Nous Research shipped an update to Hermes that changes what it means to own an AI agent.
You can now save your entire agent as a single file, move it to any computer, and switch it back on.
The announcement
Two new commands, one big idea
Nous posted it a few hours ago, and they list the pieces themselves: skills, memory, persona, crons, plugins, settings, desktop themes and layouts.
The line to watch is "with credentials stripped" — that is the part that turns this from a backup into something you can hand to another person.
Weeks of tuning. One file. Any machine.
§ 2II ────── exactly what shipped
Two commands. That's the whole feature.
The first one packs your agent into one archive. The second one puts it back.
What you're looking at: everything you tuned on the left gets folded into one small file, and that file rebuilds the same agent on the right.
# in a Hermes chat, type: /export /import
# or from the terminal: ❯ hermes profile export my-agent -o ~/my-agent.tar.gz ❯ hermes profile import ~/my-agent.tar.gz --name my-agent
Type them straight into a Hermes chat, or run them in the terminal. Same result either way.
What you're watching: the real export running on my machine just now. One command, and a whole agent — 712 files — becomes a 2.2 MB file sitting in my home folder.
§ 3III ────── the problem this solves
The Blank Machine Problem.
A good Hermes agent takes weeks to build.
Not weeks of coding. Weeks of tuning.
You shape the persona so it talks the way you want.
You build skills for the jobs you repeat.
The memory fills up with your business, your customers, your projects.
You set jobs to run while you are at the gym.
And until today, every bit of that lived on one machine.
If that laptop broke, the agent was gone.
The Hermes Teleport Engine ends that for good.
What you're looking at: every hour you spend tuning flows into one box — and before this update, nothing could get back out.
Old way~ weeks, by hand
Rebuild the persona file from memory on the new machine
Re-create every skill, one at a time
Lose the memory entirely — it cannot be typed back in
Set up every scheduled job again from scratch
Re-install and re-configure every plugin
Walk a friend through 40 minutes of settings on a call
Laptop stolen? Start the whole thing over
New way~ 2 minutes
Run one export command
Copy one 2.2 MB file to the new machine
Run one import command
Memory, skills and schedule all arrive intact
Add your own keys once, on that machine
Send the same file to a friend and they are running in seconds
Laptop stolen? Import last week's file and carry on
Six pieces go in. One file comes out.
§ 4IV ────── inside the file
Six pieces, and each one matters more than the last.
This is what actually gets packed up when you run that one command.
What you're looking at: the archive fans out into the six things you actually spent weeks building.
Piece one
Persona
The file that decides how your agent talks and what it cares about. It shapes every single answer, so it is the part people fuss over most.
Piece two
Skills
The abilities it built up over time — writing emails in your tone, researching the way you like. They used to live and die on one machine.
Piece three
Memory
This is the big one. It knows your business, your past sessions, what worked last week. You cannot rebuild it, because it came from your real history together.
Piece four
Cron jobs
The tasks it runs on its own at set times. Morning research. Daily summaries. Import on a new machine and it picks the routine straight back up.
Piece five
Plugins + settings
Every tool you connected and every option you changed. All of it comes along.
Piece six
Themes + layouts
Even the way your setup looks moves over. A small thing — but it tells you how complete this is. They shipped the whole agent, not a partial backup.
What you're watching: me opening up my real export file. The persona, the skills, the memory, the past conversations, the scheduled jobs and the themes are all in there — 712 files, 2.2 MB.
The brain travels. Your keys never do.
§ 5V ────── the part most people skim
Your keys are stripped out automatically.
When Hermes exports your profile it leaves your API keys and login tokens behind, on purpose.
So on the new machine you sign in fresh — the agent's brain travels, your private access does not.
What you're looking at: on the way out, everything you built passes through — and your keys get caught and left behind.
What you're watching: my live profile holds a 26 KB file full of API keys and login tokens. I search the export for it and there are zero credential files inside. That is the whole safety story, proven in one search.
Here is why that matters so much.
It is the difference between a backup feature and a sharing feature.
If your keys were inside the file, you could never safely hand it to anyone.
You could never post a profile for your community.
You could never send your setup to a teammate.
One leaked file and somebody else is spending on your accounts.
With the keys stripped, the file is safe to share.
They get your agent's brain. They use their own access.
Thinking it?"So I have to set my keys up again every time — that sounds like a pain."
You sign in once on the new machine, and that is it.
It is a minute of work in exchange for a file you can safely send to anybody.
§ 6VI ────── quick thing first
This is the kind of update we move on fast.
Members are running Hermes agents for their businesses right now, and the daily tutorials walk through this stuff step by step.
