If Claude Code is making you feel poor.

Try Hermes Agent. It's a pretty flexible replacement. Good time to get a detox from Claude Code too.

I've been on the Claude Max (20X) plan for a while. Love the tool. But Anthropic has definitely been on a tear, not just releasing features, but slowly tightening the leash.

Three differences worth knowing:

1. Bring your own model. Claude Code is tethered to Anthropic. And over time, you are tethered to Anthropic. Hermes talks to almost anything - OpenRouter, DeepSeek, Kimi, GLM, local models. When Claude feels expensive, swap to DeepSeek for the cheap stuff.

2. It doesn't need to live on your laptop. Claude Code is a terminal app. Hermes can run almost anywhere. You want it to be like OpenClaw, it's OpenClaw.

3. It tries to learn you. Built-in memory + a skills system that the agent writes and refines. Claude Code has memory files. Hermes supposedly has a closed learning loop. I'm still trying to see how well this works though, given my eclectic interests.

Other things in the box: cron-scheduled jobs, subagent delegation, MCP, voice mode, vision, browser, hooks. MIT-licensed. Free. You only pay your model provider.

I'm not switching. I'm running both. Claude Code for the harder stuff. Hermes Agent with DeepSeek V4 Pro for the more mundane stuff. DeepSeek V4 Pro is way cheaper, and not too far behind. 70 million tokens has only cost me $2.50 so far.

I feel like a world where we do not depend too much on Anthropic given some of their recent moves is a better one.

#Claude #HermesAgent #AgenticAI