01What Hermes Kanban Agent Is and How It Works
Hermes Kanban Agent is a free, open-source AI tool from NAOS Research that adds a Kanban board to the Hermes Agent. The board lets you manage multiple AI agents that work together like a team. Each agent is a named profile with its own memory, so the research agent remembers what it researched before, and the designer remembers your style.
Agents read and write cards on the board and leave comments for each other, just like people leaving sticky notes.
Your job is simple: you type one idea, click approve one time, and then a team of AI agents plans, builds, checks, and puts the result in a gallery. The board has five layers: capture, classify, gate, build, and gallery. Your idea rides down from the top to the bottom, and you only step in once.
This replaces the old way of dragging cards, writing tickets, and doing all the work yourself.
02Main Features of the Self-Driving Board
The rebuilt Hermes Kanban board has several key features that make it different from a normal board. First, there is a human-in-the-loop gate. Before any building starts, the agents write a plan and send it to you.
You see four things: what the agent thinks you asked for, how it will do it, the first milestones step by step, and who will build it. You can approve or reject.
- Gallery – Every finished build is stored as a clickable preview. You can go full screen and use the tool right there.
- Obsidian vault memory – The board logs every idea, plan, and build as a note in Obsidian. Agents can read these notes to remember past work.
- Separate boards – Each board keeps its own data, so you can have one board for content, one for community, and one for your website without mixing things up.
- Self-drive – Once you approve the plan, the project manager agent splits the work into smaller jobs and assigns them to sub-agents. Cards move across the board automatically.
03How to Set Up Hermes Kanban Agent
Setting up the self-driving Hermes Kanban board takes a few steps. Julian Goldie provides the Agent OS as a zip file inside the AI Profit Boardroom. Follow these steps to get started:
- Download the Agent OS zip file from AIprofitboardroom.com or the link in the episode description.
- Install the zip file on your computer. This gives you the Hermes Kanban board, the human approval gate, the gallery, the Obsidian memory vault, and the self-checker.
- Open Obsidian, the free notes app, and set it up as your second brain. The board will log everything into Obsidian automatically.
- Start your first board. Type one sentence in the capture box, like a task or idea.
- Click "Let the agents shape it" to have the AI write a plan. Review the plan and click Approve or Reject. If you approve, the agents start building.
- After the build finishes, go to the gallery to preview and use the result.
The AI Profit Boardroom includes a 30-day roadmap that walks you through day one to day thirty, plus four coaching calls each week.
04How to Use the Board: A Real Example
In this episode, Julian Goldie runs a real example. He types one sentence: "Build a welcome page for new AIprofit boardroom members. Show them where to start, how to book a coaching call, and how to find people near them on the member map." That is the capture step.
You do not need to write more than a sentence.
The board then moves the idea to floor two, classify. The agents read the idea and figure out what kind of job it is: a page, a tool, or research. Next, Julian clicks "Let the agents shape it," and the agents write a plan.
The plan lands in the human-in-the-loop column. Julian can see what the agent thinks he asked for, the approach, the milestones, and the assigned agents. He clicks Approve.
The project manager agent then splits the plan into smaller tasks and hands each task to a sub-agent. While they work, Julian does something else. When the build finishes, the welcome page appears in the gallery as a preview.
He can click it, go full screen, and use it directly.
This process works for any idea: a habit tracker, a meditation app, or a checklist for new members.
05Results and Comparisons Shown in the Episode
Julian Goldie compares the old Hermes Kanban board to his rebuilt version. The old board had no checkpoint. After you gave it a task, it would run off and make a to-do list and start building, but you had no idea what it was doing.
Everything lived in the terminal, so you had to scroll through text to see the result. You could not easily see what you built. The new board fixes those problems.
- One-click approval – The human-in-the-loop gate lets you say yes or no before the agents waste time. Julian says this one button is the whole difference.
- Gallery instead of terminal – Finished builds appear as visual previews, not text logs. You can click a preview and use the tool full screen.
- Memory – Without Obsidian, you would spend 10 minutes re-explaining every project. With the vault, you just type one sentence, and the agents remember everything from previous builds.
- Multiple boards – You can split work into separate boards without mixing data.
Julian notes that most business owners still drag cards around, copy and paste from chat windows, and lose ideas. The self-driving board is a big improvement.
06Tips, Limits, and Mistakes to Avoid
Julian Goldie shares a key tip: the human-in-the-loop gate is the feature most people skip. He says it makes the board about ten times better than the normal Hermes Kanban. Do not approve a plan without reading it first.
If the plan is wrong, hit reject before any building starts. That saves time and resources.
- Use memory – The Obsidian vault is critical for project continuity. Without it, agents forget past work.
- Stick to one sentence – Do not over-explain in the capture step. The agents will classify and plan from a short description.
- Check the plan – Always review what agents think you asked for, the approach, milestones, and assigned agents. If anything is off, reject it.
- Don't wait – Once you approve, let the agents work. You can do other tasks while the board runs.
- Separate boards – Use different boards for different projects to keep data clean and avoid confusion.
Another limit: the board runs on your computer using the Agent OS zip file, so you need to install it. It is not a cloud service.
07Who Hermes Kanban Agent Is For and Why It Matters
Hermes Kanban Agent is for business owners, marketers, and content creators who want to build small tools, pages, and apps without coding or managing multiple chat threads. Julian Goldie says most people still use Kanban the old way: they drag cards, write tickets, and do every bit of work themselves. Ideas sit for months and die.
This board matters because it puts you in charge. You drop the idea, approve the plan, and check the result. The agents do the middle part.
That saves time and prevents ideas from getting lost. Julian notes that there is a window right now where most business owners have not figured this out. The people who learn to run a team of agents early will be ahead of those who wait.
If you want to automate repetitive project tasks and build things quickly, this approach gives you a structured, repeatable process.
08How the Obsidian Vault Boosts Agent Memory
One of the most powerful features is the Obsidian vault integration. Julian Goldie uses Obsidian, a free notes app, as a second brain. The self-driving board logs every idea, plan, and build as a note in the vault.
This gives the agents shared memory. If you come back the next day and type, "Make the coaching call section bigger on the welcome page," Hermes reads the vault log. It knows what the project is, where the files are, and how it was built.
It picks up right where it left off.
Without this, Julian says he used to spend 10 minutes re-explaining every project each time. Now he spends one sentence. This matches the Hermes Kanban design: each worker is a named profile with its own memory.
The vault makes that memory even more powerful because the whole team of agents shares one big memory of everything you have made. You can also split work into separate boards, and each board gets its own data, so boardroom content and community stuff stay separate.
