For the past month, I have spent so much time talking to AI — to the point where my fiance threatened to leave me (jk but she got very very mad).
Most of the time was spent debugging, fixing errors, adjusting the right configs, and making sure Hermes do things properly without making the same mistakes twice.
Disclaimer: Again, I’m using both Hermes & Claude as learning augments — they help me shorten the time for me to consume information & make decision (for investment, for trading/predicting, and for everything else in life). Execution is done purely by me (because I don’t trust AI enough yet even with the guardrails)
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## Here’s how my 1 month with Hermes went by
• Week 1: learning how to configure basic model/inference provider set up. Tried many openrouter model setup/anthropic API and learned that opencode-go is the best subscription to get started
• Week 2-3: learning how to properly delegate work, identifying clear tasks with clear end results. Learned that I have to be very specific in pointing out “remember”, “make sure to adjust [x] cron job” otherwise Hermes could forget or miss out on something. I also learned to implement health check to make sure to detect bugs ahead of cron jobs
• Week 4: my world shattered on week 4 because I realized I’ve been using Hermes wrong all along. Hermes is not a builder, he’s an operator
## Hear me out on this
What makes Hermes great is its persistent memory + self-learning loop — it remembers things across session, automatically setup skills if it thinks it’s necessary & can reduce time for the task next time (you can’t find this in Codex or Claude Code).
These characteristics make Hermes a perfect fit for recurring automated jobs like delivering reports/alerts that are tailored for your preference (i.e. a second brain that look out for you).
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## What it’s not good at is being a Builder
At least if you’re a non-technical like me, it’s so much easier to use Claude to create artifacts, websites, dashboards, slides, excel, anything that you wanna build with an ok design. It might just be because of the frontier models but also spending $100/month for Claude subs get you more inference than paying $100/month for Opus 4.7 on Openrouter.
Because of this learning, I now nominate Claude to be “the Builder” and Hermes to be “the Operator”
The Builder: builds dashboard/websites with passable aesthetics, configure UI/UX change or any other change (i.e. the developer/engineer).
Great for one-time building task.
The Operator: delivers report, analyze data, gleans & pulls data from the dashboard and learn from it (i.e. the analyst/assistant).
Great for on-going tasks tailored to your preference.
Hermes could build stuff — but based on my experience, it takes a lot of time for Hermes to build and the result is not on par with Claude (unless you use frontier models ofc). Plus, both Claude and Codex have built-in features/products that make it easy for non-technical people to navigate the UI and build, Hermes has none of that.
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