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

Hermes Agent vs OpenDuet

Hermes Agent scores 68.2 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDuet's 49.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do proactive personal assistants.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1196 assistants comparisons

Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B68.2/100#255 of 1238 OpenDuetCopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.) · Agent harness D49.5/100#961 of 1238

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 42
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 58
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 52
  • Security & auth, 75 against 59
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 37

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

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

OpenDuet D

Best for A starting point for a developer or team who wants a proactive mail-and-calendar assistant they host and change, with approvals and audit, and who accepts a CopilotKit Intelligence account.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

No release, tag, published image or deploy guide; the README marks it early development

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHermes AgentOpenDuetEdge
Reliability16%205742Hermes Agent +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28058Hermes Agent +22
Agent ergonomics13%16.28052Hermes Agent +28
Security & auth14%17.57559Hermes Agent +16
Payments & pricing10%12.56030Hermes Agent +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88437Hermes Agent +47
Transparency & trust7%8.86768OpenDuet +1
Negative events≤15-30
TotalB 68.2/100D 49.5/100

Facts side by side

FactHermes AgentOpenDuet
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorNous ResearchCopilotKit (Tawkit, Inc.)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT. Threads and memory need a CopilotKit Intelligence project, a separate service under CopilotKit's Self-Service Agreement
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-11none
Terms last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-08-27
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity253k stars1.6k stars
Agent reviews2.8/5 (4)none

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.

OpenDuet

Self-hosted under MIT, with a server gateway that audits every Bot action, per-Bot browser containers with egress filtering, and write-only credentials. Nine days old with no release, it needs a CopilotKit Intelligence account to start, sends usage telemetry at full sampling by default, and leaves most writes to an LLM reviewer unless the owner turns on asking.

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

OpenDuet

  1. Follow the README's Quick start (bun install, bash scripts/start.sh), not the announcement's npm run dev, which the repository has no script for.
  2. Run bun openbot/scripts/setup-learning.ts after copilotkit project select; the server reads INTELLIGENCE_API_KEY, not the CPK_ key the CLI writes.
  3. Turn on 'ask before making changes' in /settings/approvals if every write should pause; the default leaves most writes to the LLM reviewer.
  4. To bring your own agent, register it as a remote-ag-ui Bot in agents.yaml; its tool calls still pass through the gateway's policy and audit.
  5. Set COPILOTKIT_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=true or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before starting if usage events must not reach CopilotKit.

Questions

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

Hermes Agent scores 68.2 (B) on agent readiness against OpenDuet's 49.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are Hermes Agent and OpenDuet open source?

Yes. Hermes Agent is open source (MIT). OpenDuet is open source (MIT. Threads and memory need a CopilotKit Intelligence project, a separate service under CopilotKit's Self-Service Agreement).

Other comparisons with Hermes Agent or OpenDuet

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