Video: "Hermes + Aion UI is Insane (FREE)!" by Julian Goldie on YouTube.

What Hermes is, and where Aion fits in

Hermes Agent is NousResearch's open-source AI agent framework. Unlike a standard chat session with Claude or ChatGPT, Hermes runs autonomously — it can hold memory across conversations, execute multi-step tasks, use tools like web search and code execution, and build up skills over time. It launched in February 2026 and grew quickly because it is genuinely capable and costs nothing to run if you host it yourself.

The catch has always been access. Running Hermes has meant working in a terminal: launching it via the command line, editing configuration files, and piecing together what the agent is doing from text output. That is fine for developers; it's a meaningful barrier for everyone else.

Aion is an open-source dashboard designed to sit in front of Hermes and remove that barrier. It gives the agent a proper graphical interface — one that most people will find far easier to use day-to-day than a terminal window ever was.

What the Aion dashboard actually gives you

The interface brings together the things you interact with most often when running Hermes: a chat panel, a session browser, model selection, and a view of active tasks. Instead of switching between a terminal and config files, you do it all in one window.

Model switching is particularly useful. Hermes supports a range of local and cloud models — Gemma 4, Xiaomi MiMo, Claude, GPT and others — and Aion lets you change between them without restarting or editing anything. In practice this matters because the right model depends on the job: fast and cheap for routine tasks, more capable for anything that requires actual reasoning.

Session management is also improved. Aion shows you what sessions are running, what completed, and lets you search through history. That is more useful than it sounds once you're running Hermes regularly and want to refer back to something it did last week.

What Aion is not

It is a dashboard, not a magic shortcut. Getting Hermes running in the first place still requires installation, dependency setup, and some configuration — Aion attaches to an already-working Hermes instance rather than replacing the setup process. If Hermes is not installed and configured correctly, Aion has nothing to connect to.

Worth knowing: the "multi-agent" framing in Aion's documentation means you can manage multiple Hermes instances or profiles from the same interface. That is relevant if you're running different agent configurations for different workflows or clients. It does not mean the agents are communicating with each other by default — that is a separate layer.

The project is also still maturing. Open-source tools at this stage tend to have rough edges: features that work in one configuration and not another, documentation that lags behind the actual release, occasional instability on less common setups. That is not a criticism — it is just the honest state of something built and maintained by a small community moving fast.

Who this is actually useful for

If you're already comfortable running Hermes in a terminal, Aion is a quality-of-life upgrade. It will not change what the agent can do, but it will make managing it less tedious once you've got multiple sessions or models in play.

If you've wanted to use Hermes but found the terminal requirement off-putting, Aion closes most of that gap. You still need someone to do the initial setup — but once that's done, using the agent day-to-day becomes significantly more straightforward.

For a business that wants to use AI agents without keeping a developer on hand for every query, that distinction is material. The terminal requirement was one of the main reasons local AI agents have stayed in developer territory rather than becoming genuinely useful tools in smaller businesses. Aion chips away at that.

Where this connects to NordSys

Setting up Hermes Agent with the right dashboard, tools, and workflow configuration is part of our AI agents service. We handle the installation and initial configuration — including Aion or Open WebUI as your preferred interface — then show you how to use it for actual business tasks without needing to live in a terminal. If you've been curious about running a local AI agent, this is a good time to have a conversation about what that would look like for your setup.

See our AI agents service →