Hermes Desktop looks like a cleaner way

to chat with an AI agent. That is not

why I care about it, though. The reason

I care about Hermes Desktop is that it

finally makes the parts of Hermes that

were already powerful actually visible.

Your files are visible. Your tools are

visible. Your sessions are visible. And

your scheduled jobs are visible. And

[music] when you set it up properly, it

stops feeling like another AI chat app

and starts feeling like a command center

for your entire computer. So, in this

video, I want to show you seven Hermes

Desktop hacks that I have been using

every day. These are the workflows that

make Hermes feel [music] less like a

chatbot and more like an AI employee

sitting inside your machine. Let's get

into hack number one.

The first hack is to stop asking Hermes

to immediately do the task and instead

ask Hermes to interview you before it

even starts.

This sounds like a very small thing, but

it fixes one of the biggest problems

with AI agents.

They start working way too early. Or

sometimes they don't understand what we

actually want. So, if I say something

like, I don't know, find me homes in in

France.

Hermes can technically start searching.

But that is not the real task. The real

task is help me find homes in France

that fit within my budget, that

are within the cities that I would like

to be in, that are, I don't know, that

have a garden or whatever my preferences

are. That means the agent needs taste,

context, budget, location, emotion, what

are my deal breakers, what are my

big pluses, and the reason behind the

purchase. So, instead of giving Hermes a

vague task, I use a prompt like this.

Help me find homes to buy in France. Use

ask user question until you reach

clarity.

And once you submit that, you're going

to see that since this is a desktop app

and you're not operating on Telegram, it

can do things like

embed a questioner. There you go. Inside

of Hermes agent, which is pretty neat

way to prompt your Hermes agent. So

here, look at this. It's asking, "What's

the real buying brief for France? Start

with the constraint that changes

everything. What is your all-in budget?"

Which is super important for a task like

this. So it breaks down the task. It

thinks, "What are the things I need

clarity on? What are the question marks

I have? The gaps

that I need filled before I run this

prompt properly. So let's say we go, I

don't know, 100k all-in. What is the

main purpose? The answer decides whether

I hunt charming usable rural houses or

tourist rental resale safe location.

Uh say I want a holiday weekend home.

There you go. It's narrowing down

exactly what it needs.

Uh I want to be able to drive. Shortest

drive. I don't know. I'm just answering

uh randomly here

right now.

>> [sighs]

>> Lucky for you, I'm not doing uh

home shopping uh live during this video.

What renovation tolerance should I

enforce?

Move-in usable for 100,000 in this

economy.

Buying a a move-in ready home

is going to be tough, but I mean, I

It's asking me for my criteria.

One bed minimum is fine. Two bedrooms

minimum. Two bedrooms minimum.

Absolutely can't have any less.

What's the minimum for it to feel like a

holiday home? A small garden is

required. What vibe should I optimize

for inside? Northern France, cute

village with cafes nearby. How strict is

the cafes nearby?

Uh

under a

15-minute walk. Final filter, should I

prioritize charm, romance, or resale

safety when there's a trade-off? Uh

always prioritize resale safety.

Not financial advice, but hey. And there

you go. It now knows my entire brief,

and I can tell it go ahead. Now that it

knows my brief, go ahead and start with

the search. Simple as that. Do you see

how with this information

Hermes can help you

find or do exactly what you want in the

exact way you want it?

And sometimes ways you didn't even know,

like

were I to look for a home,

I would not have thought of giving

Hermes

this descriptor. I want it to be a cute

village, but once it asked me, it also

allows me to think out loud and to

realize my priorities, and it helps it

narrow down on exactly what it is you

want to find or do.

So, if the task has taste, money, risk,

personal preference, or just unclear

constraints, do not let the agent start

immediately. Make it interview you

first. Because a good assistant does not

just run with a bad brief. A good

assistant asks the right questions until

the brief is worth acting on. And once

Hermes has asked those questions, the

next hack is to not throw that context

away. On to hack number two.

The second hack is to pin your most used

sessions.

This is one of those things that sound

basic until you actually start using

Hermes Desktop for real work. If every

time you open the app, you start a new

chat, you're basically just hiring a new

assistant every morning and explaining

your entire life again.

>> I want you to buy me a new home. I want

it to be perfect. I want it to be

shining. I want it to be in the best

location ever. I want it under $5. I

want every single thing to be neat and

perfect.

>> Wait.

Who is this?

But, that is not how real work happens.