Thinking it?"Doesn't running the Agent OS burn a fortune in tokens?"
No — that is the biggest myth about it. The everyday work runs on a free local model on your own machine, free APIs slot in for more, and for the heavy jobs it drives the CLIs you already pay for.
Your Claude subscription already includes the Claude CLI, and the Agent OS plugs straight into it — so you are not paying twice. Inside the Boardroom there are full token-efficiency tutorials so you cut usage to the bone.
Now here is what one portable file actually unlocks.
§ 7VII ────── unlock one
Backups. Your agent is now something you can protect.
Export once a week, keep the file somewhere safe, and you can never lose your setup again.
What you're looking at: one export a week, kept somewhere safe, means a dead laptop costs you minutes instead of months.
If you have put weeks into tuning an agent, this alone is worth updating for.
It is also the least interesting thing on this list.
§ 8VIII ────── unlock two
Move your agent to a machine that never sleeps.
A laptop closes. A laptop goes to sleep. Your scheduled jobs stop the moment the lid shuts.
Now you export, copy the file to a machine that stays on, import, add your keys — and your agent goes from part-time to around the clock.
What you're looking at: the same agent, moved off a lid that closes and onto a machine that never does.
What you're watching: the real import. One command, and a second later the agent is listed and ready — I did not rebuild a single thing.
If you run a small business, this is your research agent going from something you poke at on a laptop to something that checks your niche every morning before you wake up.
§ 9IX ────── unlock three
Hand the exact same agent to your team.
Say you have tuned an agent that writes product descriptions in your store's voice, and it works.
Export the file, send it over, they import it and add their own keys — and in seconds they are running the agent you spent weeks perfecting.
What you're looking at: one file, four people, one shared agent — and four separate sets of keys that never mix.
What you're watching: I check whether the imported copy really is the same agent. The persona file matches byte for byte, the skill count matches, and the keys folder is empty — exactly what you want when you hand it to somebody.
Before this update, getting a teammate onto your agent setup meant a long call where you walked them through every setting.
Now the setup is the file.
For a small agency, the agent one person built for client research becomes the agent everyone uses, the same day.
§ 10X ────── unlock four
Agent profiles you can pass around.
Once an agent is a single safe file, agents become things people share.
You stop starting from a blank page and start from somebody else's finished work.
What you're looking at: somebody else's finished agent becomes your starting point.
Honest note
Community members are already talking about building agents that manage collections of other agent profiles. That part is early — treat it as plans, not shipped features. The direction is clear though: agent setups are becoming something people trade and improve together, the same way they share templates today.
Your agent's identity is now separate from any machine.
§ 11XI ────── the biggest idea here
Keep the identity. Upgrade the brain.
An agent has two parts: the model underneath doing the raw thinking, and everything you built on top of it.
The model belongs to whoever made it. Everything on top belongs to you — and now it fits in a file you hold.
What you're looking at: the brain underneath gets replaced every few months, and the part you spent weeks on sits on top of it, untouched.
Until now, "yours" meant trapped on one computer.
It was not really an asset. It was more like a plant rooted in one pot.
You could not move it without breaking it.
This update pulls the agent out of the pot.
The machine is just where the agent happens to be running today.
So when a better model arrives, you keep the identity and upgrade the brain underneath it.
Your work compounds instead of starting over.
§ 12XII ────── what you're probably thinking
Three things to drop before you try this.
Wrong: "This is just a backup feature. Other software has export buttons."
Right: An agent is not settings. Its memory is the record of everything it learned working with you, and its skills are abilities it built over time. When that whole living setup becomes portable you get sharing, team hand-offs and hardware freedom out of the same file. A settings backup does none of that.
Wrong: "This sounds technical. I'd mess it up."
Right: The feature is two commands — export and import. If you can save a file and open a file, you can do this. Hermes itself takes a bit more effort to set up than some tools, but that is a one-time cost, and it goes much faster with someone showing you the screen.
Wrong: "I haven't even started with agents. Everyone is ahead of me."
Right: Look at the date on this feature. It shipped hours ago. Portable agents are brand new for everybody — the person running Hermes for six months and the person installing it this weekend both got this on the same day. And the new person has an edge the early people never had: you can start from a shared profile instead of a blank setup.
Don't take my word for it
Members post their wins every day — agency owners, ecom founders, course creators and solo operators across 38 countries. Real businesses, real numbers, in their own words.
Join 4,000+ founders running AI agents that travel.
The AI Profit Boardroom is where the Hermes Teleport Engine lives — the export, the import, the weekly backup job and the whole Agent Operating System, all pre-wired.
