Greg Isenberg

Hermes Agent Desktop: Full Setup + Real Use Cases

In this episode, I sit down with Alex Finn for a full, screen-shared walkthrough of Hermes Desktop, the new desktop home for the Hermes AI agent. I open with a clear challenge: by the end, sell me on installing Hermes Desktop, show me real ways to make money and stay productive, and explain his move from OpenClaw. Alex tours every major surface — sessions, profiles, artifacts, skills, cron jobs, and sub-agents — and shares money-saving tactics at each step. We close on the idea that matters most to me: aiming these agents at other people's challenges as the clearest path to real value. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 04:04 – Sessions and Context Management 06:10 – Profiles Explained 08:49 – Model-Based vs Role-Based Profiles 12:58 – Artifacts as a Second Brain 14:32 – Why Alex Switched From OpenClaw 17:32 – Skills, Tools, and Tool Sets 19:19 – Messaging and Cron Setup 21:44 – Reverse Prompting and the Brain Dump 28:09 – Sub-Agents vs Profiles 32:12 – Putting It Together: Solving Challenges 32:38 – The Daily Business Opportunity Scan 37:05 – Local Models: Mac Studio vs DGX Spark 39:03 – Reframing Cost as Investment 41:59 – The Real Way to Make Money With Hermes 42:51 – Closing Thoughts Key Points * Hermes Desktop pulls sessions, profiles, artifacts, skills, and cron jobs into one polished, Apple-style interface. * Smart session and context management keeps each message slim and keeps monthly costs low. * Profiles map to different models — Opus 4.8 for strategy, ChatGPT 5.5 for coding, a local Qwen model for free research — so each task runs on its best fit. * Reverse prompting plus a personal brain dump produces far stronger prompts, cron jobs, and outputs. * Sub-agents handle one skill across many parallel tasks; profiles handle work where each step needs a distinct skill set. * The biggest opportunity: aim your agent at Reddit and X to surface real problems you are positioned to solve. Numbered Section Summaries 1. The Moment Hermes Overtook OpenClaw Alex shares his screen and calls Hermes Desktop the best AI agent experience available right now, framing the recent release as the moment Hermes pulled ahead. He compares the focused, polished Hermes updates to Apple and the broader OpenClaw approach to Android, and notes his switch came purely for the love of the game. 2. Sessions and Context Management Alex shows how each new chat opens its own session, keeping context clean and separated by topic. He explains that slim context keeps every message small, and small messages keep monthly bills modest — his top money-saving tip. 3. Profiles Mapped to Models Profiles are separate Hermes agents, each with its own skills, a soul.md personality, and its own memories. Alex organizes his by model — Opus 4.8 for high-level strategy, ChatGPT 5.5 for coding, and a local Qwen model for free, fast research — and picks the profile whose strengths match the task. 4. Artifacts as a Productized Second Brain Artifacts gathers every link, image, and file you send your agent into one searchable place. Alex drops links to his "Librarian" profile and lets Artifacts file them automatically, which turns the agent into a tidy, searchable second brain. 5. Skills, Tools, and the Cron Section Alex walks the Skills interface, where 150-plus skills ship out of the box and you keep only the ones you use to trim context and cost. He highlights tool sets as a fresh way to group skills together, and praises the Cron section for giving one-click confirmation that scheduled tasks truly exist. 6. Reverse Prompting and the Brain Dump My favorite tip from Alex: brain dump everything about yourself — interests, goals, skills — then ask the agent for the best prompt to use. He demos it live by building a morning brief, and the reverse prompt returns a detailed, well-formatted instruction that pulls fresh, real headlines, prices, and scores from the last 24 hours. 7. Sub-Agents vs Profiles Alex clarifies the difference: sub-agents are copies of your main agent that share its skills, ideal for running one skill across many parallel tasks, like building several features of a micro-SaaS at once. Profiles each carry distinct skill sets and memories, ideal when a job needs a researcher, a writer, and a designer working in sequence. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com/ LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND ALEX ON SOCIAL Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexFinnOfficial/videos X/Twitter: https://x.com/AlexFinnX Creator Buddy: https://www.creatorbuddy.io/