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Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

Boba vs Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

Bobahumans& ai, inc. · Platform F10.3/100#1004 of 1010 Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#244 of 1010

Which one, for what

Boba F

Best for Groups who want a free assistant inside a shared chat for planning, drafting and images.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Hermes Agent loses 3 points for them

Watch for

No API, MCP server or A2A endpoint for an outside agent.

Hermes Agent B

Best for A technical owner who wants one always-on agent across chat apps with memory and scheduled jobs, on their own machine or a small server, with any model.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 57 against 15
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 0
  • Security & auth, 75 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 39

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

The default terminal backend runs commands on the host, and the default smart mode lets an auxiliary model approve commands it rates low-risk

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBobaHermes AgentEdge
Reliability16%201557Hermes Agent +42
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2080Hermes Agent +80
Agent ergonomics13%16.2080Hermes Agent +80
Security & auth14%17.5075Hermes Agent +75
Payments & pricing10%12.53060Hermes Agent +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8284Hermes Agent +82
Transparency & trust7%8.83963Hermes Agent +24
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 10.3/100B 67.9/100

Facts side by side

FactBobaHermes Agent
KindPlatformAgent harness
Vendorhumans& ai, inc.Nous Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Boba's Terms of Service (humans& ai, inc., last updated 5 October 2026).MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last releasenone2026-10-11
Terms last updatedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularitynone253k stars

Verdicts

Boba

Boba is a free texting assistant for one-to-one and group chats over iMessage, RCS and SMS, started by sending one message with no card or app. No outside agent can call it, its privacy notice uses inputs and outputs to train its models with no opt-out found, and no status page or security contact was found.

Hermes Agent

Card payments always ask first and are refused in unattended sessions, and the messaging gateway denies every sender until an allowlist is set. Shell commands run on the host by default with a model judging risk, and sending mail through the Google Workspace skill is held back only by an instruction to the model.

Before you call either

Boba

  1. Don't plan to call Boba from another agent. It answers only text messages in the Messages app.
  2. Tell people in a group chat that messages sent to Boba may be used to train its models.

Hermes Agent

  1. Set approvals.mode: manual before giving it real accounts. The default smart lets an auxiliary model approve commands
  2. Run the gateway with terminal.backend: docker or the project's Docker image when it reads mail, web pages or group chats
  3. Set memory.write_approval: true and skills.write_approval: true to review what it saves about the owner
  4. Leave approvals.cron_mode and approvals.unattended_mode at deny for scheduled and webhook runs
  5. Set TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS or the matching allowlist per channel. Never set GATEWAY_ALLOW_ALL_USERS=true

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Boba or Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Boba's 10.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Boba and Hermes Agent open source?

No open-source release is listed for Boba. Hermes Agent is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Boba or Hermes Agent

Disclosure

Boba competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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