Published: 2026-05-19
Hermes Agent's 8 Major Updates: Session Recall, Background Tasks, Computer Use
Alex Finn demos eight Hermes updates, led by session recall — a non-token memory system that retrieves any past conversation by date programmatically, with no LLM cost. The /background command enables true multitasking: queue multiple research tasks and stay conversational while they run in parallel. Computer use lets Hermes see and control your desktop from Telegram. Native Codex CLI integration lets Hermes spawn a vibe-coding worker as a background task, saving tokens if you have a ChatGPT subscription.
Source video
"Hermes just got 10x better..." by Alex Finn — Watch on YouTube →
Key Takeaways
- Session recall: ask "what did we do on May 10th?" — Hermes retrieves the full session summary programmatically without spending any LLM tokens.
- /background command: queue multiple tasks simultaneously (research, analysis, content generation) and still chat with the agent while they run in parallel — no need for separate agent instances.
- Native Codex CLI integration: Hermes can spin up a Codex coding session as a background worker — useful if you have a ChatGPT subscription, as it routes heavy coding to Codex rather than your orchestrator model.
- Grok 4.3 OAuth + real-time X search: add Grok as a secondary provider to search live tweets for trending topics, news, and content research without extra API spend.
- Computer use: Hermes can see your screen and click, navigate apps, and schedule calendar events — control your desktop from Telegram while you're away from the machine.
- Native video generation: use "generate video of [description]" in Telegram — Hermes calls Grok Imagine and returns the video clip directly in chat, no external site needed.
Commands & Code Mentioned
/background [task description]
hermes update (update to latest version for session recall)