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Head to head · Assistant proactive · October 2026 research run

Hermes Agent vs Poke

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (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 PokeThe Interaction Company of California Inc. · Platform F37.6/100#955 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 51
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 42
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 30
  • Security & auth, 75 against 24
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 31
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 58

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card
  • 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

Poke F

Best for One person who wants an assistant in their text messages that reads and drafts mail, manages a calendar and reaches other apps through MCP.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

No documented setting for which actions need approval before Poke sends, deletes or spends. Release notes mention email draft approval only in passing

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHermes AgentPokeEdge
Reliability16%205751Hermes Agent +6
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28042Hermes Agent +38
Agent ergonomics13%16.28030Hermes Agent +50
Security & auth14%17.57524Hermes Agent +51
Payments & pricing10%12.56030Hermes Agent +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88431Hermes Agent +53
Transparency & trust7%8.86358Hermes Agent +5
Negative events≤15-30
TotalB 67.9/100F 37.6/100

Facts side by side

FactHermes AgentPoke
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNous ResearchThe Interaction Company of California Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsHTTP
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary service under Poke's Terms of Service. The poke npm package (CLI and Node.js SDK) declares MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-112026-06-25
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-03-17
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-11
Customer content may train modelsyes
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.

Poke

Hosted assistant that answers in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram and RCS and acts in Gmail, Outlook, calendars and MCP servers. Plan prices and a status page are public. No approval settings, credential storage, model providers or retention periods are documented, and customer content trains models unless Maximum Privacy is selected.

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

Poke

  1. POST JSON to https://poke.com/api/v1/inbound/api-message with a Bearer key from Kitchen. Legacy pk_ keys work only on the deprecated /api/v1/inbound-sms/webhook
  2. Expect only {"success": true} back. Poke's answer goes to the owner's message thread, not to the caller
  3. Do not retry a POST blindly. No idempotency key is documented, and a repeated message may make Poke act twice
  4. Treat an API key as full access to the owner's mail, calendar and integrations. Create one key per automation and revoke it when done
  5. Avoid the prefilled integration link with apiKey in the query string for real secrets. Enter the key in the form or use npx poke@latest mcp add -k

Questions

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

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Poke's 37.6 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Hermes Agent and Poke open source?

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

Other comparisons with Hermes Agent or Poke

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