Hermes AgentvsKelos
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Hermes Agent
Nous Research · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.84 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.2
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 7.2
- Longevity
- 7.2
“Reachable on Signal and by email, so you can now be left on read by an agent on six platforms.”
Kelos
Kelos · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.82 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.0
- Usefulness
- 7.0
- Cost
- 7.0
- Longevity
- 6.2
“Agents can be spawned from a cron entry, so your codebase now changes on a schedule whether or not anybody asked.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Hermes Agent | Kelos |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local, cloud, sandbox | cloud, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, web |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | Yes | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | No | Yes |
| Browser control | Yes | No |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | YesEvery agent runs in an isolated Kubernetes Pod or Job rather than on a developer laptop. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, Cursor, custom agent images) |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | Yes | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | $20/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| GitHub stars | 250,643 | 335 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Hermes Agent | Kelos | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.0 | 6.8 | Hermes Agent — Pick Hermes Agent if you want an agent that writes its own skills and keeps running after you close the laptop; pick OpenClaw if you want a broader household assistant. |
| El Crítico | 6.3 | 6.0 | Hermes Agent — An agent that writes its own skills from experience ships behaviour nobody reviewed, and the first place it runs them is your own shell. |
| El Profesor | 6.8 | 7.3 | Kelos — Task status records the branches, commits, pull requests and token usage a run produced, which turns the outcome of an agent into a queryable field rather than a screenshot. |
| La Inversora | 6.8 | 6.3 | Hermes Agent — Nous Research gives the agent away and sells the Portal: 300-plus models, search, images and a cloud browser under one subscription from $20 a month, with a free tier as the funnel. |
| La Jefa | 5.3 | 6.8 | Kelos — Identity, roles and audit come from the cluster I already operate, which is the first time this quarter a tool answered the security questionnaire by not existing separately. |
| El Hacker | 8.5 | 7.8 | Hermes Agent — MIT, ~/.hermes with hermes config set, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, Ollama, vLLM and llama.cpp, and MCP servers configured from the docs page; I can run this air-gapped. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.