Get an audit

Head to head · Assistants reached by message · October 2026 research run

Hermes Agent vs Tab

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Tab's 10.7 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do assistants reached by message.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 834 assistants comparisons

Hermes AgentNous Research · Agent harness B67.9/100#244 of 1010 TabTerrasoft, Inc. · Platform F10.7/100#1003 of 1010

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 5
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 0
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 0
  • Security & auth, 75 against 4
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 0
  • Maintenance & community, 84 against 58
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 45

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

Tab F

Best for A person who wants a texting assistant that browses, calls and buys with tight checkout controls.

Also in its favour

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

Watch for

Private beta behind a waitlist.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runHermes AgentTabEdge
Reliability16%20575Hermes Agent +52
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.2800Hermes Agent +80
Agent ergonomics13%16.2800Hermes Agent +80
Security & auth14%17.5754Hermes Agent +71
Payments & pricing10%12.5600Hermes Agent +60
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88458Hermes Agent +26
Transparency & trust7%8.86345Hermes Agent +18
Negative events≤15-30
TotalB 67.9/100F 10.7/100

Facts side by side

FactHermes AgentTab
KindAgent harnessPlatform
VendorNous ResearchTerrasoft, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreePaid
x402nono
LicenceMITClosed service under Tab's Terms of Use (Terrasoft, Inc., effective 2 September 2026).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
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

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.

Tab

Tab is a private-beta texting assistant with a detailed security page on credential isolation and checkout binding, and a public updates page. No outside agent can call it, no price is published, and its privacy policy says nothing on training with user content.

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

Tab

  1. Don't plan to call Tab from another agent. It answers only the owner's Messages or WhatsApp thread.
  2. Tell the owner that access needs a waitlist place and no price is published.

Questions

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

Hermes Agent scores 67.9 (B) on agent readiness against Tab's 10.7 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Hermes Agent and Tab open source?

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

Other comparisons with Hermes Agent or Tab

Disclosure

Tab 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.

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report