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How To Learn AI Agents For Free: The $0 Agent OS Path, Layer By Layer
How to learn AI agents for free is easier than most people think, because every layer of an Agent OS now has a free version.
The agent is free, the brains are free, the interfaces are free and the lessons are free.
You install Hermes Agent, connect a free model, and give it one small job a day.
This guide gives you the quick start, a 7-day plan, the free brains that are live today and the hidden costs that turn a free stack into a paid one.
The $0 Agent OS, layer by layer
An Agent OS is a system where a crew of AI agents shares one memory and one dashboard.
That sounds expensive, and it is not, because every layer has a free piece.
Here is the map I would learn from.
| Agent OS layer | What it does | The free piece | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| The agent | It runs the tools, the skills and the chat. | Hermes Agent, which is open source under the MIT licence. | You install it from the terminal. |
| The brain | It does the thinking behind every reply. | A free model on Nous Portal or OpenRouter, or a local model in Ollama. | Some free models are time-limited. |
| The memory | It keeps what the agent has learned about you and your work. | Hermes has its own memory, and Obsidian is free to download for your notes. | You should be careful what you screen-share. |
| The interface | It gives you a screen instead of a terminal. | Herald OS or StarNet, which are both MIT licensed. | Herald OS is alpha software. |
| The automations | They run jobs on a schedule without you. | Hermes scheduled tasks are part of the free agent. | A scheduled job still uses your model's limits. |
| The lessons | They show you what to build next. | AI Money Lab and my free YouTube courses. | You only learn if you run the steps yourself. |
You do not need all six layers on day one.
You need the first two, which are the agent and the brain.
The rest are upgrades you add as you learn.
Quick start: how to learn AI agents for free in three commands
This is the fastest route from nothing to a working agent.
Hermes Agent installs with the official script, and then a setup wizard asks you to choose a model provider.
curl -fsSL https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/install.sh | bash
source ~/.zshrc
hermes setupChoose Nous Portal in the wizard, sign in, and pick a model from the free list.
Then type hermes and send it the single word "test".
If it answers, you have an agent, and you have spent nothing.
You can check the install at any time with hermes doctor.
You can change the brain at any time with hermes model.
The free brains you can practise on right now
I checked the Nous inference API on 13 October 2026, and ten models were priced at zero.
| Free model on Nous Portal | Made by | Model ID I saw on 13 October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Solar Mini 4 (free) | Upstage | upstage/solar-mini4:free |
| MissingNo | A lab that has not been named | stealth/missingno |
| Step 3.7 Flash | StepFun | stepfun/step-3.7-flash:free |
| Step 5 Preview | StepFun | stepfun/step-5-preview:free |
| LongCat 2.0 | Meituan | meituan/longcat-2.0:free |
| LongCat 2.5 Preview | Meituan | meituan/longcat-2.5-preview:free |
| Laguna XS 2.1 | Poolside | poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free |
| Laguna S 2.1 | Poolside | poolside/laguna-s-2.1:free |
| Ling 3.0 Flash (two variants) | inclusionAI | inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-fin:free and -sante:free |
That table is a snapshot, and it will change.
Solar Mini 4 was announced as free for two weeks, and MissingNo is free for a limited time with no end date published.
My Solar Mini 4 Hermes quick start and my Hermes MissingNo quick start show the setup for each.
My free models in Hermes guide covers the wider options.
OpenRouter is the backup
OpenRouter lists models with ":free" at the end of the ID, and I counted 15 through its API on the same day.
The list included two Gemma 4 models, Laguna XS 2.1, Laguna S 2.1, LFM 2.5 2.6B, Inkling and several NVIDIA Nemotron models.
You add an OpenRouter key in hermes setup and choose one of those IDs.
If the ID does not end in ":free", it is not free.
A local model is the brain that never bills you
Ollama runs open models on your own machine, so nothing is metered.
The Hermes docs give the route in plain steps.
- You pull a model with
ollama pulland the model name. - You run
hermes modeland select "Custom endpoint". - You enter
http://localhost:11434/v1, skip the API key and type the model name.