In Hermes Desktop, I can keep my

important sessions visible and come back

to them anytime I want. So, instead of

having to start from scratch every time,

I can have one pin session be around my

YouTube channel, another be around this

home purchase that we just narrowed down

on, another for me is investments,

another is email. Having Hermes take

care and manage my email, flag any

missing emails I might have not replied

to. Each session becomes a workspace

with its own decision trail. That way,

when you're coming back tomorrow, you

won't have to re-explain the context

from scratch every single time. You can

just open up the right pinned

conversation. Pin sessions turn Hermes

from random chats into recurring

workspaces. And once you combine this

with the first hack where Hermes

interviews you before doing the work,

every pin session becomes more valuable

over time. And that is a real shift.

You're not collecting chats, you're

building workspaces that compound. On to

hack three.

If you use Hermes for real work, you

will notice something annoying. You keep

writing the same instructions sometimes

over and over again. For me, that might

be

when I ask it to check posted videos

before suggesting YouTube ideas. I tell

it go use vidIQ before writing tags. Do

not use m dashes. Do not write generic

AI guru descriptions. Label evidence

properly. Verify the output before

telling me it's done. The list goes on

and on and on. And there are a set of

instructions that I needed to go through

whenever I'm uploading a YouTube video,

for example. Or

or I can turn that into a skill.

A skill is basically just that. It's a

reusable operating procedure

that Hermes can use every time I ask it

something.

It tells the agent when to use it, what

to check, what workflows to follow, what

mistakes to avoid, and what the final

output should look like. That sounds

boring until you see what it does.

Instead of prompting from scratch, you

give Hermes the playbook. For example,

you could create a skill called filming

brief. That skill could say when I move

a YouTube idea on my Notion database

from idea to to film status, check

whether I already posted it. Validate

the current demand for this video. Give

me ways to improve the title. List proof

assets and write the first 30 seconds.

Now, every time you ask for a filming

brief, Hermes is not improvising. It is

following your actual standard.

This is the difference between hiring a

smart freelancer once and training an

employee to do your work your way and

actually making use of Hermes' ability

to self-improve. So, say for example, I

go to YouTube

and I want

I

need

video idea, for example, you're going to

see very quickly that it's going to

start using the skills that we've

developed together.

There you go, skill view. Right away.

Didn't even need to think much, just

skill view. Oh, we have a skill for

that. And instead of me having to

explain in detail what it is that I need

and how to operate and how to do it and

what are each and every single step

needed,

it will just use a skill right away. And

[snorts] the great thing, the amazing

thing and while this does There you go,

it's using the vidIQ bridge, it's using

every single

point in that procedure list

after the other.

>> [snorts]

>> The great thing about Hermes Desktop is

you literally have all of your skills

listed right here. You can see them, you

can turn them on, you can turn them off.

You can edit them, you can do whatever

you'd like. You can also search up uh

the skill, for example, Nova, which is

my YouTube uh helping skill, my YouTube

agent. Or I can search up my X agent

skill, Sage X. There you go, Charbel's X

content strategist. I can turn him off,

on, edit him, whatever I'd like to do.

Skills are a massive upgrade for your

Hermes workflow. But skills are only one

layer. The next task is where Hermes

starts doing work even when you're not

sitting there prompting it.

This is one of my favorite Hermes

workflows because a normal AI assistant

waits for you to ask for it something. A

useful assistant messages you first.

That is what cron jobs are for.

Cron is just scheduled work. Every

morning, every hour, every Monday,

whatever you choose.

But inside Hermes, Cron becomes much

more useful because the scheduled job

can actually think, research, summarize,

and send you the result. For example, I

can have Hermes check for fresh AI news

every morning, or scan YouTube topics,

or look for X reaction opportunities, or

review my content board. The key is not

to make Cron jobs noisy, uh

as in don't have a billion different

Cron jobs that you never use.

A bad Cron jobs, because then trust me,

you will just be overloaded with a bunch

of information that you don't use,

you'll never use, you've never used. I

don't know why you even have them.

Hermes doesn't even know why you even

have them. Why are you even using

Hermes? Why am I using Hermes? I don't

know anything anymore. But, let me show

you that real quick. In desktop, the

Cron layer becomes a lot more manageable

because it's a lot more visible. It's

right here, Cron jobs. You can expand

it, and you will see all of your Cron

jobs. So, let's say for example, this

Cron job, Notion to film brief watcher.

Uh the watcher I was telling you about.

