Haven vs Hermes Agent

Haven

Haven answers by phone call, text, email and app, is free in beta with no card, and publishes a status page with dated incidents. No public page read says which actions need approval, which accounts it connects or how their tokens are kept, and it names no model provider or sub-processor.

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.

Haven

1. Haven has no documented API or MCP server. An outside agent can reach it only through the owner's channels (call, SMS, email, app).
2. Do not assume an approval step before Haven sends mail, texts or calls. None is documented on the public pages.
3. Email Haven sends to other people names Hello Haven as sender and says it was sent on the user's behalf, per the terms.
4. Chat messages, history, profile context and uploaded files go to third-party AI model providers that the vendor does not name.
5. Check status.hellohaven.ai before relying on phone or voice. All four published incidents affected those channels.

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