500 + VATone-off

Everything needed to get a working agent into your team chat, doing useful jobs.

  • A 32 GB Linux mini PC, set up, tested and posted to you
  • Hermes Agent installed and connected to your Codex subscription
  • Up to two chat apps: Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram or Discord
  • A session on your business, written into the agent's memory
  • Three starter routines, tuned on your real data
  • Approval rules and a handover session for your team

Care plan

£350 + VATper month

Looking after the agent remotely, so it keeps working after the first week.

  • Hermes updates and security patches, tested first
  • Monitoring of the agent and its scheduled routines
  • Encrypted off-site backups of its memory and settings
  • Fixing expired logins and broken connections
  • Small changes to routines and memory as your business changes
  • A direct line to us when something isn't right

Add when you need them

A company knowledge base with Treehouse
We run Pixelhop on Treehouse, a shared knowledge base that our team and Glitch both read and write. We can set one up for your business, so your agent works from the same notes, decisions and documents as your team.
More tools and integrations
Email, calendar, CRM, Notion, analytics, Shopify and other tools you use, connected so the agent can look things up and do the work.
New routines and skills
More jobs written and tuned for your business, such as weekly reports, content drafts or following up with leads.
More chat apps and GitHub
Extra chat apps beyond the first two, and a GitHub account for the agent if your team works with code.

Add-ons are quoted at our day rate of £650 + VAT. If you want an agent built around your own product or systems, that becomes AI agent development.

FAQs

Hermes Agent setup FAQs.

What is Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent is a free, open-source AI agent from Nous Research. It runs on a computer, remembers what it learns, does jobs on a schedule and talks to you through chat apps such as Slack, Teams and WhatsApp. The software is free; you pay for the computer it runs on and the AI model behind it.

Who is a Hermes Agent setup for?

Founders and small teams in the UK who know what AI can do but don't have the time or technical help to set up an always-on agent themselves. It suits businesses that get regular leads or enquiries, have busy shared inboxes, or keep forgetting the same admin. If you want an AI assistant that does real work in Slack, Teams or WhatsApp rather than another chat window, it's for you.

How much does it cost to run each month?

The care plan is £350 + VAT a month. On top of that you pay OpenAI for a ChatGPT plan that includes Codex, which powers the agent. There's no hosting bill, because the agent runs on the computer we send you, and no other running costs unless you add paid tools. See What it costs for the detail.

Do I need to buy any hardware?

No. The £2,500 + VAT setup fee includes a small Linux mini PC with 32 GB of memory and a 1 TB drive. We set it up, test it and post it to you, you plug it into your network and power, and we do the rest remotely. If the hardware ever fails, we restore your agent onto a replacement from its backup.

Do I need a Codex or ChatGPT subscription?

Yes. We recommend a ChatGPT plan with Codex, which is what runs Glitch. The subscription is in your name and paid directly to OpenAI, so you stay in control of it. We connect it to your agent during setup.

Which chat apps does it work with?

Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord are the ones we set up as standard, and Hermes supports others including Signal and email. WhatsApp connects by linking a phone number, the way WhatsApp Web does, so we always set it up on a new number and never your personal one.

Is my data safe?

Your agent runs on its own computer on your network, and it can only reach the tools and accounts you connect. By default it drafts emails and messages for your approval, and it doesn't send anything on its own. We're UK GDPR compliant, and at setup we agree what data the agent can see and who can access it.

What happens when it breaks?

It will, now and again. Logins expire, updates change things and scheduled jobs can fail quietly. We've had all of these with Glitch, which is why the care plan includes monitoring and fixes. You can also message us whenever something looks wrong.

Can I set up Hermes Agent myself?

Yes. It's free, the documentation is good, and if you're comfortable in a terminal you can have it installed in an afternoon. The slower part is preparing and securing the hardware, connecting your chat apps and tools, giving it a memory of your business, writing routines that do real work and keeping all of it running. That's the part we do.

Why Hermes Agent and not OpenClaw?

We ran an OpenClaw agent before we moved Glitch to Hermes, and Hermes is what we've used every day since August 2026. It keeps a memory between conversations, turns jobs it repeats into skills it can reuse and runs scheduled work by itself. Putting every client on the same Hermes setup means we know it inside out and can look after it properly.

Can it grow into something bigger?

Yes. If you later want custom tools, a connection to your own product or an agent your customers talk to, that becomes AI agent development, and the agent you already have is a good place to start from.

Do you work with businesses outside Cornwall?

Yes. We're based in Newquay, Cornwall. We post the computer to you and do the rest remotely, with the business session and handover on video calls. Most of our clients are elsewhere in the UK.

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Want your own Glitch?

Tell us what you'd want it to do first. We'll tell you straight whether an agent is the right fit.

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