01What Is the Hermes Agent Update?

The Hermes Agent update is the VOR.20.0 release of Hermes Agent, a free, open-source AI agent that runs on your computer. The big new feature is a multi-agent Kanban board that lets you manage many AI agents from one screen.

Hermes Agent can do real work: send messages, run research, pull data, manage your inbox, and join meetings. It works with the AI model you choose, like Claude, GPT, or Gemini. The new version came out on April 30th, 2026.

Before this update, you had to run tasks one at a time or open multiple terminals. Now you have a visual board that looks like Trello or Notion. That board is the core of the update.

02Main Features in the VOR.20.0 Release

The headline feature is the Kanban board. It has columns: Triage, Ready, Running, and Blocked. You drop a task in the Triage column, assign it to an agent profile, and the board handles the rest.

Other new features include:

  • Autonomous curator – A background agent cleans up your skill library every seven days, pruning old skills and merging duplicates.
  • Faster startup – The terminal interface loads more than twice as fast as before.
  • Google Meet integration – Hermes can join a meeting, turn on captions, take a transcript, and send you a summary.
  • Durable tasks – The board saves everything to a file on your disk, so work survives restarts or crashes.
  • Workspaces – Each task gets its own folder for scratch space, keeping your other files untouched.

The release is a big drop: 1,096 commits and 213 contributors. It's not a small patch.

03How to Set Up the Hermes Agent Kanban

Getting started with the Kanban takes a few steps. You'll need to be comfortable with terminal commands. Here's the basic setup:

  1. Install Hermes Agent on your computer. It's free and open source.
  2. Run the terminal command to create a task. For example: hermes kanban create "write blog post about email funnel" --assignee Researcher.
  3. Set up agent profiles. A profile is a named agent, like Researcher, Writer, or Reviewer. Each profile has its own setup, tools, memory, and model.
  4. Install the gateway. This is needed for the agents to communicate.
  5. Start the Dispatcher. This component checks the board, picks up ready tasks, and spawns the right agents.

After setup, the Dispatcher runs automatically. It sees a ready task, spawns an agent, and the agent reads the task and comments before working.

04Using the Kanban Board: A Walkthrough

Using the Kanban is straightforward. You create a card for each task. Each card has a comment thread that agents and humans can read.

This is key: when a writer picks up a task, it can see what a researcher already found.

Here's a simple example from the episode: You run a small business. Every morning you get five customer questions. You drop each one on the Kanban as a task.

A support agent profile picks them up one by one, drafts a reply, and puts it back on the card for you to check. By the time you have coffee, five drafts are ready.

You can also create task hierarchies. A parent task can spawn child tasks. For example, one research task can spawn five smaller tasks for three researchers, then an analyst, then a writer.

The Dispatcher only moves a task to Ready when all its parents are done. This prevents mess and double work.

You can tag tasks by tenant (client or project). The same agents handle different clients, but the data stays separate.

05Results and Comparisons Shown in the Episode

The episode compares the new Kanban to the old delegate task feature. Before, sub-agents died at the end of a chat and left no memory. Now the Kanban is durable: tasks survive closing your laptop or even a crash.

In a real comparison, the board is similar to tools like Agent Kanban, OpenClaw setups, Paperclip, and Nanoclaw. But Hermes does it differently: each worker is a full separate process with its own identity. Not a thread inside another agent.

If one fails, the others keep going. If one crashes, the Dispatcher picks the task up again.

The episode also notes a known bug from the first release: the board was tied to your active profile, so workers couldn't see tasks from the main profile. The team is patching it. If you hit it, keep one profile for now.

06Tips, Limits, and Mistakes to Avoid

This is not a point-and-click app yet. You need to be okay with terminal commands, setting up profiles, and installing the gateway. That's where most people get stuck.

Here are some tips from the episode:

  • Use the autonomous curator to keep your skills clean. It runs every seven days and you never have to think about it.
  • Use workspaces to avoid messing up your computer. Each task works in its own folder, which you can clean up or keep.
  • Use the comment threads for handoffs. Agents read them and build on previous work.
  • Avoid the bug by using one profile until the patch is released.

Remember, the board doesn't care if you log off. It keeps running and picks up where it left off. That stability is what keeps a workflow alive day after day.

07Who the Hermes Agent Update Is For

The update is for people who want to use AI as a manager, not a worker. Instead of asking one question at a time, you set the goal, hand it to the board, and let agents break it down.

Think of a small team: a researcher, a writer, an editor, and an email person. They talk through a shared doc, not in the same room. That's what the Kanban gives you, except the team is AI and works while you sleep.

It's ideal for business owners who want to automate lead research, email writing, and review. The episode mentions that members of the AI Profit Boardroom are already using it this way. If you're comfortable with some setup, this tool can save you hours of waiting time.