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

Del vs Hermes Agent

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Del's 20.6 (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

DelHuman Interface, Inc. · Platform F20.6/100#991 of 1010 Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#244 of 1010

Which one, for what

Del F

Best for People who want tasks, notes, reminders and Gmail handled by text on the channel they already use.

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 25
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 0
  • Security & auth, 75 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 57

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 runDelHermes AgentEdge
Reliability16%202557Hermes Agent +32
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.21080Hermes Agent +70
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%8.86084Hermes Agent +24
Transparency & trust7%8.85763Hermes Agent +6
Negative events≤150-3
TotalF 20.6/100B 67.9/100

Facts side by side

FactDelHermes Agent
KindPlatformAgent harness
VendorHuman Interface, Inc.Nous Research
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingPaidFree
x402nono
LicenceClosed service under Del's Terms of Service (Human Interface, Inc., a Delaware corporation, last updated 5 August 2026).MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-072026-10-11
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

Del

Del is a hosted texting assistant and task workspace across iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, Discord and Slack, with a near-daily public changelog and a card-free 14-day trial. No outside agent can call it, no status page or security contact was found, and recent updates let some email actions skip approval.

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

Del

  1. Don't plan to call Del from another agent. It answers only the owner's messaging threads and web workspace.
  2. Tell the owner web browsing tasks are limited to five a month on Standard and unlimited on Pro.

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, Del or Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Del's 20.6 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Del and Hermes Agent open source?

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

Other comparisons with Del or Hermes Agent

Disclosure

Del 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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