My run Hermes free forever guide shows a small local model working on an 8GB machine.
The honest trade-off is quality, because a small local model will not plan like a frontier model.
🔥 Want the exact learning AI agents for free setup I run inside my Agent OS?
Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.
The habit that makes free models work: one profile per model
This is the single most useful thing I can teach you about free brains.
I keep one Hermes profile per model, and I name each profile after its model.
A profile is an isolated copy of Hermes with its own settings, model and memory.
hermes profile create solar-mini-4
hermes -p solar-mini-4When one free model gets rate limited, I open another profile and carry on.
When a free window closes, I lose one profile and not my whole setup.
In my own Agent OS, the Hermes tab reads the same profiles, so I can compare models from one screen.
A 7-day plan to learn AI agents for free
One small job a day teaches more than a month of watching videos.
| Day | What you do | What it teaches you about an Agent OS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | You install Hermes Agent and connect one free model. | You learn that the agent and the brain are separate parts. |
| 2 | You create a second profile on a different free model. | You learn to swap brains without breaking anything. |
| 3 | You ask the agent to read a folder and summarise the newest files. | You learn how an agent uses tools. |
| 4 | You run a research job with sources, then turn it into drafts. | You learn how context carries across a session. |
| 5 | You run /learn on a topic and read the skill it writes. | You learn how an agent builds reusable skills. |
| 6 | You schedule one daily job, such as a to-do recap. | You learn how automations work. |
| 7 | You add a local model in Ollama and compare the answers. | You learn what a free brain can and cannot do. |
I start every new model with the word "test", because it proves the profile, the provider and the model all work.
When I tested Solar Mini 4 on a news research job, it came back fast with a breakdown and sources.
When I tested MissingNo, the /learn command worked really well and it was quick at calling tools.
A coding task was weaker, because a simple ping-pong style game took about five minutes and was not frontier level.
So free brains are good enough for basic agent tasks, and they will not replace Claude Opus 5.5.
My Hermes /learn guide shows what a learned skill looks like.
Free interfaces: Herald OS and StarNet
You can learn everything above in a terminal, and many people would rather not.
Herald OS is a free, MIT-licensed agent operating system that uses Hermes Agent as the interface.
It gives you a dashboard, spaces, missions, memory, files and automations on top of the same Hermes install.
Its automations sync with Hermes Desktop and with my own Agent OS, because it is the same Hermes underneath.
It is alpha software from an independent developer, and the Connections section did not work for me.
My free Hermes Agent OS guide walks through the install, and my Herald OS guide tours every screen.
StarNet is the other free interface, and it shows your agents inside a pixel-art space station.
I think StarNet is fun to play with, and I do not think it has a massive number of practical use cases yet.
Fun still counts when you are learning, because you practise more when you enjoy it.
My StarNet AI agent guide covers the setup.
🔥 Want the exact learning AI agents for free setup I run inside my Agent OS?
Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.
Free lessons that match this path
My free community is AI Money Lab, and it had more than 93,000 members when I checked today.
Its about page lists free AI courses, 50+ free AI tools, 200+ ChatGPT SEO prompts and 1,000+ n8n workflows.
My free Agent OS course is the video at the top of this page, and my two-hour Hermes course is embedded above.
I also read four third-party course pages, and this is what each one showed.
| Free course | Provider | What the page showed on 13 October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| AI Agents Course | Hugging Face | The page calls it a free course, the certification process is free, and it asks for basic Python. |
| AI Agents for Beginners | Microsoft | It is an open GitHub repo with 18 lessons under the MIT licence. |
| Introduction to LangGraph | LangChain Academy | The page says "Enroll for free" and lists 55 lessons with 6 hours of video. |
| Introduction to Model Context Protocol | Anthropic Academy | The registration button is labelled free, and it teaches MCP servers and clients in Python. |
I have not taken those four courses myself, so I am only reporting what their own pages say.
They are more technical than my videos, which makes them a good second course.
My best free AI agent course post ranks the free options.
