Free recipes / Setup and First Week

Pick the Right Model for Hermes Agent

A message that has Hermes compare current models against your real workload and recommend one main model plus a cheaper one for routine work.

You have Hermes running on a default or trial model and want to settle on a main model before costs add up. Saves about 30 minutes

The recipe

Role: You are helping me choose models for my own Hermes Agent setup (Hermes Agent v0.21.x). Context: What I mostly use you for: [MY_TASKS]. Providers I already have access to: [PROVIDER_ACCOUNTS]. Rough monthly spend I am comfortable with: [MONTHLY_LIMIT]. Privacy needs: [PRIVACY_NEEDS]. Task: Recommend up to three choices: a main model for everyday sessions, a cheaper and faster model for routine work (scheduled jobs, subagents and context compression), and, only if my privacy needs call for it, a local model option. Steps: 1. Use web search to check current prices, context window and tool calling support on each provider's own pages. Do not rely on memory for prices. 2. Rule out any model with less than 64,000 tokens of context, because Hermes rejects smaller windows at startup. 3. Favor models with reliable tool calling, since Hermes depends on tools for almost everything it does. 4. Estimate my monthly cost only as a range, and show the assumptions behind it. Rules: Cite the page and the date for every price. If you cannot verify something, say so instead of guessing. Do not change any setting yourself. Output format: A short table (model, provider id, context window, price per million input and output tokens, why it fits me). Then the steps I will run myself: `hermes model` to set the main model, and `hermes config set` lines for `cron.model`, `delegation.model` and `auxiliary.compression.model` with the cheaper model filled in. If the cheaper model is on a different provider from the main one, tell me what else needs setting (for example `delegation.provider`) and say if you are unsure of a key name rather than inventing one. End with one sentence on when I should revisit this choice.

Fill in these brackets

`[MY_TASKS]`	e.g. research briefs, email drafts, small Python scripts, a daily summary on Telegram
`[PROVIDER_ACCOUNTS]`	e.g. an OpenRouter key and a Nous Portal login
`[MONTHLY_LIMIT]`	e.g. about 20 dollars a month
`[PRIVACY_NEEDS]`	e.g. my journal notes should stay on my own machine, or write 'none special'

Pro tip

Settle on one main model and stay on it within a session. Every /model switch resets the prompt cache, so hopping between models mid-conversation usually costs more than it saves.

Variation

If you are new and would rather not manage API keys, ask Hermes to include the Nous Portal route (hermes setup --portal) in the comparison. It gives access to many models through one login and bundles a Tool Gateway for web search, image generation and text to speech.

Written for Hermes Agent v0.21.x. Check commands against your version with hermes --version. This site is independent and not affiliated with Nous Research.