Hermes is huge and packed with features you probably don't need. I prefer smaller one I can extend as necessary, there are so many on github now and it is fun to test them but have been impressed with dirge (https://github.com/dirge-code/dirge) not affiliated.
I have one reading my second tier RSS feeds and newsletters and giving me news/market updates filtered for things important to me
I'm not contradicting this but offering a contrast, I like Hermes because it simultaneously lowers barrier of entry and shows you what possibilities are unlocked by agents. I don't think I would have the time, interest or creativity to jump into the deep end by either extending an existing harness or rolling my own from the start. This also isn't an argument for doing just that, I might do so in the future, but critically only after Hermes has shown me what's possible and my preferences are developed.
I completely agree. I started with aichat[0] before the current agent trend and hit all kinds of bumps implementing agentic loops on my own. Then goose[1] showed me what a whole team working toward the same idea could do right before the official Claude Code harness which had all the bells and whistles. Now I know better what I want and its mostly less ram usage and a small set of primitives.
I still use Claude code (and codex and other big contenders) because they know what they are doing and innovate in ways I don't want to miss. And sometimes they are better at tasks.
[0]: 2023, https://github.com/sigoden/aichat [1]: 2024, https://github.com/aaif-goose/goose
I had the same line of thought and spent a while with nanoclaw before realizing that adding the features I want back in would have made future updates too painful. I ended up switching to Hermes and aggressively disabling tools/skills and it's been pretty fine so far. I got more use cases set up than I did in my time with nanoclaw.
Totally fair, I still use Claude code for tasks since it is so polished. I think I just dont have that complicated of use cases so in the end performance should reflect my lightweight needs as the priority.