If I move an item from idea to to film

on Notion, it will uh

research that idea. Is it a good idea?

Is it bad? What is a better title? You

can either trigger now straight from uh

the Hermes desktop app, or you can even

manage it. So, if I go to manage, this

is what you'll see. You'll see a run

history, as well as an edit Cron. You'll

be able to change its name, you'll be

able to change its prompt, its

frequency, where it delivers it to, and

whether it has a custom schedule. Here's

an example of a custom schedule, only

weekdays at 9:00 a.m. So, it's not every

single day. One thing I'd love to see in

Hermes in the future is sometimes when I

create a cron through Telegram, for

example, it won't really show it

properly here. For example, this is a

cron I've created through Telegram using

Hermes on Telegram, and it doesn't show

the prompt that I used. It doesn't show

the the real frequency uh or the custom

schedule that I've inputted. So, I wish

it would, instead of, you know, only

displaying the ones I have built inside

of Hermes desktop. But, that's it. This

is insane because now I'm able to see

the things consuming my AI agents'

credits and LLM usage and the bill that

I get at the end of the month, I'm able

to see them and turn them on or off or

manage them at a simple click of a

button. I don't need to ask, "Hey, list

me all the cron jobs you have." I can

just go and see and turn them off very

easily by literally just pressing pause.

Boom. And once you have scheduled

intelligence, the next step is

event-trigger intelligence.

Let's go. Hack number five.

Cron is time-triggered.

Webhooks [snorts]

are event-triggered.

And that difference matters a lot

because cron is "Every morning, check

what happened." But, a webhook is "When

this specific thing happens, wake Hermes

up and do the next step."

So, let me paint a clearer picture for

you. If [snorts] a Notion page moves

from idea to the film, like the thing I

was telling you about earlier,

Hermes can wake up and generate a

filming brief. Say I have a form that I

sent to clients. If a client fills out

that form and the form is submitted,

Hermes can wake up and qualify a lead.

If a new competitor uploads a video,

Hermes can wake up and inspect whether

it is worth reacting to. That is where

the system becomes much more

interesting. You're not just chatting

with an agent. You're connecting Hermes

to places where work already happens.

You're making it go look at

the triggers that trigger you to work.

You're basically telling it, "Hey,

instead of me going and, you know,

staying online 24/7, you do that. You

stay online 24/7 and watch events

happen. And if an event happens that

interests me,

then run that job to it, react to it,

create work

from it and through it. Okay, I know I'm

hammering you with this literally this

one example, but I find that's one of

the best examples

for me to explain this concept to you.

It's an example that resonates with a

lot of people,

which is the Notion example. So, say I

really like an idea, a $0 to $10,000

AI challenge, and I move it to two film

{slash} write

on Notion, which is where I plan most of

my videos, as you can see.

>> [snorts]

>> What this does is this triggers my cron

job, which is linked to a webhook. So,

the webhook is always

awake or maybe every 10 minutes it reads

whether an event has happened. So, say I

press trigger now if I want to force it

cuz

it said in 7 minutes it was going to

fire. If I don't want to wait,

I can just trigger it. If I want to

wait, then it can just happen in 7

minutes. Once I trigger it or once it

triggers itself, then it sends me a

message here on whether I should film it

or not, what are better title uh

ideas for it or even if it's a good

idea. This is a great example, by the

way, something it sent me right now

because I've uploaded a new video, Can

ChatGPT actually make Minecraft? Which

is a banger video that you should watch.

But anyway, whenever I upload a new

video, it

sees that and it reacts right away. It

starts tracking that. How is that video

doing?

Uh what is its performance like? Should

I change the title? Should I do anything

to it? Is its click-through rate high?

Is it low? Is its watch time high? Is it

low?

And starts suggesting edits for me to

enhance that video, that already

existing upload better. But there is one

more layer that makes this even more

powerful. You do not want one agent

doing every single job. On to hack six.

The sixth hack is to stop using one

generic assistant for every single job.

For me, the best example I can give you

is YouTube. I do not want my YouTube

agent to behave like my coding agent or

my research agent or

my personal administrator. I want a

specialist. So I have a Hermes profile

called Nova. Nova is not just a new

chat. It is a separate YouTube

strategist profile with its own role,

memory, skills, sessions, and entirely

different workflows. That means when I

open Nova, it already knows the job. It

knows to check my posted videos before

for suggesting ideas.

It knows my content board lives in

Notion. It knows to use tools like VidIQ

before making YouTube recommendations.

