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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Hermes Agent vs Lindy

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Lindy's 32.3 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistant proactive.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 190 assistants comparisons

Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#244 of 986 LindyCrivello Corp (doing business as Lindy) · Platform F32.3/100#968 of 986

Which one, for what

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 24
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 32
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 43
  • Security & auth, 75 against 49
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 35
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 9
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 52

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

Lindy F

Best for Lindy suits a person or small team that lives in Slack and Google or Microsoft mail and wants briefs, drafts, scheduling and meeting notes done on a schedule.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

The integrations page says approval settings apply in shared Slack threads only. Web chat, Slack direct messages, iMessage and SMS are not covered, and reads are never covered.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHermes AgentLindyEdge
Reliability16%205724Hermes Agent +33
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28032Hermes Agent +48
Agent ergonomics13%16.28043Hermes Agent +37
Security & auth14%17.57549Hermes Agent +26
Payments & pricing10%12.56035Hermes Agent +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8849Hermes Agent +75
Transparency & trust7%8.86352Hermes Agent +11
Negative events≤15-3-3
TotalB 67.9/100F 32.3/100

Facts side by side

FactHermes AgentLindy
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNous ResearchCrivello Corp (doing business as Lindy)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary service under Lindy's Terms of Service. No source is published
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-112025-10-21
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-09-24
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-28
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity253k starsnone

Verdicts

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.

Lindy

Lindy keeps what it remembers in files the owner can read and edit, and publishes credit prices. Its approval setting applies in shared Slack threads only, so writes asked for by direct message, text or web chat run unasked, which its pricing page does not say. It has no status page, and its changelog stops in October 2025.

Before you call either

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

Lindy

  1. Treat a request sent by direct message, text or web chat as unguarded. Approval prompts appear in shared Slack threads only.
  2. Run a routine as a dry run before turning it on. A dry run reads real data and sends, posts and writes nothing.
  3. Turn off unused tools after adding an MCP server. Every supported tool arrives switched on, and a large server adds more than a hundred.
  4. Expect a billed seat for anyone who mentions Lindy in Slack. A teammate who joins that way has seven free days first.
  5. Connect only hosted MCP servers on public HTTPS with streamable HTTP, the one kind the docs describe.

Questions

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

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Lindy's 32.3 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Hermes Agent and Lindy open source?

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

Other comparisons with Hermes Agent or Lindy

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