There is someone on my agency’s team called Hermes Flores. He signs his emails, keeps my project boards up to date and writes code with me. He is an AI agent.
Hermes is Hermes Agent, open-source software built by Nous Research. He runs on my computer and I gave him access to my tools. My email, my calendar, my CRM in Notion, my project boards, my code. He remembers what I teach him from one week to the next.
Here is what he does, how I keep him in check and what didn’t work. Without my clients’ names.
A day with him
Hermes doesn’t do anything on a schedule by himself. I start him when I need him. It looks like this.
- The morning check-in. I ask him where things stand. He reads the boards and tells me what’s waiting on a reply, what’s dragging and what can go out today.
- Client emails. When a project moves, he drafts the update in my voice. I read it, I say go, he sends it. I’m always copied.
- Call prep. Before a first meeting, he audits the prospect’s current site and builds a homepage prototype. I walk into the call with something to show.
- Code. He programs with me. On big jobs, he hands part of the work to cheaper agents, then checks what they did.
- Servers. I don’t log into a server myself anymore. I describe the problem, he handles it and tells me what he changed.
We built this site together. The Carte Blanche Instagram bio too, after I turned down his first four versions. I found them too corporate.
He remembers
Hermes keeps two kinds of notes from one conversation to the next.
- What he knows about me. My writing rules, for example. No em dashes, short sentences, “tu” with my French-speaking clients. I don’t repeat them anymore.
- How he does things. For each type of task, he keeps a written procedure. When I correct him, he adds the lesson to the procedure. Next time, he starts from there.
Every correction I make serves him the next time. That’s what makes him more useful over time.
The rules I gave him
An agent with access to your email can do damage. So there are things he never does without me.
- Nothing goes out to a client without my approval.
- He never edits a shared calendar invite without asking. An edit notifies everyone.
- He never puts my prep notes in a shared invite. The client can read it.
- On a risky send, he starts with me. An email to a whole list lands in my inbox first. I check it, then he sends to the rest.
- When he makes a mistake, he fixes it and shows me. He never resends anything on his own.
- He never sees my passwords. A vault fills them in for him.
What failed
I promised to say what doesn’t work. So here it is.
- He writes like a brochure. Left alone, he produces sales copy. That Instagram bio is the proof. I had to write my rules down for him. He also comes with Humanizer, a skill that strips the writing tics out of AI text. I still read everything that goes out.
- He fixes the symptom. When I reported a bug, he often worked around it. Now I ask him for the cause, and to look for the same problem elsewhere in the code.
- His memory has a limit. His notes about me have a maximum size. When they fill up, he has to choose what to keep. And after a very long work session, he summarizes what happened and loses details along the way.
If you want to try
You don’t need an agent like Hermes to start. The rules are the same with any tool.
- Pick a task you hate that comes back every week.
- Write down your rules before you give it access to anything.
- Keep your approval on everything that leaves your business.
- Write down every correction somewhere the tool can read it again.
The goal, for me, is to get my evenings back. Some nights, it works.