Hidden costs to avoid on a $0 stack
A free stack only stays free if you know where the charges hide.
| Hidden cost | How it catches you | How to stay at $0 |
|---|---|---|
| The paid model variant | Solar Mini 4 is listed twice, and the paid entry looks almost identical. | You always pick the variant marked free. |
| A free window closing | Solar Mini 4 was free for two weeks, and MissingNo is free for a limited time. | You check the free list before a long task. |
| Paid live voice | The Herald OS docs list the live voice engine at $0.05 per minute through an OpenAI key. | You stay on the free voice engine, which runs on your device. |
| Topping up | A rate limit hits and adding credits feels like the fix. | You switch to another free profile. |
| New hardware | You assume agents need a powerful machine. | You use hosted free models on the laptop you own. |
The first row is the warning I gave in my Solar Mini 4 video.
On 13 October 2026 the paid entry, upstage/solar-mini4, was priced at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens.
The free entry, upstage/solar-mini4:free, was priced at zero.
To check which one you are on, run hermes dashboard, click Models, click "Set main model" and read the label.
I also cannot see what Hermes Cloud hosting will cost on your account, so read what Nous Portal shows before you deploy a cloud agent.
The local install above is the route I know costs nothing.
What will eventually cost money, and when it is worth it
The free stack has a ceiling, and hitting it is a good sign.
It means your agents are doing enough real work for the limits to matter.
- A stronger paid model is worth it when a job you run every week keeps failing on a free brain.
- Paid voice is worth it when you talk to your agents daily and the free voice slows you down.
- Coaching is worth it when you have been stuck on the same problem for a week.
- A ready-made Agent OS is worth it when you would rather run agents than build the dashboard.
None of those is worth paying for before you have finished the seven days above.
Ready to go further? (paid)
This part is a paid upsell, and I am labelling it clearly.
My full Agent OS is not on GitHub, and it is only available inside the AI Profit Boardroom.
That is my paid community, with 3,400+ members and four coaching calls a week.
It includes courses on Hermes Agent, Grok Bot, DeepSeek Harness, Claude Opus 5.5 and Jev AI.
FatRank named it the #1 AI community after testing 27 communities.
I would join after you have run agents on the free stack and you want to move faster.
My AI Agent OS guide shows what the full system looks like.
Where to go next
If you want the wider roadmap, read how to learn AI agents.
If you have never opened a terminal, read how to learn AI agents from scratch.
Also On Our Network
FAQ
How do I learn AI agents for free?
Install the free, open-source Hermes Agent, connect a free model from Nous Portal or OpenRouter, and give the agent one small job a day. Join a free community such as AI Money Lab so you can ask questions.
Can I build an Agent OS for free?
Yes. Hermes Agent is the free agent, Nous Portal, OpenRouter and Ollama give you free brains, and Herald OS and StarNet are free MIT-licensed interfaces. Julian's own full Agent OS is only available inside the paid AI Profit Boardroom.
Which free models are available today?
On 13 October 2026 the Nous inference API listed ten zero-priced models, including Solar Mini 4 free, MissingNo, Step 3.7 Flash, Step 5 Preview and LongCat 2.0. OpenRouter listed 15 models with a free tag. Both lists change.
What is the hidden cost with Solar Mini 4?
It is listed twice. The free variant is upstage/solar-mini4:free, and the paid variant without the free tag was priced at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.20 per million output tokens on 13 October 2026.
Do I need a powerful computer?
No. Hosted free models run on someone else's hardware, so a normal laptop is enough. A local model needs enough memory, and small local models are weaker.
When is it worth paying?
It is worth paying when an agent already does a real job for you every week and you want a stronger model, live coaching or a ready-made Agent OS.
Final word on learning AI agents for free
Install the agent, pick the brain marked free, keep one profile per model and run one small job a day.
That is how to learn AI agents for free.
About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an AI entrepreneur, SEO expert and the founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
My YouTube channel has 400,000+ subscribers, and I run Goldie Agency, a seven-figure SEO agency.
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