And it knows how much I care about

titles, retention, thumbnails,

so on and so forth. And it also knows

what I hate. That is the difference

between prompting an assistant and

training a specialist specifically. And

the lovely thing on Hermes agent desktop

is you can switch between them so

easily. I can go to Nova, for example,

and load up my Nova specific sessions my

PIN chat. I don't have any, but

uh if you did have a PIN chat with that

specific agent, then you could

access that that quickly, and [snorts]

you could even manage their profiles.

For my default, this is my profile. For

Nova in specific, she has a different

soul bot and D file, uh which all the

other ones share. But, if you'd like the

soul of your agent to be different or

any of your specialist to be different,

then this is where you can customize it.

You could rename them. You could even

change the model that that specific

agent uses. So, if I don't know, uh you

need an agent to be on Anthropic's

Claude, for example,

you can just set it up so that every

time you open that agent, they are

already using the exact soul file you

want, the exact skills that you want,

the exact model, AI model that you want

them to have access to. And that's one

of the best things. You can also create

new profiles straight on Hermes desktop.

One of the best examples I like to give

here is you do not want your dentist to

be your heart surgeon.

Uh I mean, both of them are great at

their job, but

I mean, I don't really need to explain

why your dentist shouldn't be your heart

surgeon. Profiles let you separate those

jobs instead of forcing one messy

assistant to do all of the different

jobs.

And once you see it in this way, Hermes

desktop stops being one AI chat app, and

it becomes a place where you can manage

a team of specialist agents.

But, that being said, on to the last

hack.

The last hack in this video is one that

I don't think many people will

especially go crazy for, which is why

I've included it at number seven, but

it's one that I think more people are

going to care about over time.

>> [snorts]

>> Hermes desktop does not have to only

talk to the Hermes instance running on

the same computer. You can point it at a

Hermes back end running somewhere else,

whether it's a VPS or a home server or a

Mac mini, a separate device, a machine

that stays on 24/7. So, for me, I have a

Mac mini running 24/7. It is where my

main Hermes agent instance lives.

Yet, the PC that I use the most, the

setup that I use the most is my

laptop. So, I don't want to have to

switch between both devices every single

time, which is great because I can

connect Hermes desktop

to the same Hermes instance as the one

on my Mac mini, as the one on my local

device. And if you'd like to do that

yourself, all you have to do is click on

this setting icon

and go to

gateway. And this is where you can

choose what gateway you want, whether

it's local, so one that's running on

your current machine, the one that

you're operating right now, or another

gateway, which is what I have picked.

You input the gateway's URL. You can ask

Hermes itself to help you set it up. You

don't have to worry about all these

technicalities. You can test remote.

Once it's tested and connected and it

works,

save and reconnect. And that's literally

it. You can access the logs here in case

there's any errors. You can troubleshoot

with that. The great thing as well, and

that's maybe an advanced hack,

inside this hack, is you can connect

different agents to different gateway

instances.

How cool is that? You can I don't know,

if you have multiple devices or if you

have one instance, one specialist agent

on one device and another on another,

then

you see where this is going. You can

connect them to different instances. Or

if you have one on VPS and one on your

local device, then you can connect both

all under one

uh

surface, all on the same application,

which I love. I love being able to

access all of my Hermes instances in one

simple UI.

One simple application. Look, Hermes

Desktop is not interesting because it

makes your Hermes agent prettier or the

chat interface prettier. It is [snorts]

interesting because it makes agent

infrastructure easily understandable and

easy to access with project folders,

sessions,

skills, cron jobs, webhooks. I mean,

we've covered a lot in this video. Those

are the pieces that turn Hermes from

something you prompt into something you

operate. If you only use Desktop as a

chat window, it's nice, don't get me

wrong, but if you use it as a control

room for your files, your workflows,

your jobs, your specialist agents, it

becomes a completely different thing

that you're using. And if you connect it

to a machine that stays on all the time

like a Mac mini or a VPS or just any

machine, that is when it starts to feel

like a real AI employee. Not because

it's magic, because it finally has

somewhere to live. If you want me to

make a full walk-through of my exact

Hermes setup, how to go from zero to

100, then comment the word setup and I

will turn the whole thing into a

step-by-step guide for you. And if

you've enjoyed this video, make sure to

subscribe. I have a ton more just like

this and oh, would you look Look that?

The YouTube algorithm gods think you

will really enjoy this video next. So,

I'll see you there.