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9 min read

Run Your Own Cloud AI Agent with Hermes - No Terminal Required

Authors
  • avatar
    Name
    John Moscarillo
    Twitter

Most of the AI we use only exists when an app is open. Close the tab and it goes quiet. Hermes flips that around: it's an open-source AI agent that stays online continuously, remembers context, picks up skills, and automates tasks over time. You reach it the same way you'd message a friend—through Telegram, Discord, Slack, or email—from your phone or your desktop.

The best part: you can stand the whole thing up from your browser. No servers to rent, no terminal, no config files to edit by hand. If you're curious what people are actually doing with it, the Hermes user stories are a good place to get inspired before you build.

Below is the path I took, start to finish. Prefer to follow along in slides? You can download the full setup guide as a PDF.

The three building blocks

Each piece does exactly one job, and together they give you a personal AI agent that's online around the clock.

  • OpenRouter — the brain. One account, one API key, many AI models (including free and very cheap ones). Hermes calls these models to think and reply.
  • Railway — the home. A cloud platform that runs Hermes for you. A ready-made template gives you the dashboard, admin panel, and gateway in a single deploy.
  • Telegram — the interface. You create a bot, connect it to Hermes, and chatting becomes as easy as messaging that bot.

The whole thing is five real steps: create an OpenRouter key, make a Telegram bot, deploy the Railway template, configure Hermes, then approve yourself and chat.

Step 1 — Create an OpenRouter API key

Head to openrouter.ai and sign up. From the homepage, click Get API Key.

  1. Give the key a name.
  2. Leave the credit and reset limits blank.
  3. Click Create.

OpenRouter shows the key only once, so copy it the moment it appears and paste it somewhere safe. If you lose it, just delete it and create a new one—it takes a few seconds.

Key format:   sk-or-v1-...
Model format: provider/model-name   (e.g. deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash)

You won't enter the model name here—you'll type it later, inside Hermes. Just decide which model you want it to use and keep the name handy alongside the key.

Add a little credit. OpenRouter is pay-as-you-go. Drop a bit of credit on the account so the key can make calls—$10 is plenty to start.

Step 2 — Create a Telegram bot

Open Telegram, search for @BotFather, and open the chat. Several lookalikes show up—the real one has the orange verified checkmark, so ignore copycats like BotFather123_robot.

In the chat with BotFather:

  1. Type /newbot.
  2. Follow the prompts to choose a name and a username.
  3. Copy the Bot Token it sends back—a long string of letters and numbers. Keep it safe.

Optional but recommended: message @userinfobot (or @getmyid_bot) and tap Start to get your numeric Telegram user ID. You can use it later to control exactly who's allowed to talk to Hermes.

Step 3 — Deploy the Railway template

Go to Railway and sign in with GitHub. You can jump straight to the template here: Deploy Hermes Agent.

The template deploys a single service—Hermes Agent. Click Configure and set three things:

  • Volume — keep it set to /data so your config survives redeploys.
  • ADMIN_USERNAME — your admin login name (e.g. Admin).
  • ADMIN_PASSWORD — a strong password; you'll use it to log in to Hermes.

When it reads Ready to be deployed, click Save Config, then Deploy.

The first build takes a few minutes. Wait until the deployment reads successful, then click the app link above the service card (something like hermes-production-450f.up.railway.app) to open Hermes.

Step 4 — Sign in to the Hermes admin

The hermes /admin sign-in screen loads. Enter the ADMIN_USERNAME and ADMIN_PASSWORD you just set on Railway and click Sign in. No terminal required.

A quick tour of the Setup screen so you know where things live:

  • LLM Provider — the provider dropdown, API key, and model name.
  • Configured providers — saved providers, each showing an "API key set" badge.
  • Messaging channels — tick at least one to receive messages.
  • Save & Start — the bottom-right button that launches the gateway.

Step 5 — Configure the provider and channel

In the Setup tab, open the Provider dropdown and choose OpenRouter (it sits right at the top). Hermes works with DeepSeek, Anthropic, Google, xAI and more, but we're using OpenRouter here.

Then:

  1. Paste your API key (starts with sk-).
  2. Enter the model name, e.g. deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash.
  3. Click Save & Start. Your provider now appears below with a Remove button and an "API key set" badge confirming it's connected.

Scroll down to Messaging Channels and:

  1. Tick Telegram.
  2. Paste the Bot Token from BotFather.
  3. Save the configuration.

Step 6 — Go live and approve yourself

Click Save & Start to launch the gateway and watch for the green running status.

Now the part that makes Hermes feel like yours:

  1. Send any message to your Telegram bot.
  2. Back in the dashboard, open the Users section.
  3. Find your new pairing request and approve it.

When you first message the bot, Hermes registers a pairing request. Approving it tells Hermes that user is allowed to chat—that's your built-in access control. From here on, just open Telegram and message your bot. Ask it questions or hand it tasks, and it replies—running on Railway 24/7. Because your config lives on the /data volume, the agent stays available across redeploys.

When the bot goes quiet

If messages don't come back, work through these in order:

  • Read the Railway logs. Open your Hermes service logs and scan for obvious errors during startup or message handling.
  • Verify OpenRouter. Confirm the API key is valid and the model name is spelled exactly as the provider lists it.
  • Re-check the bot token. Make sure the token in the admin dashboard matches the one from BotFather.
  • Confirm the gateway is running. Look for the green running status—if it's stopped, hit Save & Start again.

Wrapping up

Create the key, make the bot, deploy the template, fill in the settings—and you have a personal cloud AI agent you can message from anywhere, with no terminal in sight. OpenRouter gives it a brain, Railway keeps it alive around the clock, and Telegram is your front door.

If you start in on this and hit a snag or have a question, reach out to me—I'm more than happy to help you get it running.