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Head to head · Proactive personal assistants · October 2026 research run

Hermes Agent vs Lobby

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Lobby's 11.1 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do proactive personal assistants.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1005 assistants comparisons

Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#263 of 1190 LobbyLobby OS, Inc. · Platform F11.1/100#1175 of 1190

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 15
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 10
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 0
  • Security & auth, 75 against 0
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 2
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 43

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.0 out of 5

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

Lobby F

Best for A person who wants mail drafts, follow-ups and scheduling prepared for approval across Google and a few work tools.

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.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHermes AgentLobbyEdge
Reliability16%205715Hermes Agent +42
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28010Hermes Agent +70
Agent ergonomics13%16.2800Hermes Agent +80
Security & auth14%17.5750Hermes Agent +75
Payments & pricing10%12.56020Hermes Agent +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8842Hermes Agent +82
Transparency & trust7%8.86343Hermes Agent +20
Negative events≤15-30
TotalB 67.9/100F 11.1/100

Facts side by side

FactHermes AgentLobby
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNous ResearchLobby OS, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Lobby's Terms of Use (Lobby OS, Inc.), last updated 26 March 2026.
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-11none
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
Popularity253k starsnone
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)2/5 (4)

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.

Lobby

Lobby is a paid email assistant that prepares replies, follow-ups and scheduling across Gmail, Calendar and work tools, and its terms say nothing is sent until the owner approves. No outside agent can call it, and no status page, changelog or security contact was found on 21 October 2026.

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

Lobby

  1. Don't plan to call Lobby from another agent. It works only inside its own app for the signed-in owner.
  2. Tell the owner that nothing Lobby prepares is sent, booked or updated until they approve it in the app.
  3. Check whether the 7-day trial takes a card before signing the owner up. The terms don't say.

Questions

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

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Lobby's 11.1 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Hermes Agent and Lobby open source?

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

Other comparisons with Hermes Agent or Lobby

Disclosure

Lobby 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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