Hermes USB Portable wraps Nous Research’s Hermes Agent in a self-bootstrapping launcher that downloads every runtime it needs into a single local folder. Your API keys, conversations, memories, and custom skills stay inside that folder — nothing touches the host machine.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/techjarves/Hermes-USB-Portable/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Quick Start
Get Hermes running in minutes on Windows, macOS, or Linux
Platform Support
See all supported OS and CPU architecture combinations
API Key Setup
Configure OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, and other providers
Local Ollama
Run fully offline with a local Ollama model
Launcher Menu
Navigate the interactive terminal dashboard
Command Reference
Full index of every hermes CLI command
Why Hermes USB Portable?
Hermes USB Portable solves a real problem: AI agents typically require a correctly-configured host environment with Python, Node.js, and a pile of packages installed globally. If you move to a different machine, you start over. Hermes USB Portable eliminates that dependency entirely. On first launch it downloads portable, self-contained builds of Python 3.11, Node.js 22 LTS, and theuv package manager directly into a .cache/runtimes/ subdirectory. From that point on, the entire agent runs from that folder — whether it lives on a local drive, a USB stick, or an external SSD.
Zero Host Pollution
Nothing is installed on the host. No registry keys, no global packages, no
~/.hermes/ folder.True Portability
Copy the folder to any machine and run. All runtimes, settings, and data travel with it.
Full Privacy
API keys, chat history, memories, and skills stay strictly inside your portable folder.
How It Works
Launch the starter script
Double-click
launch.bat on Windows, or run ./launch.sh on macOS/Linux. The launcher checks for a ready.flag inside .cache/runtimes/.First-run bootstrap (once only)
If this is the first run, the setup script downloads portable Python 3.11, Node.js 22,
uv, ripgrep, and the Hermes Agent source code — about 600 MB total. Everything lands inside the portable folder.Environment isolation
The launcher prepends the local runtime paths to
PATH and overrides HERMES_HOME to point at the local data/ directory, keeping the host environment untouched.Supported Platforms
| OS | Architecture | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 10 / 11 | x86_64 | ✅ Supported |
| macOS 13+ | Apple Silicon (ARM64) | ✅ Supported |
| macOS 13+ | Intel (x86_64) | ✅ Supported |
| Linux (Ubuntu/Debian/Arch) | x86_64 | ✅ Supported |
| Linux (Fedora/CentOS) | ARM64 | ✅ Supported |
Each platform gets its own runtime directory (
.cache/runtimes/<platform>-<arch>/). Running the same USB drive on Windows and macOS will download and cache runtimes for both platforms independently.